Technically true, but none of these are relevant to the modern financial system.
The four times the United States government defaulted on its debt (2021)
41–50 of 95 posts
Re: The four times the United States government defaulted on its debt (2021)
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
The conflict has been going on since 2014. I'm interested in what was actually predicted.
It's an interesting book and I think it's worth a read. The author, Peter Zeihan, does a good job of melding geography, demographics, energy, and food supply to come up with a deterministic approach to geo-politics. I have no clue how accurate it is, but it's a fun mental algorithm for simplifying complex and nuanced situations. His prediction, and I'm paraphrasing here, was that Russian Demographics are more or less…
The Russians have considerably fewer fighting age men...less every day, now it would appear.
Amazing logic.
But, I guess p didn't expect such a drubbing.
Re: The four times the United States government defaulted on its debt (2021)
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The US Government has never defaulted on its debt under the current (~75 year old) global financial system. Except for 1979: * https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-debt-default-idUSN1E76A0... * https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/heres-w... * https://archive.is/jKayD
> technical default 32 years ago was blamed on check-processing glitches and quickly corrected . . . affected only a tiny percentage of maturing securities at the time. Not exactly the same thing.
A default is a default is a default.
Doesn't matter the reason. Doesn't matter the justification.
Re: The four times the United States government defaulted on its debt (2021)
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
No better alternative for the Chinese. US Treasuries are the worlds most liquid and deep markets for money at the nation-state scale. Euro's are still in America's sphere of influence. Holding Yuan just destroys their export economy. Japanese depend on America for security so they do it as a sort of quid pro quo. I do agree though: pensioners (i.e. US public) will suffer first. International treasury defaults would t…
China has been buying gold. They have been preparing for the collapse of the dollar for years. There are some claims that the collapse of the dollar is China's goal.
Allegedly they have some 2068 tons. For an economy of their size, this isn't that much. Italy claims 2452 tons.
https://www.gold.org/goldhub/gold-focus/2023/04/chinas-gold-....
I'm more in the Brent Johnson camp on the de-dollarization hype.
Re: The four times the United States government defaulted on its debt (2021)
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps history shows that "literally bring[ing] an end to the current global financial system" is not as uncommon as people expect.
But doing so when you are at the top of said system; for no reason other than politcal gamesmanship?
I'm curious who is engaging in the gamesmanship in this scenario. This has been an issue long in the making with our deficit ballooning, even after significant increases in federal revenue. The bill signed by Republicans is hardly extreme, and when we considering the amount of expenses being paid to interest alone, it's clear the federal government needs to do something at this point.
Legislators across both aisles have demonstrated they have no interest in decreasing spending. This bill forces their hand while there's still leverage.
Re: The four times the United States government defaulted on its debt (2021)
#46Our politics is so dysfunctional. We waste tremendous amounts of time making the same arguments over and over and over, like somehow this time will be different. I assume both sides want it to continue, though I don't really understand the motivations from the left. The right is super easy to understand, it's a huge win for them every time.
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Re: The four times the United States government defaulted on its debt (2021)
#47The last default is the most significant one https://wtfhappenedin1971.com
So the intent here is clearly to blame all these problems on ending the gold standard. But on a lot of these graphs they really fudge it. The dual income trend began in 1965, as did the home value vs. income one. It's unclear to me why they view the words 'peer review' as a negative, but if you zoom in on ngram you'll find that spike also occurred before 1971. Some of the 'positive' trends also continued well after the end of the gold standard, like debt to GDP. The income inequality graph only diverges in 1980. And this is just from looking at their own graphs that they've cherrypicked. Needless to say, a questionable source at best.
Re: The four times the United States government defaulted on its debt (2021)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps history shows that "literally bring[ing] an end to the current global financial system" is not as uncommon as people expect.
But doing so when you are at the top of said system; for no reason other than politcal gamesmanship?
I don't understand why this time it's different than every other debt ceiling show. Republicans refuse, Democrats call them a bunch of names, there's a "government shutdown" where about 5% of the federal government is furloughed - the things most visible and painful to the average citizen like passport renewals, immigration, national parks etc... and then the Republicans admit defeat and everything opens up again.
Re: The four times the United States government defaulted on its debt (2021)
#49The US Government has never defaulted on its debt under the current (~50 year old) global financial system. It HAS defaulted when transitioning off the gold/silver standard, when the world moved off Breton Woods, and during the Civil War. I’d note that each of those defaults were related to the total collapse of the existing rules for national/global finance. So ultimately, these defaults do bolster the case for the…
Right! This article very misleadingly confuses leaving the Bretton wood agreement and going off the gold standard as defaults. I think that is the same only in the mind of this author, who seems to be trying to normalize something that would be very dumb to do.
Re: The four times the United States government defaulted on its debt (2021)
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
> technical default 32 years ago was blamed on check-processing glitches and quickly corrected . . . affected only a tiny percentage of maturing securities at the time. Not exactly the same thing.
A default is a default is a default. Doesn't matter the reason. Doesn't matter the justification.
Actually I think the financial system doesn't function as a rigid categorization structure. I think it's more like a negotiation of resource management. Things like leverage and political power apply here in ways that cause the rules to become far more flexible. A powerful government like the United States commands far more favorable (good faith) experiences with finance than, say, a person who is late on paying rent due to the same checking error.