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I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

beanlog.vercel.app

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Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you believe this was unconstitutional?

If a state did it, it would be a straightforward violation of the Contracts Clause. With regard to Treasury bonds and gold certificates it was the government rewriting its own contracts. It was a violation of the contract on every Federal Reserve Note and bank deposit as well. Redemption in gold had been suspended before, but the value had not been, and in the late nineteenth century the government started redeeming…

The Supreme Court disagreed and held the Gold Clause constitutional: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Clause_Cases

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#482
post #465
post #12

"A refund of the excess purchase will be made" Sounds like he will have made his intended 10k investment, there's no indication the system doesn't work as intended (even though it could work a lot better, obviously - the app could check for the investment limit right away, and an 8-week window for refunds, in a system that offers 2-month investments, is borderline scammy).

But "the excess purchase " will be refunded. "The purchase " was for $10000, so that's what will be refunded. At least that's what I view as the logically "correct" way to interpret the sentence. Whether it's what the software does or not is anyone's guess.

hmm, I'd debate whether a purchase of something that can be bought in practically continuous increements has to be seen as "all-or-nothing". If you're buying a car, of course, you can only buy a full car or none. but when your remaining purchase volume is [0,9975], I would have interpreted the excess part of a 10000 purchase as only the 10000-9975=25.

also, the 8-week window is indicative that this will be reviewed by a human being, who would hopefully understand the intention behind depositing 25 and then 10000 (the intention behind depositing another 10k might be a bit less clear lol).

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#483

I've been in the US for 4 years and it seems like the government is just like a computer that you cannot talk to or get issues fixed somehow. It's like, if something goes wrong you're fucked. If USPS loses your documents or even your car's title, or your immigration approval notice, you're fucked, you might need to wait 2 months, or 6, or 8, and nobody cares, nobody will help you. There's no one that can help you. At…

In general, the solution to your problem is to hire an attorney. They're expensive and overkill for most things, but they know how to "talk" to the government. And just as you'd expect from Vogons, it's painful to watch. Otherwise you're effectively left as your own lawyer, having to know tricks of how to communicate/escalate and doing online research to find out. In general if you can get a government agency on the…

With immigration, attorneys are not a solution either. If USCIS asks them to wait 3 months before asking for re-sending a document, they shall do that. It doesn't matter if you are 2 months away from getting deported. And the papers can get lost again.

For the title, I've known a person that had the issue. It was the duplicate that was lost again, not sure why they couldn't request another one, not sure if a lawyer would have helped. But the result was a wait time of 6 months (instead of the supposed 3-5 weeks)

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#484

I stopped reading when I got to "They're zero-risk bonds..."

US treasury bonds are generally considered "zero-risk" in finance, it's a pretty common notion.

I know this. But government bonds, including USTs, are not zero-risk. Sovereign risk exists on all government debt, including US debt.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US treasury bonds are generally considered "zero-risk" in finance, it's a pretty common notion.

I know this. But government bonds, including USTs, are not zero-risk. Sovereign risk exists on all government debt, including US debt.

Treasuries are considered zero risk in the sense that if they default, the rest of your portfolio is going to be worthless anyways and you're probably better off investing in guns, water, and cans of food.

Because the US government prints the dollar that the debt is denominated in, there is no risk that they would be unable to repay the debt, so it would have to be their explicit choice.

Technically the USA's elected congresspeople might be able to repeal or sidestep the 14th amendment and pass legislation causing the government to willingly default on their debt, but a move like that would likely cause a global financial panic and potentially even a collapse of the dollar itself, very quickly costing them many, many multiples of the amount of "money" saved. That's if the dollar is even still considered to be money at that point.

The government would start hemorrhaging money in the bond markets far before a bill like that could actually pass, due to investors pricing in the possibility of willful default. The first moment a congressperson even proposed it seriously in a tweet, the rates would be affected in a small but measurable way.

Even in a crazy hypothetical where the USA were entirely annexed by a foreign nation, it probably still wouldn't default on its debts, because the annexing country would want to preserve the asset of the USA's reputation for repayment.

So, what's the chance of the USA repealing the 14th amendment by a bipartisan 2/3 vote, then willingly choosing to surrender all of their power to other countries on the global stage? Like I said, the word "risk" starts to lose all meaning at that point. You're better off buying some books for entertainment, because you'll need to stay in your bunker for quite a while.

When you say "there's a non-zero chance that the US Government defaults", you might as well be saying "there's a non-zero chance that everyone comes to the sudden realization that money is dumb and we should stop using it".

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#486
post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's no wonder that people vote for less government influence in the US. They just never had a good experience with it so they want to get rid of it as a band-aid solution.

Are large organizations in other countries more human friendly? That sounds delightful. My impression from friends in the EU is that it is similar there, at least for housing and healthcare regulations.

As a dual-citizen, I've had some great experiences at the Swiss Consulate in the US. Though accessing the government through the Department of Foreign Affairs might yield much better service than going directly to the underlying bureaucracy.

Story: when my parents got married, my mother gained Swiss citizenship and they wanted her birth certificate. She told them she didn't have it and that it might not exist anymore, since she was born in South Vietnam, which was no longer a country. They had their colleagues in Vietnam find it for her, and even gave her a copy, without being asked.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this. But government bonds, including USTs, are not zero-risk. Sovereign risk exists on all government debt, including US debt.

Treasuries are considered zero risk in the sense that if they default, the rest of your portfolio is going to be worthless anyways and you're probably better off investing in guns, water, and cans of food. Because the US government prints the dollar that the debt is denominated in, there is no risk that they would be unable to repay the debt, so it would have to be their explicit choice. Technically the USA's elected…

If there is a coupon on the bond, then there must be risk.

No risk, no reward.

You've only addressed credit risk above. But come on, we all know there are all kinds of other risks at play here.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't want to have to care about anyone else. They are so burdened with looking out for themselves they only see caring about anyone else as just another burden that they shouldn't have to bear, instead of seeing it as an avenue of shared and thus relieved burden. So, any excuse to make it so they don't have to care about any other misfortune than their own.

Humans are social animals. How do you reconcile that?

Not OP, but a lot of people find it very easy to be sociable with successful people (or who they perceive as successful anyway) and will give them preferential treatment.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#489
post #32

The venn diagram of internet users that read about super specific financial products, decide to buy them, while not even understanding the need to keep an emergency fund such that a move like this leaves them with under $200 in their account seems to be growing. It seems to be a weird mix of wall street cosplay and financial ineptitude.

People are desperate about the future. Gone are the times when having a good job, paying a reasonable mortgage for a reasonably paid house, saving a reasonable amount for retirement, while keeping a reasonable amount for emergencies (rare, before lay-offs become the knee jerk reaction of MBAs to fatten their bonuses). Due to the increasing financialization of the economy, more and more people feel like they need to b…

Sorry, I'm not trying to be picky, but I cannot grok this sentence:

> Gone are the times when having a good job, paying a reasonable mortgage for a reasonably paid house, saving a reasonable amount for retirement, while keeping a reasonable amount for emergencies (rare, before lay-offs become the knee jerk reaction of MBAs fatten their bonuses).

Is there a word or half the sentence missing there? I cannot follow your meaning.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't know about that The majority of people never were in a pension plan, and even now a lot of people in pension plans don't work for that employer a full career, only getting partial payouts. Currently the main source of retirement funds for most retirees is Social Security. So all those supposed people in wonderful pensions from the 1970s and so on either don't exist or make so little from those pensions that…

"By yearend 1960, pension plans covered 23 million persons, about one-half of all private sector workers." "By yearend 1977, total employer contributions to defined benefit pension plans had risen [...] covering nearly 35 million active employees." [More than half.] https://www.bls.gov/mlr/1991/12/art3full.pdf https://www.thebalance.com/the-history-of-the-pension-plan-2... https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USPRIV Ad…

I like that you inject "[More than half]" when referring to the nearly 35 million workers in 1977.

Except there were over 90 million workers by then [1]. The FRED series you picked is not all employed people.

> And we saw how great these investment plans worked out for the poor folks that had planned to retire around 2008.

Ah, cherry picking, the best of all logical fallacies.

It's already known that those pensions didn't turn out too well either, since most of the people in that time now get most of their retirement income from Social Security.....

>to pump money into to Wall Street

And now the bias shows. Why not own some productive assets? What do you think pension plans do with money? Sit on it in a safe? Invest them all in the employing company, increasing risk, so that when/if the parent company fails the people get screwed? (Which happens and still happens a lot).

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/41840558

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