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Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

reuters.com

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Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#661

Post by rainsford »

kyboren wrote: post #305
jacquesm wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a one sided thing. The US has been allowed to do a lot of things under the NATO umbrella that it benefited from (such as: selling a vast quantity of arms). Soft power is a thing and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization came into being to deal with exactly the kind of situation that we are viewing today. To see the US bow out, and in fact threatening allies is duplicitous at best.

NATO came into being to deal with the USSR, which was the preeminent threat to all NATO members. The US wasn't expected just to come save Europe; European states had real military power and the will to bring it to bear against the US's main adversary. In a conflict with the USSR, the US could rely on Europe to fight with them. Very valuable. Today, US policymakers see China as the main adversary. But European states…

Looking at it in terms of the direct near-term military benefit of NATO in a conflict with China is focusing on the wrong thing. The real question isn't how strongly NATO membership would directly benefit the US military in a conflict with China; it's how strongly the act of blowing up the NATO relationship would negatively impact the US ability to deal with China in a future conflict. And those are two extremely different questions.

Are the French going to be parking the Charles de Gaulle alongside American aircraft carriers in the Taiwan Strait if push comes to shove in the Pacific? I wouldn't entirely discount it. But maybe more importantly, even if they're not, does making an enemy of the EU negatively impact the ability of the US to park American aircraft carriers there? Certainly damage to the Atlantic trade relationship is unlikely to do the US any favors economically, which is important if the US wants to keep funding the Navy. And a potential loss of European controlled military bases has the potential to negative effect the US military's logistics, which is where the real superpower status comes from. Maybe most significantly, how would such a shift in alliances impact the willingness of Pacific allies to support the US, which obviously does have a direct impact on any conflict with China.

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#662

Post by TacticalCoder »

meling wrote: post #354
OrvalWintermute wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Euros also underfunded their defense obligations and received huge amounts of US investment in facilities, enabling them to upfund social programs, socialized healthcare and most egregiously 8 - 12 week vacations which are completely unheard of in the US.

Who has 8 week vacations, let alone 12? No European country I’m aware of, but I didn’t check all…

> Who has 8 week vacations, let alone 12? No European country I’m aware of, but I didn’t check all…

All teachers and most politicians. Teachers do enjoy the same vacation as students: schools aren't open during vacation. Two months of vacation + 6 additional weeks of vacation during the year + a few special one-day holidays.

As for politicians: my stepfather was working at a national parliament but only when there would be official questions and only when these would be in his native tongue (country had two official languages). And when the country would be without a government, he'd have as much as 500 days (500 days: you read correctly, and it didn't happen once but twice) of vacations. It's only if there was a super urgent matter where the parliament would be opened that he'd have to work: so he'd quickly hop on a plane and go back to his native country.

So "who": some public servants. Not all but some public servants definitely do enjoy 8 to 12 weeks of vacation and even much more than that.

At the expense of working, taxpaying, citizens.

EDIT: for the 500 days... He would not know beforehand it'd be 500 days. He'd just know there was no government anymore. So he was fully paid but basically had to do jack shit until there'd be a government again. Which nobody could tell when it'd happen. But you read correctly: half a thousand days+. You all read that correctly. His vacation on the sunny french riviera paid by the taxes of the people.

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#663

Post by rainsford »

rayiner wrote: post #546
jacquesm wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't you done enough to wreck your reputation by now? For reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46685072

[flagged]

Any reasonable substantive analysis of the situation can't possibly limit itself to just the direct benefits of "having Denmark in our camp", especially considering the context of this thread. Would having the support of Denmark be the make or break factor in a war between the US and China? Almost certainly no. Would the second and third order effects of the US ending its alliance with Denmark and/or NATO, and potentially turning them into enemies, by forcibly taking over Danish territory or something similar impact the US ability to fight a war with China? Almost certainly yes.

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#664

Post by _zagj »

jacquesm wrote: post #216
adventured wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming NATO is somehow critical for the US. It is not. NATO is critical for the European powers (those not named Russia). The US doesn't require it. The US doesn't need to defend Europe any longer. And it's clear the Europeans don't want the US there, so it works out great. Europe can boost its defense spending by ~$300 billion to make up the difference, or not, whatever they choose to do is up to them. The…

This is not a one sided thing. The US has been allowed to do a lot of things under the NATO umbrella that it benefited from (such as: selling a vast quantity of arms). Soft power is a thing and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization came into being to deal with exactly the kind of situation that we are viewing today. To see the US bow out, and in fact threatening allies is duplicitous at best.

> Soft power is a thing

This is the usual claptrap Euros and Eurosimps come up with when Americans gripe about subsidizing Europe's defense.

"Soft power" isn't putting money back in Americans' pockets, and the primary beneficiaries of NATO clearly didn't like us very much even before Trump's return, when Biden was still president and the aid flowed freely to Kyiv: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/06/11/views-of-the-u...

> Sweden: 47% had a favorable opinion of the US.; Germany: 49%; France: 46%; The Netherlands: 48%

This is the "soft power" that Americans should rue having lost under Trump? A continent of entitled ingrates, who constantly crow about their generous welfare states ("six months paid vacation!") they enjoy partially through neglect of defense, and condescendingly lecture us ("As a European...") about how everything we do is wrong, who apparently don't like us very much even when we do come to their defense?

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#665

Post by dragonwriter »

rayiner wrote: post #546
jacquesm wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't you done enough to wreck your reputation by now? For reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46685072

[flagged]

> I pointed out that Denmark is a country the size of Maryland and couldn't meaningfully move the needle in any serious engagement involving the U.S. military. If the U.S. went to war with China, having Denmark in our camp versus not having Denmark in our camp would make literally no difference.

Destroying NATO and our relations with the western states that have heretofore been either formal allies or friends-inclined-to-cooperate with the US has much wider consequences than not having Denmark “in our camp”, both on security issues in the narrowest physical sense and on the broad range of softer issues that impact the security landscape, as the almost immediately way the current crisis over Greenland has resulted in overtures from erstwhile allies to China demonstrates pretty dramatically.

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#666

Post by ponector »

wolvesechoes wrote: post #533
epolanski wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's the logic of a 15 years old playing call of duty. Europe has spent less on military because after the cold war and still today, it never had any realistic threat. Russia can't even take few miles off Ukraine. The only realistic threat is the US, which is an ally, in theory. Now a threat.

> Russia can't even take few miles off Ukraine And yet Europe is unable to support Ukraine enough to change the course of war. Which is the direct cause of the current situation. If Europe was so strong and ready, war in Ukraine would be over, Russia was defeated, and US wouldn't even think of doing what it is doing. Everything else is copium.

>> Europe is unable to support Ukraine enough to change the course of war.

It's not unable. There is little political will in Europe and USA to support Ukraine with arms to the victory. They support Ukraine just enough to not loose. It's in their interest to grind russian meat and tanks in Ukraine as long as possible.

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#667

Post by Barrin92 »

lenerdenator wrote: post #645
Barrin92 wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the Chinese will seek something in return. They're not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. of course they aren't but it's also obvious what they want. Design a new global order where they have a seat at the table and get to determine standards, processes and technologies. That's the point of investing in telecommunications, cars, and so on. But what they don't want is annex European territory. China is s…

> But what they don't want is annex European territory. They've more-or-less directly supported Russia's ambitions in Ukraine. If they don't want to annex your territory but are willing to support someone who does in the bloodiest war on the continent since the end of WWII, is there really a difference? They know they aren't in a place to project power over Europe, but they have a partner that absolutely is. I'd keep…

Wang Yi, when he was in Brussels earlier last year was pretty blunt and said that if China wanted Russia to win the war would be over and given the scale of China's defense and industrial sector that's probably true. They don't actually recognize Russia's territorial gains. From their perspective, this is the middle position. They simply can't afford Russia to lose, they're dealing with their own US problem.

And mind you I'm not very sympathetic what we in Germany call "Russlandversteher" but it's also become clear, the war in Ukraine not withstanding, that Russia isn't an existential military threat. There'll come a time, maybe after Putin is gone, when there's an opportunity to have a security architecture that covers the whole continent. A Europe with Russia even though it's impossible now wouldn't be this vulnerable. And at some point this has to be resolved because it's untenable long term.

Kissinger wrote a book in 1994 Diplomacy where he pointed out that the biggest threat to European independence is over-reliance on the US, not China or Russia simply because of the predominance of the US militarily and economically. And if the US continues to be this beligerent, unlike Russia it is an existential threat.

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#668

Post by surgical_fire »

justin66 wrote: post #660
surgical_fire wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "nutty" about it? For countries outside the US, it would actually not be a bad scenario. Better than having your supreme leader threatening invasion, annexation, promoting coups and so on.

We’ve apparently abandoned the meaning of the word “best,” for staters. > For countries outside the US, it would actually not be a bad scenario. I really don’t think I can help you, but the two obvious crazy ideas encompassed here are that civil wars never turn into wider regional conflicts and that losing a major trading partner never tanked an economy. Or that the ideological conflict here won’t possibly spread any…

> losing a major trading partner never tanked an economy

The major trading partner that has been placing heavy tariffs on everyone but Russia? I just want to confirm we are talking about the same one.

> did you not even notice Vance and Musk’s support of afd ?

This is exactly the sort of problem we are talking about.

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#669

Post by drecked »

afavour wrote: post #42

It's symbolism. But it's important symbolism. Far more notable, I think, is Macron saying this morning that Europe needs more investment from China. Canada signing a deal with China to allow their cars to be sold in the country. It's all a sliding slope until it reaches a breaking point and falls off like a cliff. EDIT: to quote the Canadian PN earlier today: “American hegemony in particular helped provide public goo…

One of the strongest reasons to hold onto the dollar is the stability and finances of the U.S. government.

But in the last month, the U.S. President has pushed for a criminal investigation of the Fed chair because he isn’t doing what the U.S. President is asking, has threatened to start a war of conquest against a NATO ally, has simultaneously said increased taxes on imports will reduce the deficit but also that he will distribute it all away, has used import taxes as a geopolitical weapon, has said he runs Venezuela and one of the first things he’s done is injected the US government ahead of all other creditors.

All of this in the first few weeks of 2026. And every one of these actions destroy the very basis of why the world has confidence in the finances of the U.S. govt.

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#670

Post by lazzlazzlazz »

Many will downvote this, but this is profound validation of the concern that Europe is nearly suicidally trending toward what will be a disastrous relationship with China. Only the US seems to appreciate the risks. Complete insanity, not unlike German denuclearization, etc.
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