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Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

reuters.com

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Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#761

Post by Braxton1980 »

adventured wrote: post #206
azinman2 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re assuming the people in charge are sane, rationale, and value past decisions that have worked out. It’s quite clear with the now likely permanent damage to NATO this isn’t the case.

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…

NATO was formed as a defense against Russia. Which is a major threat to the US so I don't see why it's useless. We operate bases in Germany, Spain, and others.

If we need Greenland so bad because Russia is that dangerous then isn't NATO important?

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#762

Post by Braxton1980 »

SR2Z wrote: post #377
epolanski wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Europeans now expect America to fight Russia for them, not with them. As an European: nobody has this expectation, unless you're using some strange subreddit comment as a source of information.

Compare the strength of the militaries of Europe with the United States and you'll see how that claim is believable. That's changing, but for many years European nations did not spend very much on their militaries. A large part of why is the protection of NATO and US bases in various countries.

How is US military spending say that Europe was letting the US fight Russia?

The US spending could be the result of so many other factors.

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#763

Post by Braxton1980 »

SR2Z wrote: post #701
ponector wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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.

The US lacks political will to support Ukraine (mostly) because it's a conflict ten thousand miles away. Europe should have a much more immediate interest in Ukraine not losing.

The US needs greenland because Russia is that much of a threat but we don't need NATO even though it was created because of Russia(USSR) and we are hesitant to supply Ukraine with weapons even though they are actually fighting Russia because it's too expensive but we also are going to buy a country

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#764

Post by gpvos »

tokai wrote: post #444
CamperBob2 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're under active, malicious attack by 1/3 of our own eligible voters. Not clear how this will play out, as I can't think of any historical parallels.

Thats why its really fricking important to have more than two parties, so coalitions can be formed to counter such things.

At the other end of the spectrum, the two countries with the strongest form of proportional representation, also have problems: politics in The Netherlands is nearly paralyzed, it becomes harder every election to form a coalition. And Israeli politics radicalized anyway.

Maybe indeed the relatively best solution is in the middle: proportional representation with well-chosen thresholds.

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#765

Post by nugator »

A Swedish pension fund has been doing the same with about 8 billion dollars.

"The reason for the sales is an increased risk linked to the US's more unpredictable policies under Trump's leadership, says asset management manager Pablo Bernengo. Alecta assesses that the risk in US government bonds and the dollar has increased at the same time as the country suffers from large budget deficits and a growing national debt."

https://omni.se/a/0pK1zJ

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#766

Post by collingreen »

_zagj wrote: post #664
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.

> 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-o…

Are the constantly crowing, entitled ingrates with their condescending lectures in the room right now?

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#767

Post by jonathanstrange »

bluGill wrote: post #626
epistasis wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's definitely going on. There's also something that I've heard called "reactionary centrism:" a feedback loop of people who think that truth lies in the middle between the two extremes, and also that assumes that no mainstream position in a political faction can itself be the "extreme." And that if they find that one political faction is doing something that seems extreme to them, that in the interests of fairnes…

Right vs left makes the assumption there are two sides / options. I have long thought that the 'left' was too extreem socialist - that doesn't mean I think current 'right' is any better.

I know political discussions on HN are discouraged but let me chime in as the one who made a comment higher in the thread: From a European perspective, both US Republicans and US Democrats are right-wing, except for guys like Bernie Sanders whose positions are close to a typical European center-left social democrat.

However, IMHO this doesn't really matter because in the US both the left and the right tend to score high on authoritarianism on the freedom vs. authoritarian axis on a two-dimensional political spectrum view if you look at their actual policies and views they defend. That even includes the almost nonexistent US far left. Strongly anti-authoritarian viewpoints are extremely rare in the US. Even self-proclaimed "libertarians" in the US tend to have fairly authoritarian views when you press them about it, they're usually merely anti-federal-government pro business right-wing neoliberals.

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#768

Post by DrScientist »

davesque wrote: post #691
kevin061 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy. The people have spoken. Americans wanted this.

Can people quit with this stupid argument? A thin majority of Americans voted for this during the election. If you follow the polls, the vast majority of American currently don't want this. Just stop with this "dumb Americans" dur dur nonsense. Those of us who have our heads screwed on straight are so sick of being blamed for this. The same thing could happen at any time in any country.

I understand, but it's also a bit rich coming from the US.

When the US applies country level sanctions or goes to war in places like Gaza, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Cuba, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Iran - I don't see much thought given to it really not being the peoples fault.

> The same thing could happen at any time in any country.

Exactly.

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#769

Post by xienze »

triceratops wrote: post #708
xienze wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, homogeneity doesn't cause happiness. Funny though how all those European countries everyone on HN and Reddit point to as "how things should be" are all pretty ethnically and culturally homogenous, though that's changing rapidly. Interestingly, cracks are starting to appear. > And the US was always less homogenous than other "western" countries. The US was 85-90% white in 1965. That's pretty homogenous.

You're confirming what I said earlier. There are both happy and unhappy "homogenous" countries. There's literally no correlation. Instead of stopping there you're regurgitating, and it's unfortunate I'm confirming Poe's law, Mein Kampf . > The US was 85-90% white in 1965. That's pretty homogenous. I think you know nothing about culture, ethnicity, or the history of bigotry, xenophobia, and racism in the US if you can…

> There are both happy and unhappy "homogenous" countries. There's literally no correlation.

There’s multiple components to what “happiness” entails. One might argue that a society filled with numerous cultures and ethnicities all vying for their own interests can make for quite a bit of unhappiness. E.g., if everyone was white, there’d be no hand-wringing over white supremacy. If everyone was straight, there’d be no hand-wringing over LGBT representation, and so on. That’s not saying that other social ills can’t exist in homogenous societies, but they do have fewer due to having more shared identity and values. Don’t be dense just to make a point.

> You're reducing all the diverse peoples that made up the nation into a single group based on their skin color.

Like people do today when lumping everyone of various ethnicities into the “white” bucket and decrying “whiteness”? If it’s a valid classification today why can’t we use the same term retrospectively?

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#770

Post by xienze »

larkost wrote: post #581
xienze wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You understand how statistics work, don't you? When you have 64% of the population voting, that's a pretty big sample size, enough so that you can reasonably extrapolate that the 49.8% share _probably_ holds across the rest of the population, give or take. Put another way, if someone asked you to estimate what the split between the one third of the population that didn't vote was, what would you use as a reference po…

I don't think that you understand how that part of statistics works. You are said that we have sampled 64% of the population, so we can extrapolate to the rest. That works if the sampling is sufficiently random. But in this case the "sampling" is people who voted, so an entirely (self) selected population, and pretty much not random at all (i.e.: people who were mostly less decisive about their opinions/vote). So I d…

> So I don't think we can extrapolate confidently at all

But the parent was — the implication being that if the other third had voted, surely they would have voted in greater proportion for Democrats than Republicans. That’s based on nothing but vibes and assumptions. I argue that the 64% share of people that actually did vote give you a lot more confidence in how the remaining third probably would have voted than whatever the parent suggested. It’s at least a starting point for extrapolation.

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