It's how Steve Yegge became a "father of agentic orchestration" or something - there is some Canonical Universe Building exercise somewhere on twitter that just looks, for the lack of a better word, not rigorous. But good for all these people, I guess, for riding the hype to glory.
What incentive do any of the few actors with the ability to effect that change have to actually pull that lever? I imagine that you have spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I would like to understand your position.
That is the problem. Reigning in debasement is what needs to happen or the dollar is dead. But, reigning in debasement means spending less. Spending less means people can't be reelected for "bringing federal money home". So, there is no incentive for Congress to cut anything. But, the piece that makes me pretty sure that debasement is the goal, is that by debasing the currency it makes it possible to pay off dollar denominated debt. I can't be the only one that sees it. Nations have been divesting of US Bonds for years now.
I'll say it another way. The government can pay off its debt by making your money worthless.
I changed my investment habits as soon as I recognized it. I am already happy I did.
So, if I got it right, your argument is that the US government has issued so much debt that in order to pay for its interest in the future it will find itself forced to devalue the USD, and that will lead to the stock market to underperform.
Did I get the gist of it?
> I can't be the only one that sees it
Correct. It is a pretty common argument.
A common counterargument is that the US government has two advantages when it comes to issuing debt.
First, the USD remains the primary reserve currency around the world, and for good reasons, too. As long as global trade relies so heavily on the USD and, more generally, on exports to the US, foreign exchange rates will continue to prop up the value of the USD and USD-denominated debt.
Can this global economic system change in the future? Sure. But it has a lot of mass and momentum behind it. It can't stop overnight, any more than a tornado can.
Second is that the US government issues debt in USD and it has its own central bank, which allows them to pull levers both on the fiscal policy side and the monetary policy side. This allows them to issue pretty much as much or as little debt as they want, pay for it as much or as little as they want (let's not forget forget QE), and adjust inflation up or down with an enviable degree of freedom.
Can this destabilize? Of course, it is possible to mismanage it badly enough, in theory. But given its position as the world's reserve currency, they can get away with murder compared to other less privileged countries and currencies.
Lastly, understanding something is not enough to make money out of it. You need to have privileged knowledge that other people lack. Is that what is happening here?
Unless something changes the government will be forced to continue devaluing the USD. They have been doing it since 1913. This is late stage debasement, not the start. Unless there is a drastic change in spending or growth there is no stopping this train even for a reserve currency. Being the reserve just allows us to spread out the damage. This points back to countries selling their US debt. They see default as more likely and want to get rid of it before they get caught holding the bag. It doesn't help that we have been abusing reserve currency privilege by using USD as a weapon. Who wants to be friends when our friendship is conditional on compliance?
The stock market will continue to go up as long as inflation happens. The dollar losing value is now the dominant market force. That makes the stock market increasing dependent on cheap credit. It is too risky for me to have money in the stock market. That value can evaporate faster than I can realize it on a decision as common as a FedFunds rate increase.
The last stage of a currency collapse is the country selling assets priced in dollars to pay dollar denominated debt.
That's the core question. I would like to see the parent poster's answer as well, because I don't see it happening as long as the US can price debt in its own currency, and the only way that stops happening is after a catastrophe that isn't worth planning for because there's no way to survive financially.
and incantation you put on your resume to double your salary for a few months before the company you jumped ship to gets obsoleted by the foundational model
How about this: no masks, no weapons (if they feel they are in danger they can call the cops who already have more weapons than they possibly need). Every time a citizen is detained in jail, detaining agent and their manager lose their paycheck for that period. Family with kids jailed and separated? No paycheck. You know, do it in the Christian compassionate way, not in the shooting single moms way.
We would have to pass a more general law that said children cannot be separated from their parents based on any crime the parents have committed, as there's no reason to special-case illegal immigration.
You are saying cops should ignore constitutional law in support of ICE? That is absolutely bonkers. This is the United STATES, not the Supreme Authority of the Federal Government.
With all due respect, actually look at the replies to your comment here. You are arguing in bad faith.
> How about local law enforcement just comply with ICE? Sanctuary cities and non-compliance brought this on these blue cities.
No, they "brought this on" by ignoring due process. There is no world in which your stance justifies the extrajudicial execution of a detained US citizen.
When I read these enjoyable posts, I agree, but then the thought creeps in that the human experience is not all that bliss. Thoughts about the Russian soldiers raping Ukrainians and putting the grenade booby traps into the children toys (replace with other war experiences of your choice), or about parts of our society idolizing insecure men being cruel and inevitable murder of innocent bystanders that happens then.
Of course the author had a great experience, he's a weird white American somewhere unexpected, the embodiment of a "traveler" archetype. Would that Swedish person give their car keys to a random Roma on their doorstep? Yeah no.
I don't know where I'm going with this rant. "Check your privilege" screeds are overused. Being kind, on the other hand, isn't.
Yeah, it's a good article, but the dissonance between this today and the death of Renee Good is so hard to reconcile. Certainly no miracle happened for her that day.
"surprised Pikachu face" lmao, just absurdly arrogantly wrong. Molotov-Ribbentrop was Stalin's last resort and (successful) bid for time and breathing room after trying and failing numerous diplomatic efforts to unite the Allies against Hitler. Many of those Allies were explicit, at the time, about their desire to use Nazi Germany to inflict a mortal blow on the godless communists in Moscow.
Em. After Molotov-Ribbentrop, the Soviet Union tried to formally join the Axis as the fourth Axis power.
It's hard to argue that was to buy time, especially given they had spent more effort conquering their neighbors and helping the Nazis than building defenses against the them. They just wanted a larger chunk of Europe and Western Asia.
Their attempt failed because Stalin got greedy with what chunk of Europe he wanted and their poor performance against Finland convinced the Nazis to double cross them and invade.
Hitler offered the Soviets to join the Axis in 1940, predicated on a bunch of conditions that they refused to accept. Where in the world did you come up with this completely false reinterpretation of that as "the Soviets tried to join the Axis"?
To describe the Soviet-Nazi discussions to join the Axis as the Soviets refusing because of Nazi demands is certainly an odd view of history especially given how Stalin's proposal, one he personally drafted, was received.
Perhaps this was one of the self-serving Soviet narratives, like the nonsense of having to side with the Nazis and invalid Poland because the Allies refused them - as opposed to actively double dealing and choosing the Axis because they offered the best deal.
Regarding the counterproposal, Hitler remarked to his top military chiefs that Stalin "demands more and more", "he's a cold-blooded blackmailer" and "a German victory has become unbearable for Russia" so that "she must be brought to her knees as soon as possible."[12] Hitler had already decided to invade the Soviet Union in July 1940,[13] but this apparently accelerated the process.
It all goes back to what Zhukov said, "we rescued Europe from fascism, and they will never forgive us for it."
And of course the Allies' own self-serving behavior and cutting deals with Hitler, or leaving the internal dissident generals within the Wehrmacht to twist in the wind, is always to be completely ignored, the fruits of four decades of history textbooks published by Ghislaine Maxwell's capitalist spook father.
> we rescued Europe from fascism, and they will never forgive us for it
Yeah, they "rescued" it alright. Like they rescued, err stolen, Moldova from Romania and they kept it for more than 40 years. Heck, they're still messing with it. Then at the end of the war they robbed and raped civilians from the countries they "liberated".
They have flown the flag of USSR in several occasions during their offensive war in Ukraine. It’s not the troops trying to be funny, either: their MoD has been sharing such videos.
Germany would have quite literally run out of oil (and other materials and even grain) a few months after conquering Poland. Most was imported was imported from the Americas before the war.
The French and British could have pretty much waited Germany out had Stalin decided not to bankroll the Nazis invasions of Norway and France. The allies were quite seriously considering bombing Soviet oil fields in Azerbaijan before France fell.
Presumably Stalin was hoping to prop-up Germany just long enough for them to get stuck in a protracted war in France so that he could swop in and "liberate" Europe. Unfortunately for millions it turned out to be a slight miscalculation...
Nah, Stalin didn’t anticipate the attack. And also deposing capitalist regimes, in what would become Allies, was famously the long-standing goal of the USSR
Those capitalist regimes were messing with the USSR continually from the moment of its inception, of course both sides were trying to undermine the other. Only one resorted to the sorts of terror tactics exemplified by the Phoenix Project, Operation Gladio, and the like.
When I think about this, I often come back to thinking that the societies that underwent some conflict or difficult times, absolutely cannot have a member of an older generation in charge, because the only thing they do is to continue that conflict, completely manufacturing it again if needed, just to get their "revenge". Current Russian attempt at genociding Ukrainians is all the more tragic in that the generations, that remember the previous hostilities, were almost all gone by now. Alas, that corner of the world is again poisoned for several generations ahead.
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