The British didn't really make unforced errors like Germany did, though. They mostly were forced into a fire sale situation as they were fighting for their lives. Even with everything they sold off, they were still within an inch of surrendering. The French story is similar. They may have been in a slow decline, but the war threw them off a cliff.

It's hard to look at what the US is doing and not become extremely angry, because historically the dumb hubristic nationalism always leads to crushing misery. It's so utterly predictable, and yet we're forced to watch the idiocy play itself out again.

> They felt like they'd eventually get swallowed unless they did something and the end result was WWI. And WW2 if you think about it.

I think this exactly how the US administration _feels_. Alexandr Dugin proposed spheres of influence. Russia starts acting on those. China is getting more powerful. Its now or never.

Even if China begins to take over much of the world's economic power, I don't think the rest of the world will accept Chinese culture in the face of Western social values.

The wave of fascism is already rising in Europe, but it is still very much under control. Like the AfD political party in Germany.

The summation aligns with everything I've ever read from anyone about Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm.

Behind the Bastards has a pretty good couple of episodes on this little corner of history: https://podcasts.apple.com/ke/podcast/part-one-kaiser-wilhel...

Margaret MacMillan is a modern historian with a liberal world view and no ideological incentive to defend Bismarck, and in her phenomenal work The War that Ended Peace (2013) she largely supports this view.

What gave the US the power it's now throwing away was an array of successes that made the US an example of good governance for the entire world: New Deal, Bretton Woods agreeement, victory in WW2, Marshall Plan and NATO. There wasn't a single person in charge of that all, but I think 3 stand out:

* Henry Morgenthau Jr.: secretary of Treasury during Roosevelt, one of the main designers of the New Deal, of financing the US war machine during WW2, and also one of the US negotiators at the Bretton Woods conference

* George C. Marshall: chief of staff of the US Army, organized the victory in WW2, came up with the eponymous plan and carried it forward politically. secretary of State after the War

* Dean Acheson: main designer of the Marshall Plan and of NATO, and one of the US negotiators at the Bretton Woods conference. secretary of State after Marshall

I wouldn't put it on one person, it was basically everyone between Roosevelt and Obama. Not that any of them were exactly geniuses, but we've gone from mostly sober drivers to someone blowing a 0.5 BAC.

JQ Adams, Elihu Root, George Kennan, and Henry Kissinger.

Joe Biden.

Not only a great orator, but look at his resume:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Carney

This man is clearly one of the leaders of the new free world.

I have been thinking about this speech and your comment for a couple days now.

He should be pissed. Not as a Canadian, but as someone who understands the benefits of a global system of rules that has made everyone who cooperates rich, which has included himself.

What we have witnessed under 47 is that a small group of the world's rich ideologues were so maniacal and myopic that they screwed it up for everyone.

As a relative "poor", this pisses me off as well, as peace and prosperity will likely, at least temporarily, devolve for us all as Pax/Oeconomia Americana unwinds. Utter insanity.

> no more China-only ownership of companies

They already allow this somewhat. Tesla's Gigafactory in Shanghai is fully owned by Tesla, and is the first wholly foreign-owned car manufacturing plant in China, operating without a required local joint venture partner.

Does using the Renminbi require investing in securities?

It's a very different thing to trust that China will maintain the value of its currency, than to trust that investment in Chinese companies will remain liquid and not be arbitrarily cut to a price of zero.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I also don't fully understand the need to have grander access to capital markets. Perhaps access to the equivalent of US Treasury auctions?

not even P/E ratios resetting back to historic norms? Or have we finally entered a new age where highly elevated P/E are a permanent feature of markets?

> constant devaluation makes it unappealing

If this is the complaint the dollar is safe. And international holders of dollars aren't idiots. They hold Treasuries, which more or less preserve their purchasing power. (Nobody outside the poor, who have to, and nutters, who don't know better, hold cash as an asset. It's so thoroughly assumed that in finance, cash refers to cash and cash equivalents.)

The insidious thing about inflation is that it compounds. Even just a 7% inflation rate will halve your currency's value in just 10 years.

the S&P is only growing when the denominator is USD. Not Euro or Gold.

It's kinda like saying during "My bread appreciated!" during hyper inflation.

IMO we're in one of the cases where "Number go up" is actually bad.

That chart is also really weird. With log scale turned off and expanded to all time...

https://www.macrotrends.net/1437/sp500-to-gold-ratio-chart

Makes it look like the US peaked at Sep 2000 and has been downhill ever since. Doesn't track at all with GDP which has almost doubled since 2000. I.e. it doesn't track with growth, but does track with dollar index somewhat, which makes sense because it's tracking a dollar value intermediate when considering "how much gold it takes to buy S&P 500", which means it really ends up tracking something else entirely.

> Compared to real money (Gold) the S&P500 is down over the past 10 years. [4]

Isn't this the real chart to look at for that? Completely different story when you select max on the timeline.

https://www.perplexity.ai/finance/%5EGSPC?comparing=GCUSD

Personally I am about $10M USD poorer for listening to people on the internet. I wish people would not spread falsities about finance that can actually ruin lives. (Albeit to be fair, the trend is towards conservative advice...my life was uniquely affected in terms of limiting upside, so I am at least grateful that most online posts work very hard to limit downside.)

It's a lot less Fiat than USD.

The analytical philosopher in me says:

"Define real money"

I think everyone can agree if you specify your definition.

A goat or a sheep cost roughly the same in gold today as it cost 2000 years ago during the Roman Empire. Gold is the only “real money” in the sense that it is the only stable measure of the value of basic needs over centuries.

https://chatgpt.com/share/696fb3e8-91d4-800a-9b2b-32eacdadeb...

You're also forgetting BRICs and the EU's efforts to create their own banking systems that would make it easier to do trade and finances without the dollar as an intermediary. The dollar being the reserve currency is going to be come more sudden once mass adoption of those platforms takes hold. Who can blame them with how the US is behaving

Does your data include 2025? Because it was the only year with any international pushback at all, so we shouldn't expect the previous trend to stay unperturbed.

It may also point not just to decline in US stability but other areas of the world with stable monetary policy compared to the 90s

Gradual isn't nearly profitable enough for some people.

"at first you go bankrupt slowly, then all at once"

Most think that the cracks in the financial system started to appear after 2008 (global financial crisis) and become truly visible after the financial system was weaponized through the seizures of Russian central bank USD reserves. It setup a precedent that it happened once it could happen again to some other country.

Cheers to you for mentioning Triffin's dilemma. In my opinion, the dilemma is in the ability of the host country to be able to make "good use" of the exorbitant privilege. The financial system was not only used against other states but against its own people. Instead of developing the country and building equity through the middle class, it cannibalized its own.

You seem to be talking about an alternative universe where employers are being paid in a different currency.

The Trump cabinet is explicitly determined to improve its trade imbalance (export / import) and has spoken about the US dollar’s relative strength as a weakness in trade imbalance.

There’s a delicate, fine line between dedollarization and a heavily weakened dollar, especially when the methods used are viewed as fickle and capricious (tariffs, threats). So it’s basically four choices:

  - Dedollarization is not happening (#nothingeverhappens)
  - Dedollarization is happening, but not because of anything the Trump admin is doing (lol)
  - Dedollarization is happening and the Trump admin is either causing it or exacerbating it, despite not coming out explicitly favoring it (they’re idiots)
  - Dedollarization is happening and it’s being orchestrated by the Trump admin (5d chess / malicious actors)

And if you look at pricing as a proxy for capital flows, SMMD which is Russell 3000 minus S&P500 has had a heck of a run in 3 months. IMO People are retreating the mag7

Oh, that’s not entirely fair. I feel like the self appointed experts almost have more pretentiousness than Reddit.

Plenty of Elon musk types / admirers who think that because they’re good with computers they know everything about everything.

HN is great for technical discussions, but is below average for political or macroeconomic discussions. A HN comment thread on those topics is essentially indistinguishable from a NYT comments section, which I mean as an unfavourable comparison.

Turns out that being good at SQL does not make one good at the subtle social art / science of power and governance. If anything, the correlation is inverse. This shouldn't be surprising.

>BRICS has implemented initiatives that could reform the global financial system, such as the New Development Bank, the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement, BRICS PAY and the BRICS Joint Statistical Publication. BRICS has also advanced de-dollarization to reduce the use of the U.S. dollar as reserve currency. In its first 15 years, BRICS has established almost 60 intragroup institutions and an extensive network including think tanks and dialogues.

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRICS

So what is the problem mentioning a future BRICS possibility while discussing de-dollarization. Not a challenge want to understand.

Explain why. That's more than half the world's population

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Your linked page doesn't actually appear to render any sort of compelling argument for this.

In fact - the entire argument seems to more accurately hinge the conditional left off the main saying, so the full description is:

"Bad money drives out good if they exchange for the same price."

But that requires a legal structure that enforces the disparity, and the summary of the whole thing basically boils down to:

---

If given the choice of what money to accept, people will accept the money they believe to be of highest long-term value and not accept what they believe to be of low long-term value. If not given the choice and required to accept all money, good and bad, they will tend to keep the money of greater perceived value in their own possession and pass the bad money to others.

---

But if anything - this is exactly an argument for the value of soft power to the US, because we can't enforce how other nations transact, except through soft power.

> The Dollar is antifragile.

Apparently the guy that invented the concept disagrees: https://x.com/nntaleb/status/1914633020671246352

Couldn't you make the same case for every other former reserve currency which has had something replace it?

The harsh reality is that a federated state system with a very weak governing body economically and politically is extremely unlikely to be the global trade currency.

Or the Bancor[1], like how Bretton Woods was originally envisioned.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bancor

Oil price is highly volatile for it to be reserve currency. A mix of Gold, Yuan, Euro, Dollar makes more sense.

People downvote this but Bitcoin has some very nice properties:

- easy to verify/impossible to forge (as opposed to gold and paper currency)

- fixed supply (as opposed to paper currency, oil, and even gold)

- easy to transfer from one party to another (as opposed to gold, oil, and physical cash)

Whenever Bitcoin is brought up, the same arguments against it are made by people who are too arrogant to look up credible counterarguments. I've decided to stop bringing it up to the HN crowd since it seems like a magnet for downvotes.

Trump is a populist.

He supports tariffs for the exact same reason Bernie Sanders does. There is a reason so many bernie bros jumped to camp Trump in 2016 when (globalist) Hillary won the nomination.

There is no secret or conspiracy going on here. Trump is a populist president and is unsurprisingly doing populist things, elected because of his populist stances. At this point you have to have stabbed your eyes out and shoved spikes in your ears to not know that all he does it gush about bringing back 1950's factory worker dad.

For us individually. For us collectively it was a horrible thing. We lost the means and incentive to produce anything durable, including a healthy, educated, sustainable society.

Something that weirdly both Milton Friedman and Karl Marx would equally agree on.

The point of an economy is not to make a profit or collect currency. The point of an economy is to provide ourselves with goods and services.

Focusing all of our efforts on making things so that we can send them to other countries in exchange for pieces of paper is backwards.

[dead]

I know it's pretty common shorthand to describe American post-war interventions as "Imperialism". But Imperialism before Bretton-Woods was a very specific and intentional international policy - literally conquering and/or colonizing land to secure resources. Which is a bit different than America's "spheres of influence" thing today.

The two are very linked - the tacit agreement of the postwar order was for America to use its might to expand a common market on behalf of the shared benefit of NATO members. But the collapse of today's "American empire" does not mean the end of empires. If anything, the opposite: instead of one common international market, we will return to a 19th century scramble for land.

> Nobody is cheering for inflation to get worse, they are celebrating it being held down to 2.7% after higher inflation a few years ago.

Trump is actively fighting the federal reserve to drop the interest rate to 0%. Members of his team regularly do interviews where they say "it's going to get worse before it gets better". Inflation is being held down despite this administration's best efforts.

> The U.S. is a net exporter of oil and food and self-sufficent for majority of its mineral needs as well.

And has been for a while. But the current conservative rhetoric is specifically about bringing manufacturing jobs back.

> There is no need for U.S. to crash its currency to incentivize domestic production, it can just impose tariffs on imports to do so.

I don't think autarky is this administration's only stated goal. They specifically see an export-led economy as being more important or even "legitimate" and are pushing for other countries to import our goods. Devaluing currency is a strong way to incentivize exports and China's currency manipulations were the key to their rise as a manufacturing power.

The problem with tariffs is really just trumps complete instability. Why would anyone invest in domestic manufactoring when Trump wildly flip flops on all tariff policy using it as a diplomatic punishment and reward system? Especially when his tariffs in general are legally questionable at best and the other half of us politics are against them just in principal. Imagine investing millions in a domestic factory and then trump gets a personalized jet from some random nation so the tariffs you were depending on for your profit margin are gone. Or Trump loses the midterms and now tariffs as a policy are gone. Unless Trump both becomes a dictator and sets the tariffs in stone without changing them too much, or democrats come out in wide support of tariffs themselves, I don't see how you could use them to invest your money.

> it can just impose tariffs on imports to do so

This is how you grow a sclerotic, internationally-uncompetitive domestic industry. See: shipbuilding.

Where tariffs work is as a nursery policy. Give firms a safe haven to grow in. Then let competition hone them. South Korea has pioneered this playbook; China copied it. We were sort of doing it, but the current administration blew up our nascent new energy industry.

Precisely. People in this thread almost seem mad that the economy didn't crash in Trump's first year.

As time goes on, fewer people are alive that predate the EU and more people will perceive it as a lasting institution.

Additionally, we've now seen the EU survive the departure of a major economic power (the UK). More people are certainly willing to believe in the stability of the EU now.

Another major currency is the Yuan, and some countries may be as willing to trade in Yuan to improve relations with China, so perhaps we won't see one single reserve currency but two spheres of influence with most countries maintaining reserves of multiple currencies.

There is a very sudden shift though - those options have existed but not generally been seriously considered. The US was seen as a bastion of stability and while sanctions could drastically impact a country's ability to trade due to the reliance on US currency exchange it has arguably been used relatively scarcely.

The change is that suddenly the US isn't a bastion of stability and having an independent trading currency could ensure more internal stability for other nations.

> Today there are more options like the Euro that didn’t exist in the 90s

Yet the Euro peaked back in 2009 and has been declining ever since.

At this point its share is not that massively higher than that of the German mark back in the 90s.

when do we reach a tipping point for rapid decline?

seems like once it starts falling, it would accelerate.

EU can easily pull the plug on Euro as a reserve currency if they confiscate the money of a certain country and give it to another one. That would be the "front fell off" moment for Euro.

> Currencies fundamentally relate to some trust.

A quant partner at Goldman said to me once that the thing that's different about currencies relative other normal financial products is whereas you might buy JPMC or oil or a bond because you like JP Morgan or oil or think rates are going to move in a particular direction or whatever whatever, you never just buy the dollar. You are always trading one currency for another eg selling GBP to buy USD. What that means is currencies are always about the value of one currency relative to other currencies.

In that sense they do fundamentally relate to trust and in particular specifically in this case about trust of the US economy and financial system's stability as opposed to other economies and financial systems.

So there have been times (eg during the financial crisis) where people think all currencies are bad but you can't just sell all of them so typically they would sell the other ones for dollars. For me, de-dollarization is about the choice of central reserve banks to hold dollar assets but also about other financial players changing their "default currency denominator" when they're doing this kind of trade.

Multipolar? So kind of like Europe before the beginning of World War 1, with major powers all competing with each other?

> I believe that the near-term de-dollarization isn't as much trust erosion as it is a tool to provide monetary penalty for behaving in unpredictable ways.

How is that different from trust erosion?

> I believe that the near-term de-dollarization isn't as much trust erosion as it is a tool to provide monetary penalty for behaving in unpredictable ways.

Sure, everyone else is also acting based on childish emotions now, not just the US president. It's not about retaliation at all, it's about reducing suddenly very imminent risks.

Didn't know that was a real term Mike Pondsmith used for cyberpunk

Few people actually know how Eurodollar system works under the hood.

It's easier to cancel elections during à conflict

I love the complete lack of argumentations this comment has

The US would no longer be able to export the cost of its spending on other countries which is the so called 'extraordinary privilege' of running the world's reserve currency and the US population would feel the consequences of its out of control spending.

Which is to say, that is a fairly traditional way of how empires go the way of the dodo. First losing their financial dominance, which loses them their international power, which then causes internal rupture.

This is a pretty astute interpretation.

Here's a write-up of Trump's grift so far: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/01/20/opinion/edito...

I read it as side-stepping Hacker News' tendency to kill comments that get into politics.

I've been trying to read more about investing properly recently and this is such an annoying characteristic of most advice you read. Sometimes it's also "well, economic theory says this, and that doesn't follow the behavior of these markets, so decide for yourself".

I'm sorry, but was there a specific point you wanted to make in relation to the first two sentences of the grandparent's post?

> Are you a financial analyst by any chance, because the "here's a few facts, interpret how that's going to impact the market yourself" is very on-brand.

What do you want him to say?

1. De-dollarization is all Trump’s fault

Or

2. The world is reacting to Trump putting America first

It isn't prohibited by the constitution and was created as an independent body. You are correct that it wasn't specifically outlined by the constitution but that's an empty statement - the constitution included the allowance of the creation of agencies and laws outside of itself... that's the main power and strength of the constitution.

Your statement was equivalent to saying that Hacker News has no constitutional right to exist - it is equally vapid.

This is a non-sequitor.

Google has no constitutional right to exist or have accurate search results either. However, it's value depends on the quality of their search results.

People outside the US don't care about the particulars of the US constitution like it's a holy document, but rather the US governance as a whole and whether it's well-ordered, lawful, and predictable.

That's true, but the US dollar also doesn't have a constitutional right to be the international reserve currency.

It does exist, and it has been independent, and consequently global markets have priced that in. If that changes, markets will respond accordingly.

What the other said about it being a non sequitur, adding on top of that "constitutional right" is no longer as strong a statement as you think it is considering the kangaroo court that is the SCOTUS nowadays.

That’s correct, Congress could pass a law removing its independence or eliminating it entirely whenever it so chooses. Until then, it’s independent because that’s how Congress created it using its powers under Article 1 of the Constitution.

It has about 38 trillion reasons exist. if you want to see what national debt looks like for countries without an independent central bank, there are plenty of examples around the world and throughout history. I’m sure the Wikipedia page on failed states would be a good starting point.

It does have a strong economic reason to exist and be independent.

While maybe true, the history of direct democratic control of monetary policy is not a pretty one.

Something tells me you aren't exactly steelmanning your opponents here.

Holders of US debt have no obligation to give a shit about the statutory background of the Fed, and to just make decisions about who is the best fiduciary of their currency.

If holders of US debt goes away, we have immediate inflation to the point where our currency hits trade equilibriums such that we can service our debt. All of your savings are worthless.

Ok? Trump doesn't have a constitutional right to do a bunch of crap but he's doing them anyway. This is the world we live in.

My local town doesn't have a Constitutional right to exist or be independent either.

This has very little to do with the price of tea in China.

Parties outside of the US who don't give a fuck all about the Constitution are involved in keeping us as a reserve currency, and they care that the fed is independent. We have kept it so to keep the economy stable and to reap the benefits of that stability.

> The federal reserve has no constitutional right to exist or be independent.

Do we suddenly care about the constitution again?

Ah yes, the "sovereign citizen" argument applied to the Fed. You've been wrong for 110 years -- I predict you will remain wrong.

Their stability has worked to benefit a lot of rich and powerful people, so I would question the motives of this sect of billionaires who are trying to destabilize it. They must believe they can extract something from the ashes.

>The federal reserve has no constitutional right to exist or be independent.

Irrelevant.

Actions have consequences, and the natural consequence of the actions of the US administration is that corporations and states that value stability are looking elsewhere than the US Dollar.

Whether or not the Fed has a constitutional right to independence is irrelevant to this situation. If Americans want to cheer while Trump flushes nearly a century of soft power down the toilet that's their prerogative, but the trend of de-dollarization has already begun and it's unlikely to be reversed.

And I sure Trump would be a great steward of our fiscal policy and wouldn't wildly throw the levers back and forth every Friday as his whims change

I don't know how you can say that about an institution that was formed by people using false identities on Jekyll Island and ramming it through congress as fast as possible because in their own words "if the people found out they would stop them" (paraphrased).

Who signed the front of those checks?

We were in a lockdown, and Congress voted for multiple trillion dollar stimulus' financed by debt. Refusing to "print money" in those circumstances is just asking for a worse Great Depression.

Why did the fed raise interest rates? To soak up some of that cash. It was too slow, but this is exactly the sound money policy that everyone expects. You loosen cash (what you mistakenly call printing money), when you need investment, and tighten cash when inflation and risk taking is out of control.

was money printing because of a lack of independence, and manipulation by the executive? or the fed trying to keep things afloat.

this president is trying to money print during non-crisis, to ramp up economy to "20% GDP".

why downvote? Trump literally said he wants a GDP that goes to 20% or 100%. Shoot to the moon.

I'm struggling to understand what you are trying to say?

That biden wanted to grow the USA to 600 million people?

That trump is also trying to do that?

This is quite obviously written by someone with no intelligence experience.

> On the face of it the Greenland situation makes no sense on a national security level regarding a non-existent, fabricated Chinese or Russian threat, nor related to the fantastical grift of the "Golden Dome" that is even more useless against what Russia has recently developed, than it was for things prior to about 3 years ago.

Power projection in the arctic is weak. Russia has made multiple tactical movements towards soft projection in the arctic. You have zero idea what submarines are on station. Taking greenland is arguably stupid, boosting it's defense to prevent a Russian incursion is not.

> What we are looking at here (you can tell your children that you heard it here first) is a strategic move to essentially take Canada and all of the NA continent, and eventually all of the Americas. Yes, Canada, you are indeed in danger as well as Mexico. I don't see how it could be any other way in the face of current developments; remember Trumps USMCA, i.e., a de facto North American Union?

No evidence. Unless you're arguing while NAFTA was around this was a way to create a "United America".

> That also doe not take into account the Wizard of the USA wanting to take over all of South America for positive control eventually

No evidence. Most think-tanks have recognized that maintaining positive control of south america would be disastrous. If anything, Maduro and his friends were probably happy the US decided to black bag him. It is well known that whoever was going to attempt control over Venezuela in particular was going to be responsible for spending the money to rebuild it.

> These are real tabletop calculations and how things are seen at the top and discussed amidst cocktails

No.

When did Biden say the US needs 300M more immigrants?

> Why is the independence of the Federal Reserve sacrosanct?

Then the value of the USD is entirely at the whim of whoever is elected and should be priced accordingly.

I can't believe you are making an office complex renovation argument.

FED has been instrumental is keeping the monetary policy sane in the recent years, unlike some pushes from the orange person you are taking talking points from.

> they should have oversight

Congress provides oversight and accountability of the Fed. The GAO does audits as well. Frank-Dodd provides more windows into the Fed. Why did you think the Fed doesn't have oversight?

> Not ever passing an audit of any kind

It might have been hard for you to find because it is hidden under the "audit" page on their website: https://www.federalreserve.gov/regreform/audit.htm

> Why is the independence of the Federal Reserve sacrosanct?

It's never been completely independent. It's independent from short-term (4 years) political influence. It's audited and has congressional oversight and the President nominates people to the board.

What else do you want? Interest rates set by Presidential tweets?

It's not sacrosanct, it's just a 14 year term for the Fed chair so that they don't give in to political pressure to be re-appointed.

Do you realize that you’ve digested a whole bunch of misinformation uncritically?

But the broligarchs don't need purchasing power. All their wealth is in assets, leveraged many times over. Currency collapse is the best that can happen to them.

There is more to the world than Europe.

Which is why the euro will not be a reasonable reserve cirrency

not the OP - That gold is rarer than oil, and the supply is lower when compared to demand.

And silver is $95 per ounce.

Well people pushing for this have a world view. They see a bipolar world with China dominating Asia, US dominating it's hemisphere and Europe fending for itself. They also have major crypto holdings so instability of both major currencies benefits them financially.

I actually have a greater disgust for those who see it but don't act. I think this line from an incredibly relevant book is precisely this:

> "Your ‘little men,’ your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better.

Those who act on behalf of evil are not free from guilt, of course. But the truly damned are those who sense better but look the other way. They walk in the footsteps of the millions who tacitly supported the last time this evil took hold of the world, by not acting.

This entire book, but especially this exerpt, is a must read: https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.htm

I feel like many are going to upvote this because they think it is an indictment on the current administration but it isn't exactly.

> Say what you will about how dated a gold standard is, but it forces immediate fiscal responsibility upon governments

We were on metal standards for millenia. Governments routinely spent beyond their means, including for imperial aims. This is like four centuries of Roman history.

> Mankind has never seen the collapse of a nuclear powered empire.

Open your history book and read about what happened in 1991.

The number of Trump apologists lunatics who do not seem to understand what MAD was about is staggering.

Industrial scale warfare isn't some secret forgotten by accident.

The current American power-trip fantasy delusion is rightfully scaring the shit out of people, and the scary thing is the people who aren't scared.

It's reaching the point that I think the best thing is for Germany to detonate a nuke between the US and Greenland just to wake up the idiots who think it would be unreasonably difficult.

--

Edit: I see people are misunderstanding me as saying they should use the US bombs stationed there. I'm saying they should build their own - to have people remember that It's not really that hard if you have a functioning industrial sector.

>The US was both back in the 40s as well as the late 80s when Germany and USSR crumbled. So hail to Pax Americana.

This is the historical equivalent of selective memory, and only really applies to a tiny slice of the planet - western Europe.

A lot happened in the world between 1945 and 1989. Outside of Europe and Japan, most people would probably not be so sympathetic of the US actions during those times. An abridged list:

* Iran 1953 - US and UK overthrow democratically elected PM, install brutal dictator

* Guatemala 1954 - US via CIA overthrows democratically elected president, install brutal dictator

* Brazil 1964, Chile 1973, Argentina 1976 - US supports brutal dictatorships replacing democratically elected governments

* Iran/Iraq 1980s - US funds both sides in the war

etc. This is a very resumed list.

Is it more efficient though? It just looks like burning long term prospects for short term ones. Which is on brand with the current regime to be fair.

Are you a troll or just uninformed and stupid?

Saying “we gotta get Greenland” when the people in Greenland say they don’t want to join the US. Then refusing to rule out using force. If you want to say that no exact act of treachery has been committed, then substitute “treacherous words”, which also harms alliances.

> what treachery was committed?

Invading ones allies has been treacherous for millenia. If you want to be pedantic, you can say the U.S. President is openly threatening treachery, and showing as part of his character an affinity for it.

This is about way more than a few tariffs. Think Venezuela, think madman jizzing over the idea of invading greenland, or just throwing tantrums on an international scale.

>> I'm sorry, what treachery was committed? The imposition of import taxes is not treachery.

It is an egregious violation of the Constitution, which specifically says that only Congress can impose taxes.

You must be a proud holder of his cryptocurrency.

> Unlike the Soviets, however, we can see it happening and debate it.

I think you’re severely underestimating how much public discourse has already been chilled. There are a lot of things leaders across business or government won’t say any more for fear of being targeted. And let’s be honest the people who rise to the top in America aren’t the selfless kind.

How do you suppose we change the minds of the third of Americans who like having a Gestapo

My outsider's POV: the fact that there's a Gestapo-analogue in place already tells me that an electoral solution alone is almost certainly no longer sufficient (or at least, unlikely to be effective) at this point.

The Democrats have also had very weak messaging ahead of the midterms. Like, pathetically weak in the current context.

This is to say nothing of the hypothetical where the US makes moves against allies' territories before the midterms.

> raising a Gestapo

If they were really Gestapo you wouldn't see people tailgate them in a Subaru or scream in their faces

I'd agree with most of what you said, but there is no "raising a Gestapo". ICE has existed for 25 years. And the laws that give it permission to act haven't changed. It has gradually grown over the decades but what it fundamentally does has not.

What's new is finally the federal government pushing back against locales that refuse to allow local police to cooperate with federal law enforcement by means of massive influxes of federal officers to offset the lack of local support.

Also ICE has widespread support for what they are actually doing. Only when you ask manipulative questions that presume something is happening that isn't, do you get poll results that support a widespread dislike for ICE.

This is a self fulfilling prophecy. It may only be over because the administration is actively trying to create the multi-polar world. It could absolutely be fixed by Congress re-asserting its power.

Mankind has never seen the collapse of a nuclear powered empire.

What makes us think this is possible?

It may not be possible for a nuclear powered empire to fall without the death of billions.

Mankind is in uncharted territory.

Even Russia never fully fell after the USSR collapsed. Whoever kept the nuclear weapons continued to be a first tier power.

Nothing in human history compares to the present question of how the current empires fall. And if they can even do so safely.

> Consequently, Trump’s approach is the only way forward.

It's the DoD.

Prior to Trump's actions, the American-led "world order" seemed to work, even if we couldn't get China to agree to a "Bretton Woods 2.0".

Biden tried diplomacy with the EU. He tried to get them to agree to a renewed US-led world order, but it wasn't working. The EU decided to play the US and China against each other to improve its own standing, which is why the US is now moving away from the EU.

I think the US could seriously pull out of NATO and leave the EU to fend off Russia by itself. It'll have to start spending enormous tax dollars on defense and war.

Meanwhile, if the world is truly becoming multi-polar, then the US wants to consolidate power in its own hemisphere. This is why there's all the rhetoric and action on Venezuela, Cuba, Greenland, Canada, etc. The US will keep Chinese ports, basing, and trade completely out and secure the trade routes for when the Arctic opens up. It recently changed control over the Panama Canal, and the DoD is dead serious about taking Greenland and maintaining complete hemispheric control.

With whatever energy the US has left, it will dedicate to Asia. It will strengthen alliances and project power there instead of dealing with Europe.

The world is going to be a much more violent place without hegemony. Free trade doesn't exist in that type of world. The US realizes this and is playing 50 years ahead. None of the nice words matter when the energy, trade, and economic lines are redrawn.

People like to say the US is led by lawyers and China is led by scientists and engineers. This is wrong. The US is led by war generals and intelligence. The career DoD folks are the ones impressing upon the administration to make these moves.

To be clear: I hate this. I loved the world I grew up in. I think we're headed for a violent world that could easily erupt into war. I don't like it.

Not true. Some, like myself, love the idea of the shining city on the hill, although we often find the behavior of the actual city less than shining.

I would like for the US to continue being a beacon of freedom where people can come and build great lives.

But that is not the direction we are going, and one might reasonably forecast that no country can maintain indefinite dominance. Paul Kennedy wrote "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" almost 40 years ago. Regression to the mean and all that, but also, great powers tend to overstep.

I believe the recent line from a US ally at a recent security summit was, "We will never fucking trust you again."

https://www.readtheline.ca/p/matt-gurney-we-will-never-fucki...

Yup! I too was befuddled at why the admin was purposefully devaluing the dollar, but well, like you said, they tell you plainly if you go read and listen to them.

Make decisions accordingly folks! They want the dollar down >30% from where it was when they took over, we're about 1/3 the way there so far, be prepared for more.

Yeah, I've read that and find it a little sus. The article for me was fine even if not perfect.

It's the first time in my internet life (20y+) that I go find a wiki article to share to a friend because the US keeps weakening and I found it gone.

Didn't know it was that easy to remove a wikipedia article by just hinting it was AI generated.

Right up until you lose your internet access.

The exact point I'm making is that this is NOT the case! US has super strong financial control over most of the world in a way which is NOT connected to the strength of the US currency.

If The US goes to war against China, we are screwed, because we outsourced our manufacturing to China. We cannot quickly ramp up our manufacture of ships, tanks, aircraft or ammunition. Not only do we lack manufacturing capacity, the entire supply chain is in China / Asia.

In addition, China leads in the critical technologies need for drone oriented warfare, like we are seeing in Ukraine.

Software can leave your country in a fraction of a second. Manufacturing is infrastructure. This is also basic. Manufacturing in the US is shrinking, comparatively with other countries that actually make things. People just think they can just play with numbers, categories and dollar values to hide it.

The US has been playing a currency game since 1980 to make up for the loss of the free money it got for reconstructing Europe and Japan, and using that money to buy things from impoverished workers in China. And as China got on its feet through careful planning and management, it moved to India, Pakistan, Mexico, Indonesia, the Philippines, anywhere that was willing to stomp on its workers and pollute its air and water.

Now China has gotten to the point that it is a viable alternative to the US, so the US can't unilaterally set terms anymore for its suppliers. It's dumping US treasuries. It's competing for natural resources in countries that the US just tried to topple and steal their natural resources through sieges that ironically served to cut the US's legs from under them, giving China a huge discount. The game is up.

China going from nowhere to the greatest economy on the planet in 50 years is what happens when you manage and cultivate manufacturing. US real estate and an economy run on luxury consumption is what you get when you outsource manufacturing and play word games to cover it up. We literally can't tariff China significantly, they could crush our economy just by embargoing us like we freely embargo everyone else. That's the power of a manufacturing base. We might want to fix our bridges, too.

> Why is manufacturing so special? As opposed to something like software?

I assume that dollar will be strong if people want to buy stuff from the US, which requires using the US currency. Software indeed is a strong sector. I'm just not sure (as due to my ignorance) if they compensate sufficiently the trade deficit. For instance, if advertisers use Instagram in Europe, they wouldn't need the US dollar to pay for the service, right? If there's no virtual export happens, I'd assume there won't be any need for the US currency either.

> Also, manufacturing in the US is growing not shrinking. For a long time.

What about market share? I remember that the US had more than 65% of the manufacturing marketshare 25 years ago. Actually, I'm more concerned about the long-term national security and prosperity of the US, and I think they are tied to a robust manufacturing sector. But that's different topic.

> Also, manufacturing in the US is growing not shrinking. For a long time.

Well, at least up to 2024...

I think when people run the next number, there will be a surprise there.

This too. Many people argue that if we weaken the dollar enough, the manufacturing will come back.

> As applied to the United States, the current account version of Triffin runs as follows. The global accumulation of dollar reserves requires the United States to run a current account deficit. Since desired reserves rise with world nominal GDP, which is growing faster than US nominal GDP, the growth of dollar reserves will raise US external indebtedness unsustainably. Either the United States will not run the current account deficits, leading to an insufficiency of global reserves. Or US indebtedness will rise without limit, undermining the value of the dollar and the reserves denominated in it.

It's a fair question but the answer is fairly simple: the Russian military simply isn't strong. The only reason they haven't been bombed back into the Stone Age is because they have a nuclear arsenal. That has limited the West's response to being "proportionate".

The Russian-Ukraine front is kinda like WW1. There's no real air power to speak of. The front is dominated by artillery and infantry and fortifications like trenches.

Russia cannot project military power anywhere like how the US can and the US has decades of projecting that power to force countries to capitulate, essentially. Europe outsourced their security to the US, for example. But make no mistake: NATO is a protection racket. It projects American power into Europe.

This is one reason why I call this administration inept because they seem intent on splintering NATO, which actually diminishes American power. Just like disbanding USAID diminished American soft power, and quite cheaply at that.

The lesson since at least the (W) Bush administration is that only nuclear weapons can guarantee your survival.

You just have to be in it

Liquidity is atrocious as soon as you leave USD rails and are trying to move more than a few million (in notional usd terms), let alone billions

Downright terrible, its actually amazing how bad it is. “Finance” as infrastructure isn’t anywhere near finished and swapping the currency rails would be very hard

Its more than people just agreeing to use a different currency, which means its more than all traders and merchants dying, the next best currencies have structural problems. Their central banks trying to pump the market full of liquidity would destabilize those currencies far more than it would the USD doing the same thing

But I’m open to being impressed

>This looks to be slowly changing for various reasons.

Well, not really, because obviously that deprecation via buying government treasuries is balanced by the appreciation in the other currencies. But if everybody (large enough to matter) dosen't want their currency to appreciate, if somebody buys Japanese bonds for example to weaken their own currency, then Japan will buy somebody else's treasuries to offset the increase in Yen, and if we go to the long chain of musical chairs of people offsetting each other's behaviours, it just leads back to the USA as the only ones both large enough and willing to take in those capital inflows.

That's not a interpretation mind you, that's a description of what central banks are doing right now. If that has to change, you need somebody willing to take the mantle of the absorber of global deficits, and nobody wants to do that.

When you say non-western what do you mean in this context? From what you describe it just sounds like China, Russia and North Korea

Yeah, on second evaluation I think you're right. People are less likely to be motivated to act, and more likely to be more easily manipulated.

I'm afraid I completely disagree with you and am not interested in arguing further than this.

Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Gaza, and so many others are atrocities but they are well understood by anyone with a casual understanding of 20th century geopolitics.

Anything you could list is awful but still respected the norms and rules that exist between nation states. There is not a high bar for these things, but some people within a specific flavor of the Republican party reject these rules and norms. By a quirk of history they were able to gain power. I could describe this in more technical and impressive sounding language, but "FAFO, and we are in the find-out stage" goes by many names and is accurate.

It might be over-consolidated in the aggregate but I don't think the greed is too worried about that.

So gold is up 50% in six months? That's... quite a bit.

The EU is going to have to (very painfully) grow legs then.

The fact that the US provided the majority of weaponry, and half the money to Ukraine should have been shocking wake up call to every European. But instead the vibe seems to be "Americans are so dumb to live the way they do".

Well, yeah. Because there hasn't been any significant fluctuation in exchange rates. You can also see the decline in the velocity of money that's offsetting the increase in the money supply metrics (numbers checked on FRED). It's very clear that we haven't had unprecedented inflation. So the burden of proof is on you... why would the increase in the money supply matter when all metrics are saying otherwise?

It assuredly did. For example, the first Trump administration is responsible for ~25% of the current money supply, with the second Trump term only contributing about 6%.

So, "let's have Trump burn the house down just to make the point nobody was arguing against that fireplaces can be hazardous"?

How exactly is QE related to all this bullshit? You’re going to need some sources before you start randomly claiming that QE is leading to the collapse of NATO.

How many bars of gold get moved round the world every second?

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