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I've been reading this news headline since I was a teenager. I am over 50 now. Why is this time different?
by starik36 1y ago
I've been reading this news headline since I was a teenager. I am over 50 now. Why is this time different?
- api 1y agoWe have an administration actively attempting to tank the US dollar as global reserve currency? If you think this is a crazy thing to suggest, consider that there is a faction in the US that wants this to happen. They see a strong US dollar as harmful to manufacturing and the working class.
- drstewart 1y agoGreat, Europe can use the yuan instead
- prpl 1y agoThe bond market, and blasé attitude towards national debt and default.
- LPisGood 1y agoI think this is the most incompetent administration USA has had in modern times, and it’s perhaps the second most authoritarian (next to WW2 era FDR). The current administration seems to be taking concrete steps to weaken USA’s financial dominance in a way that has not happened in the years since you were a teenager. I suspect these forces will combine to significantly weaken the dollar.
- ldjkfkdsjnv 1y ago[flagged]
- gtirloni 1y agoAre they? None of the recent events point to any plan. It's pure and simple corruption. If by trying you mean trying anything without a clue, I can agree with that. What do you think about the fact you can directly bribe the president through his memecoin or by buying dinners with him? That's "at least trying"? Sometimes change for the sake of change gets you a circus on fire.
- Henchman21 1y agoTrying to do what exactly?
- pstuart 1y agoEnrich themselves and punish their perceived enemies? After all, isn't that what government is supposed to be about?
- suzzer99 1y agoWhat exactly is the evidence of this? Debt/deficit? Seems like that's been going up and down forever. Because by every other metric the US economy was humming along until we decided to take a wrecking ball to it, to prevent future wreckage I guess?
- LPisGood 1y agoI don’t think that “Sold us down a river” is not an appropriate summary of 100 yers of American executive governance. Further, I don’t think there is any evidence that they are sincerely “trying.”
- justanotheratom 1y ago[flagged]
- alabastervlog 1y agoWe were probably doomed to see a major public debt crisis eventually when we cut taxes going into two extremely-expensive long wars under W Bush, the “probably” was upgraded to an “almost certainly” when we cut taxes again under Trump, then Covid happening removed the “almost” from that. Now we appear to be trying to move the timing of the crisis from 20+ years out, to less than a decade out.
- justanotheratom 1y agoFederal Revenue actually went up after Trump Tax Cuts. I hope we can agree that there was some justification for a big spending bill in Covid time window. But after that, there was no justification IMO for the crazy spending that happened in the last 4 years. Data: Table of Federal Revenue vs Spending: https://chatgpt.com/share/681e9040-edf8-8008-ae3d-370bb5a0d285 https://chatgpt.com/share/681e9040-edf8-8008-ae3d-370bb5a0d2...
- LPisGood 1y agoI don’t see how someone could draw a parallel between “pro-trump” and “anti-defecit.” His administrations have overseen deficits balloon.
- justanotheratom 1y agoI think you are referring to the last administration when you use the term "balloon" https://chatgpt.com/share/681e9040-edf8-8008-ae3d-370bb5a0d285 https://chatgpt.com/share/681e9040-edf8-8008-ae3d-370bb5a0d2...
- pooty 1y ago[flagged]
- alabastervlog 1y agoFewer than 50% of people who voted, voted for him. He won a plurality, not a majority. (Of course fewer than 50% of eligible voters voted for him, but I’m assuming that’s not what you intended)
- LPisGood 1y agoLess than 50% of the vote went to Trump, and you’ll find that he did very poorly among the well educated. This is the first I’ve heard of any banning, but the facts are clear and frankly it makes sense that an echo chamber opposed to the president’s policies forms wherever well reasoned discussion happens among educated people.
- watwut 1y agoNot true, I was saying conservatives in general wanted this and support this and no one banned me. Some tho tried to argue with me, trying to make them sound innocent
- tomhow 1y agoIn other recent threads we’ve been attacked for “censoring” criticism of the administration, which we don't do (we've often intervened to restore posts that have been flagged/flamed by the community). But, nobody gets banned for making thoughtful comments pro or against the administration, and people are only banned for repeated breaches of the guidelines.
- starik36 1y agoThis too I’ve heard forever. Usually it’s voiced by alternating view points depending on if their guy is the occupant of the White House or not.
- LPisGood 1y agoI sincerely question what you might mean by “heard forever” - much of what is being done here is so far beyond the pale of what has been done before that I can’t seriously understand how someone could look at it and say “ah this is the same as it’s always been, just standard partisan bickering”
- latency-guy2 1y agoIf you sincerely question, then it should be easy for you to provide samples of what is "beyond the pale". There is no need for narrative building either, it serves no purpose other than aggravating the other person and making them smaller.
- LPisGood 1y agoI think the “narrative building” is important here, since I am responding to an in-construction narrative. Frankly I really struggle to see how someone who has been reasonably paying attention would need examples; they’re too many to mention. Off the top of my head and in no particular order: 1.) Unilaterally and without the consent of congress invoking emergency powers to place broad tariffs on almost the entire world has never been done 2.) Frequently attacking and undermining the judicial branch, including by transparently punishing entire law firms that represent causes unpopular with the administration has never been done 3.) Brazenly abusing the office of the presidency to further personal financial gain by launching a meme cryptocurrency days before taking office has never been done These are just some of the many examples, and that’s without going into the many things before Jan 20, 2025 that are clearly and undoubtedly unprecedented.
- watwut 1y agoExcept this is not true, unless you was reading some really weird far right stuff.
- CountSessine 1y agoI don't know about incompetent - there's plenty of smart people around Trump. The big problem seems to be that they all kind of disagree with each other and Trump ends up doing what the guy who talks to him most recently advises him to do. The current "plan" seems to be to leave behind the largely-defunct WTO once and for all and build a selective free-trade alliance specifically excluding China, much like GATT was. I don't think this would really make the US "richer" (or any participant in the alliance) - in fact it would probably make us all a bit poorer. But it would make China much poorer which at this point is kind of the goal. https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/research/638199_A_Users_Guide_to_Restructuring_the_Global_Trading_System.pdf https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/rese... But that's just today. Next week someone else might get Trump's ear before he speaks to the press.
- CountSessine 1y agoFor the record, I'm not really sure how I feel about this plan. Free trade with China uplifted 700 million people (in China) from poverty. OTOH, if you believe that China is basically Germany circa 1938 (and indeed, China in 2025 is the largest and most successful fascist state in all of history), then kneecapping China's economy makes plenty of strategic sense. But we could always just keep buying Hitler's Volkswagens - that's the direction our incentive gradient points in. The US doesn't need to be the global police - we could always just let China have Taiwan, the Senkakus, the Ryukyus, etc...
- LPisGood 1y agoI think what a lot of people miss when they talk about America being the “global police” is that almost always the law (so to speak) that the “global police” are enforcing is enforcing is the advancement of American interests.
- CountSessine 1y agoAnd yet the near-term interest is to keep buying Volkswagens from Hitler.
- Hilift 1y agoThe FDR administration two of the Treasury architects of Bretton Woods were Russian agents. One of them, FDR's chief economist, had his US passport and US citizenship revoked. He lived the remainder of his life in Columbia, presumably helping with their "monetary policy success". Don't forget Nixon shock though. That was basically undoing Bretton Woods, but in an incompetent fashion that was amplified by low interest rate induced inflation, and produced "stagflation". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock The smartest guy we had was probably Lawrence Summers.
- Jimmc414 1y agoIn the last 35 years, the US dollar has lost 60% of its purchasing power. https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/purchasing-power-constant-dollars.htm https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/purchasing-power-constant...
- paulpauper 1y agoThis would be true if you left your $ in a vault or mattress ,which no one does. It also fails to take into account utility. How does one put a dollar value on a $10-30 GPT-4 pro subscription? Where does this fit in the 'dollar losing value' paradigm?
- pton_xd 1y agoRight, a burger and fries is $15 but a ChatGPT pro subscription is only $10, life is good!
- alabastervlog 1y ago2030: “Well a loaf of bread is $50 but a loaf of mostly-sawdust is $10 so we’ll sub that in the basket of goods as equivalent; the median house is $2m but girlfriend chatbots are too cheap to meter. Looks like yet another year of low consumer price inflation!”
- XorNot 1y agoI don't know why this example gets presented as absurd all the time. Food is a vital good. If you have a population with a certain calorie demand and don't have enough calories, in 3 months you no longer have the population. Food: you literally die without it. ChatGPT: nothing of value is lost. Look at your iPhone and realize that in any desperate situations, the burger and fries gets more and more valuable.
- pavlov 1y agoExactly. Modest inflation is good because it encourages investment. Japan suffered fifteen years of deflation starting in the early 1990s. It wasn’t an economy anyone should envy.
- paulpauper 1y agoBecause this time is always different. There needs to be some accountability when pundits are wrong, just like in any other profession. I have read this prediction forever too. The dollar always has a recurring tendency of surging, typically when there is unrest or recession or any other reason, or even no reason. Also, the dollar falling also does not make Americans poorer, as the implicit unit of wealth is the US dollar (e.g. the Forbes 400 list). Americans measure their net worth in dollar, not Euros. This would only matter if traveling oversea and purchasing power falls due to falling dollar. Otherwise, it does not matter.
- Henchman21 1y agoPerhaps you’ve also followed politics since, oh, about 2016 or so?
- zardo 1y agoThis time it isn't we will fail in our efforts to maintain a strong dollar. It's, US policy is no longer attempting to maintain a strong dollar.
- lossolo 1y agoYou're not alone, someone in ancient Rome probably read a clay tablet saying the denarius was doomed. Centuries later, a merchant in Spain might've heard whispers about the decline of the Spanish real, and a banker in London likely scoffed at predictions of the pound’s fall from grace. Empires always feel eternal, until they’re not. History doesn’t repeat, but it does hum the same tune. Maybe this time isn’t different, just... next.
- altcognito 1y agoEverything has been in a headline at some point. Perhaps all that experience is hindering your ability to discern what really matters. Too much noise from your past.
- JCattheATM 1y agoBecause the USA is rapidly losing it's place on the world stage.
- EasyMark 1y agoBecause we have a complete clown show of juvenile seniors in the White House and Congress who follow an Orange Glow Clown who is actively doing the worst financial mistakes he could possibly doing without just flat out deliberately blowing up American banks and allies all over the world