7 ms·

So much of the way the United States works is having a nearly limitless source of borrowing at low rates in the form of selling treasury bonds. The further we

by qgin 9mo ago

So much of the way the United States works is having a nearly limitless source of borrowing at low rates in the form of selling treasury bonds. The further we get away from that being true, the more precarious things become.

CamperBob2 9mo ago
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.
- ch4s3 9mo ago
  It’s a lot like the rise and presidency of Andrew Jackson.
- ninth_ant 9mo ago
  It’s over 50% and there are plenty of plainly obvious parallels both historical and contemporary.
  - epistasis 9mo ago
    Far far below 50%. The media tricked some people into supporting Trump by perpetuating his obvious lies unchallenged, but now that people see what Trump is doing he is underwater on all issues. Most other contemporary and historical parallels of authoritarians show far higher popularity of the authoritarian. Trump is nowhere close. The biggest risk to the US is that the media is completely compromised, as are leadership at many institutions. Even in Silicon Valley, the loudest and most vocal leaders are self-destructively supporting this madness that will destroy the US's wealth, and their future wealth gains too.
    - CamperBob2 9mo ago
      The media tricked some people into supporting Trump You could almost make this case in 2016, but anyone who fell for Trump in 2024 will just fall for the next con man to come along. At some point we have to take responsibility for our own choices and stop blaming the media. The truth about Trump was out there, and it was not hard to find. Added here due to rate-limiting: 2024 was right after voters had seen Biden at that debate, while all the "responsible" people insisted he was sharp and smart. It really was more unique than its given credit for. Both candidates were a disgrace to the parties who propped them up. However, nothing Biden said was any worse than what Trump said about immigrants eating peoples' pet dogs and cats. At the Biden/Trump debate, the choice was between malevolent, incoherent senility and plain old garden-variety senility, and the voters choose poorly. At the actual election, there were even fewer excuses for voting for Trump, as Biden was no longer in play.
      - woooooo 9mo ago
        2024 was right after voters had seen Biden at that debate, while all the "responsible" people insisted he was sharp and smart. It really was more unique than its given credit for.
      - epistasis 9mo ago
        No, it's largely the media. Compare what passes for political journalism from, say the New York Times to the rest of the world and it becomes clear that the US media politics coverage is in its best form mere both-sidesism. Most people who were tricked were people who don't pay much attention, and might only get a few articles of news, if anything. When the media doesn't tell people that there are plans for mass deportations at numbers that require legal immigrants to be deported, then the media is lying to its consumers. When the media is not willing to report that Project 2025 is Trump's plan, and instead places Trump's lie about ignorance on the same footing as the reality of people saying it is his plan, then the media lies to people. Media consumers expect that journalists will react normally to extreme news. But instead the media is normalizing extremely unpopular and ridiculous policies that everybody would hate if they knew what the media knew. I know large families of Mexican descent who have lived in the US for generations, that had many Trump voters in the recent election, from people that don't follow much news, and believed ridiculous things like Trump being a "Peace President." As you might imagine, there's a bit of intense discussion these days about how they were tricked into voting for secret police that will imprison family members and detain them for days without cause. If somebody reads a single article, they shouldn't have to read 5 more in order to get the real story merely because the media was more concerned about normalizing Trump's views than it was about reacting like a normal person would to the insanity of Trump. Do people have personal responsibility to be better informed? Sure! But when they go to CBS they should get a real news article, not glazing of the most radical opinions out there on the political spectrum.
  - ca6d8815 9mo ago
    It is 49.8% (people who voted Trump in 2024) of 64.1% (people who voted in 2024), or 31.9% or ~1/3 of the total eligible voting population, which is what your parent states.
    - xienze 9mo ago
      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 point? Social media posts? Vibes? Or maybe polls leading up to the vote that showed the same roughly 50-50 split found in the actual results?
      - larkost 9mo ago
        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 don't think we can extrapolate confidently at all. So we really don't know whether it holds for the rest of the population at all.
        xienze 9mo ago
        > 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.
    - ninth_ant 9mo ago
- pavlov 9mo ago
  It's not uncommon for democracies to be subverted by a minority party. Nazis did it in Germany. They lost parliamentary seats in the November 1932 election, but remained the largest party with 33% of seats. The next year the country was already a dictatorship. Communists did it in Czhechoslovakia in 1948. They led a coalition government but had just lost the previous election. I'm worried that United States 2027 will be added to this list. If MAGA sees their grip on power starting to fade after November elections, they may try increasingly extreme measures.
  - weakfish 9mo ago
    I mean, they already tried it on J6, we just got lucky it failed and yet didn’t learn our lesson
- tokai 9mo ago
  Thats why its really fricking important to have more than two parties, so coalitions can be formed to counter such things.
  - gpvos 9mo ago
    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.
epistasis 9mo ago
When you say "nearly limitless" source of borrowing, the limit is the gain in global wealth. The US has been siphoning off a huge chunk of world wealth by printing dollars to serve as the currency for that wealth. All the people complaining about "US Debt" and $26T of "net investment" or whatever don't realize that this is/was the benefit of the US being stable, strong, and friendly. When the US is unstable, weak, and a bully, as it is now, all that goes away. The bill comes due, and the US will pay dearly. The rest of the world will pay nothing.
- adventured 9mo ago
  The US is more stable than the powers of Europe (which have constant political upheavals, snap elections that completely remake the political landscape, etc). You're confusing Trump's mouth with how the US political system actually functions. Just because the US changes political direction, that doesn't equate to instability. Its aims are changing, like it or not, good or bad. The US deciding it wants Greenland is not a proof of instability, it's a change in the strategic goals held by the people controlling the superpower. And the US is at a high level of strength, not weakness. Its large corporations hold sway over the globe in a manner the likes of which has never been seen before in modern history. Its military has force projection to nearly every point on the globe, with hundreds of global military bases. Its national wealth is at an all-time high. Its stock markets are at all-time highs. Its median income is at an all-time high. Its median disposable income is at an all-time high. Its housing wealth is at an all-time high.
  - triceratops 9mo ago
    > Its median income is at an all-time high. Its median dispoable income is at an all-time high. Its housing wealth is at an all-time high. Then why is everyone so damned unhappy all the time?
    - xienze 9mo ago
      The US used to be a much more homogeneous country, which certainly makes it a lot easier for everyone to be on the same page because of shared cultural values. That has changed dramatically in the past few decades and with it, places where Americans can find common ground. Other western countries are going down the exact same path, just a bit behind us.
adventured 9mo ago
Japan is the model of low interest rate debt and the US is not close to how low Japan was able to go, with a currency (Yen) vastly less potent than the global reserve currency. Most of the US borrowing is domestic, very little of it is now foreign. No foreign entity can afford to absorb $2 trillion of new paper every year. That's equal to the total holdings of China + Japan. Going forward you might as well regard all US Govt borrowing as domestic, as that will essentially be the case given the scale. The UK holds $885b of treasuries, what are they going to buy annually that will make a difference at this point? Every nation has a limitless ability to borrow internally via currency debasement, with obvious consequences. That USD debasement is why gold has gone up 10x in 20 years when priced in dollars. It's why healthcare and housing is so expensive - when priced in dollars. Cash pushed into gold in 2005, $100k, would now buy you a million dollar house. It's the dollar of course that has been hammered (among other currencies, the Euro has not done well against gold either). The US won't stop being able to debase its currency and buy its own debt. What the US is doing is eating its hand. If it continues to get worse, it moves on to eating its arm, and so on (the US is de facto consuming its national wealth through stealth confiscation via currency destruction, rather than paying the bills with taxation directly).
- maxglute 9mo ago
  >what are they going to buy annually that will make a difference at this point Mechanically, "they" being sovereign banks serve as price-insensitive marginal buyers that close treasury auctions regardless of price because they buy treasury for storage/liquidity. VS domestic buyers (hedgefund insurance), who are price sensitive = raise rates to attract discriminate buyers who buy for yield/valuation = worse debt servicing = faster debasing. Foreign sovereign buyers still play governor role in making sure domestic buyers get a shit none-market deal, i.e. US gov gets a good deal which moderates velocity of debasing. Of course past certain level of debt brrrting, the ability for sovereign buyers to absorb is compromised, in which case it makes sense for US to fuck foreign buyers over and inflate away as much debt as possible while still reserve currency - US can inflate/soft default faster than world can unwind. And TBH US will probably be "fine" as long as US can still gunboat diplomacy. If can't be banker anymore, be the mob boss.
MikeNotThePope 9mo ago
There will always be a market if the interest rates are high enough. But wanting to lower interest rates and introducing political instability seems like a bad combo.

by qgin 9mo ago

CamperBob2 9mo ago

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.

ch4s3 9mo ago
It’s a lot like the rise and presidency of Andrew Jackson.
ninth_ant 9mo ago
It’s over 50% and there are plenty of plainly obvious parallels both historical and contemporary.
- epistasis 9mo ago
  Far far below 50%. The media tricked some people into supporting Trump by perpetuating his obvious lies unchallenged, but now that people see what Trump is doing he is underwater on all issues. Most other contemporary and historical parallels of authoritarians show far higher popularity of the authoritarian. Trump is nowhere close. The biggest risk to the US is that the media is completely compromised, as are leadership at many institutions. Even in Silicon Valley, the loudest and most vocal leaders are self-destructively supporting this madness that will destroy the US's wealth, and their future wealth gains too.
  - CamperBob2 9mo ago
    The media tricked some people into supporting Trump You could almost make this case in 2016, but anyone who fell for Trump in 2024 will just fall for the next con man to come along. At some point we have to take responsibility for our own choices and stop blaming the media. The truth about Trump was out there, and it was not hard to find. Added here due to rate-limiting: 2024 was right after voters had seen Biden at that debate, while all the "responsible" people insisted he was sharp and smart. It really was more unique than its given credit for. Both candidates were a disgrace to the parties who propped them up. However, nothing Biden said was any worse than what Trump said about immigrants eating peoples' pet dogs and cats. At the Biden/Trump debate, the choice was between malevolent, incoherent senility and plain old garden-variety senility, and the voters choose poorly. At the actual election, there were even fewer excuses for voting for Trump, as Biden was no longer in play.
    - woooooo 9mo ago
      2024 was right after voters had seen Biden at that debate, while all the "responsible" people insisted he was sharp and smart. It really was more unique than its given credit for.
    - epistasis 9mo ago
      No, it's largely the media. Compare what passes for political journalism from, say the New York Times to the rest of the world and it becomes clear that the US media politics coverage is in its best form mere both-sidesism. Most people who were tricked were people who don't pay much attention, and might only get a few articles of news, if anything. When the media doesn't tell people that there are plans for mass deportations at numbers that require legal immigrants to be deported, then the media is lying to its consumers. When the media is not willing to report that Project 2025 is Trump's plan, and instead places Trump's lie about ignorance on the same footing as the reality of people saying it is his plan, then the media lies to people. Media consumers expect that journalists will react normally to extreme news. But instead the media is normalizing extremely unpopular and ridiculous policies that everybody would hate if they knew what the media knew. I know large families of Mexican descent who have lived in the US for generations, that had many Trump voters in the recent election, from people that don't follow much news, and believed ridiculous things like Trump being a "Peace President." As you might imagine, there's a bit of intense discussion these days about how they were tricked into voting for secret police that will imprison family members and detain them for days without cause. If somebody reads a single article, they shouldn't have to read 5 more in order to get the real story merely because the media was more concerned about normalizing Trump's views than it was about reacting like a normal person would to the insanity of Trump. Do people have personal responsibility to be better informed? Sure! But when they go to CBS they should get a real news article, not glazing of the most radical opinions out there on the political spectrum.
- ca6d8815 9mo ago
  It is 49.8% (people who voted Trump in 2024) of 64.1% (people who voted in 2024), or 31.9% or ~1/3 of the total eligible voting population, which is what your parent states.
  - xienze 9mo ago
    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 point? Social media posts? Vibes? Or maybe polls leading up to the vote that showed the same roughly 50-50 split found in the actual results?
    - larkost 9mo ago
      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 don't think we can extrapolate confidently at all. So we really don't know whether it holds for the rest of the population at all.
      - xienze 9mo ago
        > 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.
  - ninth_ant 9mo ago
pavlov 9mo ago
It's not uncommon for democracies to be subverted by a minority party. Nazis did it in Germany. They lost parliamentary seats in the November 1932 election, but remained the largest party with 33% of seats. The next year the country was already a dictatorship. Communists did it in Czhechoslovakia in 1948. They led a coalition government but had just lost the previous election. I'm worried that United States 2027 will be added to this list. If MAGA sees their grip on power starting to fade after November elections, they may try increasingly extreme measures.
- weakfish 9mo ago
  I mean, they already tried it on J6, we just got lucky it failed and yet didn’t learn our lesson
tokai 9mo ago
Thats why its really fricking important to have more than two parties, so coalitions can be formed to counter such things.
- gpvos 9mo ago
  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.

epistasis 9mo ago

When you say "nearly limitless" source of borrowing, the limit is the gain in global wealth. The US has been siphoning off a huge chunk of world wealth by printing dollars to serve as the currency for that wealth. All the people complaining about "US Debt" and $26T of "net investment" or whatever don't realize that this is/was the benefit of the US being stable, strong, and friendly. When the US is unstable, weak, and a bully, as it is now, all that goes away. The bill comes due, and the US will pay dearly. The rest of the world will pay nothing.

adventured 9mo ago
The US is more stable than the powers of Europe (which have constant political upheavals, snap elections that completely remake the political landscape, etc). You're confusing Trump's mouth with how the US political system actually functions. Just because the US changes political direction, that doesn't equate to instability. Its aims are changing, like it or not, good or bad. The US deciding it wants Greenland is not a proof of instability, it's a change in the strategic goals held by the people controlling the superpower. And the US is at a high level of strength, not weakness. Its large corporations hold sway over the globe in a manner the likes of which has never been seen before in modern history. Its military has force projection to nearly every point on the globe, with hundreds of global military bases. Its national wealth is at an all-time high. Its stock markets are at all-time highs. Its median income is at an all-time high. Its median disposable income is at an all-time high. Its housing wealth is at an all-time high.
- triceratops 9mo ago
  > Its median income is at an all-time high. Its median dispoable income is at an all-time high. Its housing wealth is at an all-time high. Then why is everyone so damned unhappy all the time?
  - xienze 9mo ago
    The US used to be a much more homogeneous country, which certainly makes it a lot easier for everyone to be on the same page because of shared cultural values. That has changed dramatically in the past few decades and with it, places where Americans can find common ground. Other western countries are going down the exact same path, just a bit behind us.

adventured 9mo ago

Japan is the model of low interest rate debt and the US is not close to how low Japan was able to go, with a currency (Yen) vastly less potent than the global reserve currency. Most of the US borrowing is domestic, very little of it is now foreign. No foreign entity can afford to absorb $2 trillion of new paper every year. That's equal to the total holdings of China + Japan. Going forward you might as well regard all US Govt borrowing as domestic, as that will essentially be the case given the scale. The UK holds $885b of treasuries, what are they going to buy annually that will make a difference at this point? Every nation has a limitless ability to borrow internally via currency debasement, with obvious consequences. That USD debasement is why gold has gone up 10x in 20 years when priced in dollars. It's why healthcare and housing is so expensive - when priced in dollars. Cash pushed into gold in 2005, $100k, would now buy you a million dollar house. It's the dollar of course that has been hammered (among other currencies, the Euro has not done well against gold either). The US won't stop being able to debase its currency and buy its own debt. What the US is doing is eating its hand. If it continues to get worse, it moves on to eating its arm, and so on (the US is de facto consuming its national wealth through stealth confiscation via currency destruction, rather than paying the bills with taxation directly).

maxglute 9mo ago
>what are they going to buy annually that will make a difference at this point Mechanically, "they" being sovereign banks serve as price-insensitive marginal buyers that close treasury auctions regardless of price because they buy treasury for storage/liquidity. VS domestic buyers (hedgefund insurance), who are price sensitive = raise rates to attract discriminate buyers who buy for yield/valuation = worse debt servicing = faster debasing. Foreign sovereign buyers still play governor role in making sure domestic buyers get a shit none-market deal, i.e. US gov gets a good deal which moderates velocity of debasing. Of course past certain level of debt brrrting, the ability for sovereign buyers to absorb is compromised, in which case it makes sense for US to fuck foreign buyers over and inflate away as much debt as possible while still reserve currency - US can inflate/soft default faster than world can unwind. And TBH US will probably be "fine" as long as US can still gunboat diplomacy. If can't be banker anymore, be the mob boss.

MikeNotThePope 9mo ago

There will always be a market if the interest rates are high enough. But wanting to lower interest rates and introducing political instability seems like a bad combo.