22 ms·

Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

• singularity2001 8mo ago
  Maybe simultaneous with the crash of the Chinese economy, which was predicted for 40 years now
  • torginus 8mo ago
    I don't understand why people expect the Chinese economy to crash - they can basically make everything, a lot of which is internationally competitive, they can trade for the resources they don't have with the goods that they do - with basically the whole world dependent on them. They have a huge internal base of poor people, and lifting them to a middle class level will alone fuel domestic demand for years to come. Their biggest problem seems to be they're too good at building stuff, whenever a new category of product pops up, they quickly build up both volume and drive down prices through competition so that they saturate their internal markets (see: housing, EVs)
    • Tiktaalik 8mo ago
      > I don't understand why people expect the Chinese economy to crash - they can basically make everything, a lot of which is internationally competitive, they can trade for the resources they don't have with the goods that they do - with basically the whole world dependent on them. One absolutely would have been able to say the same thing about Japan in the 1990s when they were top of the world. So I dunno! Anything's possible!
    • acuozzo 8mo ago
      > Their biggest problem[…] is demographic in nature. https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2024/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2024/
      • chillacy 8mo ago
        Korea has a similar demographic shape, and Japan already passed its peak in 2005ish https://www.populationpyramid.net/japan/2024/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/japan/2024/
        • hirako2000 8mo ago
          Roujin Z shows Japan saw what's coming over 20y ago, already.
      • torginus 8mo ago
        Great website, not going to downplay the problem, but you can check out other countries, and see that a lot of places - particularly in the West - are f*cked. That China is too, is not much of an upside, Honestly its kinda shocking how bad things are going to get, and Im not sure what can be done if anything at this point.
        • pphysch 8mo ago
          China is probably the among the best countries in the world to handle so-called "demographic collapse". Elders are relatively healthy and multigenerational households more common. Leader in robotics. News flash: you don't need a billion hard-working peasants in 2026 to be productive.
          • generativenoise 8mo ago
            People in general don't seem to look at how much "productive" population you need in the real economy to support a given population. Things look pretty fine by those metrics and if the AI claims are to believed about to rapidly get even better. How to motivate and compensate that small number of people in the real economy that supports human welfare is a different question. Also people appear to be blind to the real material limits that really start to be pushed by large populations. You could end up making life materially worse by trying to "fix" the demographics by adding more humans.
      • 8mo ago
    • ahartmetz 8mo ago
      The Chinese economy is indisputably strong and real, but rumor has it that its reported growth numbers have been inflated in the last couple of years. And why wouldn't they be - there is an autocratic government whose justification is that what they are doing is increasing economic success. No success is not an option.
      • torginus 8mo ago
        Personally I'm less and less inclined to believe in capitalism and money as a concept - we've long past moved the concept of money as universal barter, and into strange and speculative theories about how things ought to be valued, with the most valuable things either emerging from immediately unclear value propositions (impossibly valued companies, high-paid jobs that seemingly dont contribute to society) or artificially created shortages (housing, overpriced infrastructure projects due to government regulation and meddling). If for example, BYD makes a car that's substantially similar between the China and Europe versions, and sells said car for $15k eqv RMB in China, but $30k in the EU, it makes double the revenue for the same 'value'. Even the argument of the EU being generally richer, and thus the car having higher monetary utility doesnt hold - a well-paid EU surgeon wont pay more for it than your average office worker. So I feel money is increasingly a poor proxy for actual value/wealth etc.
        • JackFr 8mo ago
          Much of the difference in the BYD cost is accounted for by a 27% tariff on the cars, transport and increased costs for warranty and compliance certification costs, as well as likely subsidies in the domestic market. Of those, you’ll see that only transport costs are a function of “capitalism” the rest is government.
          • tonyedgecombe 8mo ago
            The UK doesn’t apply tariffs on Chinese cars yet the situation is similar here.
          • torginus 8mo ago
    • tim333 8mo ago
      There were worries that they'd issued a lot of debt to build real estate that wasn't needed resulting in ghost towns and people thought prices would fall and the banks lending would collapse but they seem to have managed ok. The Chinese actually seem quite smart at managing their system.
      • dmix 8mo ago
        They managed okay up until now because the Chinese gov takes a ton of revenue directly from their industry. They have very low income taxes on the public and instead make a lot of money from their huge state companies and investments in their manufacturing, industrial, and tech businesses which are still booming. That helps offset the losses from real estate, which they also make money off from land sales. They act more like a giant bank than one that simply taxes and spends. But their fiscal deficits have been growing quite a bit, particularly their local governments and they've had some pretty bad deflationary issues recently. https://rhg.com/research/chinas-harsh-fiscal-winter/ https://rhg.com/research/chinas-harsh-fiscal-winter/
        • tim333 8mo ago
          It seems to me there are two parts to the economy - physical stuff like like buildings, trains, factories, people working etc which you can see if you look around, and the financial side like bank balances, debt which are basically numbers in databases which you can only see on screens and paper. If the financial side goes wrong the government can kind of fix it overnight but printing/lending money, nationalizing bust banks and so on. But the physical takes a long time - you can't suddenly have a lot of high speed rail or trained engineers overnight - it takes decades. The Chinese seem to plan ahead on the physical stuff like houses factories universities and don't worry too much about the financial. The west seems more to worry about regulating the financial side and leave what to build to the market but that seems to have some aspects that can be inefficient. Not that it's just east - west. The US has built loads of infrastructure at times and socialists have had many screw ups. Still there may be something to be said for having some sort of long term plan on the physical side.
        • torginus 8mo ago
    • deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
    • Dumblydorr 8mo ago
      Their biggest problem is demographics. They’re living on borrowed time. There won’t be enough young people to do all this work in future with all the old folks to care for.
  • refurb 8mo ago
    Depends on your definition of crash? Real estate prices dropped 30% blowing up most people’s savings. The debt overhang is slowly bankrupting various companies. Growth is an anemic 5% (should be double for a country with China’s per capita income) and means it will never enter middle income status. Unemployment, especially for grads is very high and the lack of babies or immigration means the worker base will shrink while the demand for social services will skyrocket. Doesn’t seem great to be honest.
• dfilppi 8mo ago
  [dead]
• plaidfuji 8mo ago
  > So, perhaps we won? Perhaps we built our markets so stable that they are these days impervious? That sounds silly on its face, and the two reasons I’d actually give are: > 1. Markets are just slower moving than ever before, big players just like to sit on their big piles of money > 2. There are one or more bubbles in the stock market. Almost everyone agrees that AI is a bubble. It funds itself in a circular fashion, and capex cannot be recovered with profits any time soon, even with optimistic outlooks. It’s a bit of both. The impact of political instability in the US (read: Trump pissing off as many people as possible) may not be felt in the markets quickly, if even within his term. He has severely dented confidence in the US as a trading partner and as an arbiter of the global rules-based order. That will have decades-long implications, the result being a pivot away from dollar-denominated commodities trading, and export markets for US goods being increasingly unfriendly. The value of the dollar will probably decline, and in fact that is a goal of many in his administration. That could actually be good for US equities if it’s in moderation. The biggest risk I see is flight of capital away from US treasuries, which would drive up interest rates, leading to a sovereign debt crisis in the US. The likely solution to that would be money printing and resultant inflation. The high treasuries rate would drag capital away from equities.
• sleepyguy 8mo ago
  There is so much wrong with this blog post that it is difficult to know where to start. Does he even know that China has placed silver on the rare earths list? Considering they export 60 % of the worlds refined silver and now exports are limited and controlled. Silver markets have sold 200 contracts to every bar of refined silver. Now they are scrambling to fulfill delivery if someones requests it and are forced to buy on the spot market, which incidentally has driven spot pricing higher than contracts. People are moving out of Bitcoin and into Gold currently. I see this trend continuing (Bitcoin falling). The markets today are indestructible at the moment as you have witnessed over the last 3-4 years. This year will be similar to 2025 according to many different and smart people. I tend to agree with them and we are still in a bull market. -not an expert, not investment advice, your mileage may vary.
• roninapps 8mo ago
  I asked NOMOS (a system) I built for financial intelligence. These are it's key findings: Key Answer As of early 2026, there is no consensus forecast for an imminent crash of the U.S. economy. The prevailing view among major institutions is a period of moderated growth or a "soft landing," not a severe contraction. However, this outlook is balanced against significant and rising risks, including labor market fragility, unsustainable fiscal debt, and persistent inflationary pressures that could trigger a more pronounced downturn. Key Findings Consensus Points to Slowdown, Not a Crash. Major institutional bodies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and large investment banks project modest U.S. real GDP growth for 2026, generally in the 1.8% to 2.5% range. This baseline scenario is supported by expectations of resilient consumer spending, continued investment in technology like AI, and an anticipated easing of monetary policy by the Federal Reserve as inflation moderates. Optimistic forecasts from firms like RSM US and ARK Invest even anticipate a growth rebound to 2.2%, viewing the economy as a "coiled spring" fueled by technology spending. Labor Market Fragility is the Primary Downside Risk. Despite a low headline unemployment rate, the labor market shows significant signs of weakness. Analysts describe the current environment as a "low-hire, low-fire" equilibrium, characterized by slowing job growth and concerns over employment quality. A critical warning sign is the growing divergence between strong reported GDP figures and weakening labor market data. Historically, such contradictions are often resolved by downward revisions to economic growth, suggesting the economy may be weaker than headline numbers indicate. Capital Economics highlights that a cooling labor market, if not offset by productivity gains, could initiate a self-reinforcing cycle of lower employment and reduced consumer spending. Unsustainable Fiscal Debt Poses a Systemic Threat. The U.S. federal debt has surpassed $38 trillion, exceeding 100% of GDP. Net interest costs are projected to consume nearly 14% of all federal spending in 2026. The Brookings Institution projects this trajectory is unsustainable, with debt potentially reaching $170 trillion over three decades and interest payments consuming over a quarter of tax revenues within a decade. This creates near-term risks, as FTI Consulting warns that "bond vigilantes" could push back against perceived fiscal profligacy, driving up government bond yields and, consequently, borrowing costs for the entire private sector, independent of Federal Reserve actions. Stagflationary Pressures Complicate Monetary Policy. The economic environment is characterized by a difficult mix of slowing growth and persistent, albeit moderating, inflation. This presents a stagflationary challenge for the Federal Reserve. Policy measures such as new tariffs are expected to add to inflationary pressures while simultaneously acting as a drag on consumption and investment. This dynamic severely constrains the Fed's ability to stimulate the economy; cutting interest rates aggressively to support growth could risk re-igniting inflation, while keeping rates high to fight inflation could accelerate a downturn. Negative Public Sentiment Contrasts with Macro Resilience. While macroeconomic indicators like GDP have shown resilience, public sentiment remains overwhelmingly negative. Polls from Pew Research and YouGov show that a majority of Americans rate the economy poorly, driven by persistent affordability challenges related to housing, food, and healthcare. This sentiment is exacerbated by 2026 policy changes, such as cuts to social programs, which directly impact household budgets. This disconnect between headline data and public experience is a vulnerability, as deteriorating consumer confidence can lead to pullbacks in spending that are not yet reflected in aggregate data.
• deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
• stevenjgarner 8mo ago
  It is often argued that the US will grow its economy such that the debt is less significant. There is much confusion between the US debt being cited as a ratio of GDP (common among economists) vs net tangible assets (common among businesses and people). For example, after WWII, the U.S. faced its previous record debt-to-GDP ratio—roughly 106% in 1946. By 1974, that ratio had plummeted to just 23% largely through: a) massive GDP growth with real consumption rising 22% between 1944 and 1947. b) fiscal discipline where the U.S. actually ran primary budget surpluses in the late 1940s c) financial repression with the Federal Reserve capping interest rates at around 2.5% while inflation averaged 6.5%. This meant the government was paying back debt with "cheaper" dollars, effectively "inflating away" the debt at the expense of bondholders. Fast forward to today, there is an often stated belief that the US will grow the economy again, this time with a dramatic expansion into a space economy including orbiting data centers, solar power plants, asteroid mining, space manufacture - all leveraged with robotics and AI. Let's be generous and assume this actual happens and that it happens soon - what mandate is there that this massive space economy will be denominated in US dollars or even be part of the US economy? SpaceX has already launched numerous satellites for foreign countries. What is to stop them launching a space economy that will be owned under a "Flag of Convenience" from an offshore tax-free zone, perhaps even denominated in crypto? Will we then confront this massive off-planet economy with "space-tariffs" in order to import the value-added component back into the US? The U.S. debt can only be "grown away" if the value-added activities (mining, manufacturing, computing) remain registered in the U.S..
• assaddayinh 8mo ago
  The us are two economies in a trenchcoat. One a classic naval trade economy, the other a imperial security trade economy. One damages the other regularly and applies local monetary anesthesia to prevent the population from rising up against the whole state of affairs. Now they are divorcing.
• nektro 8mo ago
  the burst will be bigger than anything we've ever seen. so everyone pretends its not there (which only makes it bigger but alas), and money only material exists as people's faith in it so that's enough to punt the problem down a bit further.
• ohbleek 8mo ago
  That spark could end up being the rollout of chinas digital currency to the world and requiring payment using that currency when dealing with foreign businesses. This will kill the position of the US dollar as a reserve currency, slowly, but almost certainly.
• GOD_Over_Djinn 8mo ago
  > The unemployment rate just follows these smooth curves, covid was an exception, and it was due to jump again. Not very scientific I know. Why did you feel the need to post this article? It totally lacks substance. The above quote says it all.
• Dumas007 8mo ago
  The US has several things backing it currency ...oil/gas, gold, oil- processing efficiencies, the value of the world's largest companies ....AND (not to mention) an unrivaled armed force. Lol. BUT, every barrel of oil to emerge from the ground is immediately priced in US dollars. Hence ....a liquid printing press. GDTA.
• captain_coffee 8mo ago
  Some sort of an AI crash / bubble bursting is expected to be honest - now if that will take the rest of the US economy as well.... debatable. Any strong opinions on this?
  • Noaidi 8mo ago
    Yes, the concentration of wealth led to the AI boom and it’s going to lead to the crash for sure. The AI boom was nothing but a crypto bubble. And since it’s making up a large majority of the investment right now I would say that’s the only reason that we didn’t have a crash last year.
  • crote 8mo ago
    What else does the economy consist of these days? It's pretty much already in a recession if you exclude the big AI companies. Besides, basically every company had been desperately shoving AI into all their products. Throwing all of that out when the bubble pops won't be pretty.
    • shmeeed 8mo ago
      I imagine depreciated AI features will be like the soft varnish surfaces of some 90s cars after 10 years - disgustingly sticky, shedding flakes left and right, and in hindsight an obviously stupid idea that wasn't tested sufficiently before pushing it on consumers
  • johnnyanmac 8mo ago
    > now if that will take the rest of the US economy as well.... debatable. In the grand scheme of GDP, the US hasn't done much growth in anhtjjg else this decade, all while massively increasing spending to prevent post COVID recessions. It certainly doesn't look good. But this was being setup for 30 years as we outsourced our strong manufacturing wing to make the top brass richer in the short run. So I do think the house of cards falls if AI does. The sad part is that we may have been able to whether the storm under the right leadership. But that sure isn't the leadership in the White House right now.
  • benrutter 8mo ago
• newsclues 8mo ago
  Who do we expect will replace Americas global leadership and will they really be better for everyone?
  • wolvoleo 8mo ago
    China probably. No I don't think it is better but at least their leadership is actually sane. Evil, but sane and predictable.
    • scotty79 8mo ago
      Even the evil adjective starts to look debatable in contrast to what current hegemony is doing on its way down. Apparently their worst offence so far was calmly outgrowing and out competing their peers while benefiting global consumers with he fruits of organized labor of their own society.
      • philipallstar 8mo ago
        I'm particularly annoyed that the US is for the people of Iran and not, like China, for the government of Iran. And the US putting secondary sanctions on Russian oil to starve Putin from Chinese and Indian oil revenues? Disgusting.
        • wolvoleo 8mo ago
          The US is for the oil of Iran, not its people. Just like it doesn't actually care about the people of Venezuela, just its oil.
      • wolvoleo 8mo ago
        I was referring more to the millions of Uyghurs in political prisons and their overreaching surveillance of the population. And I was just speaking of what I think about China, not saying the current US administration is any better. I don't think it will be there forever though.
• wolvoleo 8mo ago
  I do really hope the AI bubble will collapse soon. The sooner it blows the less damage it will do. And hopefully we can go back to doing real work without all these leadership guys breathing down our necks to see if we are doing enough of this AI all their shareholders want us to be involved in. It will suck even for us in europe due to shortsighted pension funds having invested in AI as well. But we'll just have to deal with it. I'm sure it will happen sooner rather than later. PS: I'm not an AI hater as such. It definitely has its usecases where it shines. The problem is like with all hypes; it's not good at everything and it won't be all golden mountains tomorrow like the investors expect. This overhyped investor circlejerk is what screws up technology. It happened to blockchain, it happened to metaverse. All things that have their merits but somehow investors thought it would change the world overnight and make them insta-rich. Obviously didn't happen and it won't happen now.
  • Oras 8mo ago
    > It happened to blockchain, it happened to metaverse. I don't think AI is comparable to these technologies. AI had a real impact on certain daily activities, such as search, coding, etc. While the metaverse was just a fantasy with no tangible benefit other than Zuck trying to create his own platform to take on Apple and Google. Blockchain had some potential in certain fields, but it wasn't user-friendly or usable by many people.
    • wolvoleo 8mo ago
      Not really, there are good applications for metaverse tech, they just need time to mature. However I don't really see it in the realm of social media. It's not something that's for everyone, at least not yet. I don't understand what meta was thinking there. It's amazing for gaming though, and for architecture, 3D product design collaboration. I use it a lot daily and I have 5 headsets (plus two AR ones) but I also know it's not for everyone. It's also really good for porn which somehow in America isn't seen as a real industry but in my view it's a good usecase for the tech too. Anything that relies on immersion benefits from it. AI has its niches too where it's genuinely useful (and coding really is a niche, it's not a mainstream activity) but just like metaverse they're trying to cram it in situations where it doesn't really add any value.
• drstewart 8mo ago
  Surely the surge of predictions of an incoming crash will never end though.
• SchwKatze 8mo ago
  I'm kinda new into economy crashes, was a kid in 2008, is there a way to protect of it?
  • Noaidi 8mo ago
    Gold and silver mining stocks. And International ETF funds. It looks like the United States will be going through the depression alone.
    • SchwKatze 8mo ago
      I saw the graphs of some silver mining stocks and it seems to just follow silver price, why don't just buy silver then?
      • czechdeveloper 8mo ago
        Mini stocks were traditionally used as way to invest in asset as a security. But currently with all the ETFs that are backed with physical asset itself, I'd choose that way. Holding asset yourself (gold) causes logistical issues and massive buy/sell split on your side, but it has some advantages too.
      • Noaidi 8mo ago
        Mining stock are lagging, so they have the highest to go right now.
    • repelsteeltje 8mo ago
      Was thinking the same, but why would everyone be more interested in gold an silver in a couple of months than they are right now? Sure it beats holding dollars of stocks. But, keeping both feet on the ground, I'm tempted to think that if the economy collapses I'd not be very interested in buying precious metals. I'd be looking for food, a roof to live under and safety.
      • Noaidi 8mo ago
        You can invest in silver mining stocks, and be concerned about food at the same time. One is for long-term survival. The other is for short term survival. You can think of things like toilet paper and razors as bartering tools or actual new money, and the golden silver investments as objection of the current money you have right now. My grandfather lives in a great depression in Manhattan. He told me some crazy stories, but you know what most people made it through. I think this time our system is more fragile, but I have no doubt that human survival is much stronger than me think as well as human socialism. For instance, I am homeless living with schizoaffective disorder and I’m not worried so why should you be?
• Noaidi 8mo ago
  No one will ever get the timing right, but if you see the fundamental flaws of the economy, you know a crash is going to come. There were a lot of people who predicted the housing crash, not the timing but the crash. There are several signs that this is happening and the one no one is talking about is gold and silver prices. Don’t worry about the timing, you’ll never get the timing right, just worry about the fundamental economics and the flaws and protect yourself. I happen to agree just because of golden silver prices that it’s going to happen sooner than later, regardless if war breaks out with Iran.
  • tossandthrow 8mo ago
    The issue is that you don't know magnitudes. If the market go up 80% before dropping 20% then you want to have bought in.
  • padjo 8mo ago
    At any given moment there is always someone predicting that the economy will crash. So someone will always have predicted it. The question is do they actually have some insight or were they just lucky.
    • Noaidi 8mo ago
      This not a prediction. The crash is currently happening. You just do not want to see it. Can you explain gold and silver prices? can you explain why bitcoin has been flat now dropping? The falling dollar? The US Treasury yields rising since 2020? CAn you explain why consumers feel at ease even though economicsts are stying everything is great? I mean why do you think the FED and Trump are all over each other? Because there is no way out. If they lower rates, inflation. If they raise them, assets collapse. People have been warning about this exact secnario since 2008 and no one is listening. Back then it was a prediction, but now it is happening.
      • qnpnpmqppnp 8mo ago
        > This not a prediction. The crash is currently happening. The stock market being at an all-time high, a crash in the usual meaning of this term is not, by definition, currently happening. Since apparently this isn't what you mean by "crash", could you define what you mean by this term so we're all on the same page?
• philipallstar 8mo ago
  > This is the 11th time that tariffs have happened, and it just isn’t surprising anymore. There are tariffs everywhere, all the time. Canada just dramatically cut its 90% (or something) tariff on Chinese cars. Tariffs haven't just started happening because someone you don't like did them.
  • wolvoleo 8mo ago
    Yes but tariffs were a long-term strategic tool. Not a bullying tactic for someone who woke up the wrong way.
  • devnonymous 8mo ago
    Otoh, tarrifs as a foreign policy / coercion method disconnected from trade and local economy impacts definitely is a new thing. Sure, it might have been used as a delicate lever previously but in its current brazen form is just bad diplomacy.
  • bilekas 8mo ago
    This is incredibly disingenuous. > Tariffs haven't just started happening because someone you don't like did them Nobody said they have, throwing ridiculously high ones with your allies and trading partners is new though.
  • e2le 8mo ago
    > There are tariffs everywhere, all the time. This neglects the scale, cost, and unpredictability. His tariffs are far from being the usual seen elsewhere. Of course, you should already understand this.
  • tock 8mo ago
    Blanket tariffs used as blackmail is obviously different.
  • Nevermark 8mo ago
    Knife: Surgeon. Slasher. Results are not the same.
• carabiner 8mo ago
  This is really obscured by the K-shaped growth, dual economy now. We've reached a stable pattern of a deep underclass serving the wealthy. We won't have a crash or "correction" because the entrenched top 5% has figured out a way extract value from everyone else indefinitely.
  • mistersquid 8mo ago
    > This is really obscured by the K-shaped growth, dual economy now. We've reached a stable pattern of a deep underclass serving the wealthy. We won't have a crash or "correction" because the entrenched top 5% has figured out a way extract value from everyone else indefinitely. Apologies for quoting all 3 sentences of parent, but the poorly-drawn conclusion depends on the full sequence of seemingly rational statements. The context this sequence is missing is that approximately 70% of the US economy depends on consumer spending. [0][1] If the lower stroke of the K-economy diverges too much from the upper, the economy is going to grind to halt. Consumer spending of the bottom 90% cannot (easily?) be replaced by the top 10%. [0] https://govfacts.org/money/broader-economy/economic-indicators/the-four-parts-of-gdp-that-drive-americas-economy/ https://govfacts.org/money/broader-economy/economic-indicato... [1] https://www.npr.org/2025/11/23/nx-s1-5615222/consumer-spending-is-the-u-s-economys-main-driver-heres-how-its-doing https://www.npr.org/2025/11/23/nx-s1-5615222/consumer-spendi...
    • throwaway132448 8mo ago
      I used to think along these lines. But now I think the truth is - does it matter if the economy grinds to a halt? Perhaps the ruling class can still keep enough Americans comfortable enough, and fearful of losing more, doing largely pointless jobs, to stay passive - and that’s all they need to do to completely bifurcate the society such that they face no threat to their own position.
• scotty79 8mo ago
  Where it's gonna crash to? Where is going the capital move to when everythings going up? (except crypto apparently)
  • Smaug123 8mo ago
    Could you clarify the question? When everything's going up, it's definitionally not a crash; do you mean something like "where are people going to flee to now/soon, in anticipation of a crash, given how buoyant everything is"?
    • scotty79 8mo ago
      That exodus is what crash is. Yes. My question is where "they" are going flee to in anticipation of the crash to actually make the crash happen.
      • Smaug123 8mo ago
        They're not definitionally the same. Normally a (stock market) crash is just "everyone's assessment of expected future cash flows goes down, meaning that what everyone owns is less valuable". One thing that can cause people's assessments to drop is "everyone else is withdrawing from it, which I assume means they're assessing it as being much less valuable, so they have information I don't, so I should revise downwards", which can make a self-sustaining feedback loop, but that's certainly not the only possible cause of a crash; I wouldn't even say it was the most likely cause of an AI-bubble crash. My guesses would be "everyone's assessments go down together because OpenAI et al's predictions of their future revenue are observed to be consistently vastly overinflated vs actual performance, but everyone was previously assuming they were roughly correct" or "some political thing happens which makes OpenAI et al's services obviously much less valuable or makes them much less able to provide services".
      • PeterHolzwarth 8mo ago
        This is a great question, and one that drives right to the key issue! (oh god, that sounds like an LLM response, sorry) Like with the implosion of the Japanese economy, people will just not invest, instead parking their money in low-yield bank accounts. It was, in some cases continues to be, an issue for that country.
• n0um3n4 8mo ago
  my bet is: "new" tech, emphasis on "new", will keep US on top or whatever US become after the big reveal.
  • Henchman21 8mo ago
    I hope that after the Big Reveal, nationalism will immediately begin to fade away and we can start tackling species-level problems, like the plastic everywhere and in all of us, or dying ecosystems, or ... literally anything other than commerce.
• baal80spam 8mo ago
  Any time now: 1. Market crash 2. AI bubble bursting 3. Year of the linux desktop Have I missed something?
  • mechazawa 8mo ago
    Half life 3
    • mnky9800n 8mo ago
      This will probably be better than duke nukem forever because they were always working in DNF but nobody has been working on hf3 in 20 years.
      • deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
  • lifetimerubyist 8mo ago
    Beyond Good and Evil 2
  • pelagicAustral 8mo ago
    GTA VI
  • Der_Einzige 8mo ago
    Year of linux gaming being good (it isn't)
• johnnyanmac 8mo ago
  There's quite a few factors here that delayed what should have logically already happened. 1. All the tarriff reactions cause US companies to import a huge amount of stuff for 2025. From what I understand, we're about to exhaust all of those imports. 2. The unemployment reports (especially the U3 numbers) hide quite a bit of turmoil going on under the hood of the job market. - If you lost your job and switched to Uber/Doordash, you're not unemployed. - If you are riding on severance pay instead of filikg for unemployment, you're not unemployed. - If you got tired of throwing out hundreds of apps only to get automated rejections and take a break a month, you're not unemployed. - If you just graduated into this hellscape and can't qualify for any unemployment, you're not unemployed (you're technically not part of the workforce yet). There's a lot of these small shifts in how jobs work that make U3 less reliable in reflecting reality. And I only touched the surface of these issues. 3. Continuing on the U3 with a point worthy of its own bullet: the unemployment appears flat, but the makeup of what's happening per industry really lays down the reality. The only industries growing are hospitality (aka food service and similar sorts of duties) and health care. And to top it off these "growing" industries shift more and more to fractional work. Pretty much every other industry is down. So people are getting laid off/fired and moving to part time work to get by. "Stable" by unemployment numbers, but very unstable on the day-to-day. Add in the recent congressional bills for healthcare subsidies and we're throwing more gas on rhe fire. 4. I'm sure it's been said so much by now, but AI in the US is the only thing holding up the GDP. Without that massive investment, the GDP would be at best, dead flat. The US isn't growing in a way that reflects actual yields to anyone outside of a select few shareholders. We're not building more houses, mining more materials (on the contrary, we've resumed ransacking others'), manufacturing more machinery, nor even producing more service value for customers and businesses. We're putting all hedges on one thing with an uncertain outcome. If that industry declines, so does the rest of the US. 5. The K shaped economy. I have to check these numbers again, but I believe that spending is indeed up, but the makeup of spending per income band is more stark than ever. The too 10% income households makes up half of US's spending. But there are signs that even many high income houses add also starting to hunker down on spending. ---- That was a lot and it still only scratches the surface. But the TLDR version is that there's a lot of statistics massaging over the real struggles of life and many industries reaching a breaking point they did a good job putting off. But by this point it will only take a needle to break this camel.
• csomar 8mo ago
  > Which is to say that no individual decision make want’s to be the first mover, so the market does not move. Uh, that's not accurate. Hathaway is sitting all cash because of it and so far they have been the one losing. Even if you assume (and correctly I think) that the market is overvalued, their stock pile of cash is eroding: https://newzsquare.com/warren-buffett-warns-of-fiat-currency-erosion-amid-record-382-billion-cash-pile-at-berkshire-hathaway/ https://newzsquare.com/warren-buffett-warns-of-fiat-currency... > A year ago there were a few signs. Right now, it feels like everything is primed to blow. Is that new? The market is unhealthy. Too unhealthy that I think it can no longer self-heal the usual ways (recession/crash/etc.) and we'll instead move to more advanced stage of hyperinflation, global war, etc.
• zerosizedweasle 8mo ago
  It is a giant Ponzi scheme and those tend to collapse at some point.
• lvl155 8mo ago
  Software sector basically got cut in half just on Claude Code. You have to wonder what is next. I don’t think loss in economics is 1:1 with replacement so it’s not zero sum. Production doesn’t necessarily go up. In fact, net output is going to go down if you think about all the B2B lost too. Whoever comes into power next better start thinking about universal income fast. We are gonna get there sooner than expected.
  • maxerickson 8mo ago
    Software productivity doubling would be a huge boon for the economy, not a drag. Of course it's very disruptive for people that lose their jobs, but many of them will get similar new jobs, and the overall impact is higher output.
    • FrancisMoodie 8mo ago
      If all companies fire 50% of their engineers, how will anybody find similar new jobs? In an ideal world software productivity doubling WOULD be a huge boon for the economy IF companies used the increased productivity of their engineers as a way to manage tech debt, R&D and other issues that were put in the backlog because historically there were no resources for this. In reality all companies look at increased productivity as a source for layoffs which does not translate in higher output but the same output done by less people. Which is a net negative because now you have 50% of all engineers without a job and no discernible increase in quality of deliverables.
      • TYPE_FASTER 8mo ago
        The FAANG companies hoarded engineering talent for years. It was really difficult to hire in any market where they were located. What I think will happen/is happening is the combination of AI assisted development and reduction in FAANG engineering headcount will enable business transformation pretty much everywhere. The impact of that transformation remains to be seen.
      • PleasureBot 8mo ago
        If software engineer productivity basically doubled as is being claimed in this thread, I think you'd see companies scrambling to lay off everyone else in an effort to hire even more software engineers. They'd be by far the most valuable and productive employees at every tech company and you'd be foolish not to have as many as you can. I'm being a bit facetious but throughout history when a resource or profession takes a dramatic leap in efficiency, the demand for that thing rather than decreasing as is predicted here, only increases since it has become far more valuable & effective.
• metalman 8mo ago
  This isn't a crash, it is something else comming, perhaps the "jackpot", where society/civilisation unravells, climate disaster kicks in with real persistant challenges everywhere, and some third, fourth, fifth effects that break our millenial run to the top of our planets ecosystem as the ultimate apex species. It has been a good run, but useing the same tacticts as our stone age ancestors, is, I think, about to bite, hard. And it is literaly this, our strategy is to keep useing the same tacticts.Jackpot.
• trilogic 8mo ago
  What is different this time? Maybe: 1 Online shopping market in the range of 5 trillions 2 Electricity and energy price raise 3 Impossibility to lower interest rates 4 Tech market also in the range of multi Trillions 5 Global education and power expansion ... Meaning that a % of all this money flow goes private pockets destroying medium class, which gets poorer. It is like a memory leak that keeps sucking resources while growing exponentially until the system crashes. The real question for an economist is how much ram has the system and how much the memory has leaked? This Legendary site is interesting: https://usdebtclock.org/index.html https://usdebtclock.org/index.html Especially when combined it´s data with AI.
  • John7878781 8mo ago
    Is it just me or does this metaphor sound AI generated? > It is like a memory leak that keeps sucking resources while growing exponentially until the system crashes. The real question for an economist is how much ram has the system and how much the memory has leaked?
    • rglynn 8mo ago
      "... how much ram has the system" is a typo or an ESL mistake, so not an LLM.
  • danans 8mo ago
    > It feels as though all we need is a spark. And yet, many sparks seem to have come and gone. Big market moves, in stocks or yields, that have recovered. Tariff and invasion threats, protests, you name it, they might move the needle but it always seems to move back. So, perhaps we won? Perhaps we built our markets so stable that they are these days impervious This is a myopic question only considering the values of securities, gold/silver, etc, which are owned in significance by relatively few. The working class economy has already crashed. People who have to put in hours to get paid are struggling, and consumer spending is dominated by the top 10%. The media, ever fixated on the economic welfare of the top 1%, spins a story that if the stock market is doing well, the economy is doing well. Meanwhile there is an quiet bet that authoritarians will protect interests of capital owners over all else (i.e the bailout OpenAI hinted they might need), while suppressing the primary methods the masses have for expressing their discontent: speech, organizing/demonstrating, strikes, and voting.
• Dirak 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  • komposit 8mo ago
    You comically self contradict yourself. If it was lack of ideas to invest in that drove holding of cash at negative interest rates, then what stops the european from just buying us stocks? US collapse is inevitable, until its NOT…
  • piva00 8mo ago
    > In Europe, people hold cash at negative interest rates because they have so few new ideas and so little innovation to invest in. Where exactly do you think the money will go? That's a bit reductive, in Europe there's a much bigger culture of saving, most people I know here are very averse on taking debt if unnecessary, only going into debt for large purchases like a house or a car. Even for cars I see many outright purchasing a used one in cash instead of going into financing/leasing. People hold cash but also invest, it's savings in general that are high, varying between 10-25% of yearly income saved (compared to the US's ~5%). I think this narrative of "so little innovation" is peddled very much in the software-adjacent circles but it forgets that innovation is not only from software, if you really think Europe has no innovation you are either ignorant or purposefully fostering a bad narrative. No, Europe doesn't have the VC industry, and the software companies' culture of the USA, it does innovate with a different model. > If you insist on believing the US economy will crash without a well thought out thesis, I think that’s a beautiful thing. When you sell your positions on US companies, I’ll gladly be on the BUY side of that order. Please do, as I've been cashing out throughout this year anything that has any direct exposure to the USA stock market I need people like you on the other side, thank you very much.
  • gota 8mo ago
    > In Europe, people hold cash at negative interest rates because they have so few new ideas and so little innovation to invest in. Where exactly do you think the money will go? BRICS, apparently
• tock 8mo ago
  Stocks might go down if AI doesn't bring in enough revenue. The real risk seems to be currency depreciation though. The USD is already down 15% this year compared to the Euro. I'm worried about what the next FED chair appointee will do. JPow has stuck to his principles so far.
  • trgn 8mo ago
    falling usd is a disaster in a consumption economy like ours. fuels inflation. makes investing in usd-denominated assets less attractive. it's not going to boost exports due to tarriff walls. there's no silver lining here.
  • drstewart 8mo ago
    >what the next FED chair appointee will do What do you think he will do, given he's one of 12 votes?
    • tock 8mo ago
      The admin wants to cut rates drastically. But the FED policymakers just voted 10-2 to not cut rates. So I worry the admin will try something crazy to force a cut.
  • zahlman 8mo ago
    > The USD is already down 15% this year compared to the Euro. It's down 12% since a year ago, but that's largely a reaction to the tariffs. It's been fairly stable since July or so and has only seen a small dip (and partial recovery) in the last couple of weeks. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/USDEUR=X/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/USDEUR=X/
    • bootsmann 8mo ago
      Tariffs cause a currency appreciation (they reduce imports, driving down the supply of the currency outside the country)
  • happyopossum 8mo ago
• brador 8mo ago
  I keep seeing soon, sliding into, moving towards. USD Currency futures have already collapsed. World trade will move to (not a good idea) RMB or (mistakenly) crypto. Euro is the only real option left and it’s beautifully positioned in the center. Great leadership too.
  • blargthorwars 8mo ago
    [flagged]
    • padjo 8mo ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Sweden Not even the right order of magnitude
• nodesocket 8mo ago
  I know HN always has its fair share of doomers, and generally the HN communities track record anecdotally regarding finance and the market is frankly terrible. Tesla (stock price wrong), Bitcoin (wrong), AI a huge dot com like bubble (wrong in my opinion - TBD though). I’m optimistic on the US. We could realistically print a 5 handle GDP, oil at rock bottom prices, lower federal income taxes this year. As far as Gold and Silver I just see it being propped up by speculators. Silver spot is down 15% this mornings and gold down 8%. I predict double digit gains in the S&P by end of year and strong financial conditions with mag 7 continuing their lead. Tesla also will be a big winner.
  • tonyedgecombe 8mo ago
    At this point I think Tesla could sell zero cars this year and their stock price would still be astronomical.
  • johnnyanmac 8mo ago
    > We could realistically print a 5 handle GDP, oil at rock bottom prices, lower federal income taxes this year. Ignoring everything else in terms of oredictions: the US simply doesn't have that spending buffer anymore to really outspend yet another crash. Its at what, 37 trillion right now? And it's only rising more and more by the month. The only thing worse than a crash would be the US defaulting on that. And then we'd be screwed in ways that we don't recover from in any of our lifetimes. Nearly a century of trust and soft power completely down the drain.
    • Ekaros 8mo ago
      Even if they don't default. How long there is willing investors? Even if FED drops rates. It is an auction. So rates should be set there. But maybe printing will happen via bigger and bigger market operations. Leading higher and higher rates. With probably inflation... So I suppose valuations could go even higher... I do not understand economics and from engineer perspective whole thing doesn't make much sense.
• pembrook 8mo ago
  Some advice for those who are young: If every idiot (I'm including myself in this) on HN/Reddit/Youtube/Tiktok/mainstream news/etc. thinks we're in a bubble and is crazy pessimistic and thinks economic collapse is near...it means we're not actually in a bubble. When the bitter, frustrated pessimists on HN shift their tone to being neutral or even mildly optimistic, then I will start worrying. Because that will mean the general public must be reaching 1999 levels of euphoria for a hint of optimism to show up here.
  • johnnyanmac 8mo ago
    >When the bitter, frustrated pessimists on HN shift their tone to being neutral or even mildly optimistic, then I will start worrying. That seems to have happened around 2023 or so as people chose to laud over AI instead of understanding the underpinnings of society coming undone in real time. So, should I be worried?
    • drstewart 8mo ago
      The hourly "AI is a bubble" threads doesn't scream optimistic to me.
      • johnnyanmac 8mo ago
        Its a busy site, I can also find hourly "AI brought joy back to my life" threads.
    • pembrook 8mo ago
      No, because your pessimistic feelings only serve to strengthen my claim. I find it amusing that, even when directly calling attention to the overwhelming pessimism that is the default-state on HN, I'm met with a pessimistic comment with zero self awareness.
      • johnnyanmac 8mo ago
        >because your pessimistic feelings only serve to strengthen my claim. So me pointing out optimism in discussion strengthens your claim, because it's specifically my feelings that prove your point. Well I'm glad you can prove yourself right, if nothing else: >When the bitter, frustrated pessimists on HN shift their tone to being neutral or even mildly optimistic, then I will start worrying. Denial sure is a worrying point.
• torginus 8mo ago
  I feel like there's some credibility to 'this time it's different' The US economy depends on the country's position of world hegemon - the US dollar is the world's main reserve currency, the US enforces international order and trade rules via its military strength, it dominates technology and culture through 'US defaultism'. I dont think AI even factors in to this. The US economy is priced for global reach - if it manages to lose that through a combination of credible competitors, and loss of goodwill - it's going to be in heaps of trouble. The looming US debt is also a great question - a lot of economists have argued that since most US debt is good. It's mostly in forms of treasuries purchased in USD that pay in USD - this means the indebtedness creates a huge amount of dollars abroad that foreigners have to then spend on US services, driving demand. Should the US become an unfriendly power to the rest of the western world, it will find the demand for its currency plummeting, which I don't want to outline is a big issue. All said, I think if the US continues down the political path it currently seems to be pursuing, 'this time it's different' actually will be.
  • adventured 8mo ago
    > The US economy depends on the country's position of world hegemon Your premise depends on that being true, and you stated that like it's a fact. It's an unsupported opinion. The US economy was the world's largest before 1890, without anything remotely resembling the global reserve currency or superpower military.
  • thuridas 8mo ago
    You need US dollars because you have with US. Tarrifs hurt the need for dollars.
  • SllX 8mo ago
    > Should the US become an unfriendly power to the rest of the western world, it will find the demand for its currency plummeting, which I don't want to outline is a big issue. Right now this is much more of a maybe, possibly, eventually, over a long enough time horizon. As of the end of 2025, USD still made up 57% of foreign reserves vs 20% for the Euro and 3% for the Chinese renminbi. Nearly all commodities are still priced in USD and about 50% of trade invoicing is done in dollars, closer to 60% if you exclude the Eurozone. USD also makes up about 60% of SWIFT transactions. So the demand is still there today and de-dollarization is not really a thing in aggregate as of January 2026, despite all of the events of the past year or so. So if this time is different, I’m not seeing it yet.
• benrutter 8mo ago
  I feel like one of the following is true (and I don't know yet which is the case): - I'm genuinely a lot more pessimistic than is accurate around what is and isn't a bubble - Bubbles are just slower to burst than I expect Possibly some combination of both. But even ignoring AI which is relatively new, it seems "obvious" to me, that whatever value Bitcoin has, investment in the asset is detached completely from that value. I'd have expected to see Bitcoin crash a long, long time ago, and have been thinking it's "just around the corner" for years and year. And yet, the bitcoin price as a whole, although it's dipped recently, and is clearly volatile, still remains something like 10x what it's value was 5 years ago[0]. [0] https://charts.bitbo.io/price/ https://charts.bitbo.io/price/
  • FrancisMoodie 8mo ago
    Something I think people forget when it comes to the valuation of bitcoin is just how much of it is used to fund illegal activities (Betting, Drugs, anything on the darkweb,...). I honestly believe much of the valuation is linked to that, but I have no source or proof.
    • r_lee 8mo ago
      No... problem is that most investors are flooded with liquidity/money (thanks to QE and the rallies) thus alternative assets like Bitcoin are being flooded with liquidity (see: Blackrock BTC ETF) We only would see a real valuation if there was a sudden need for liquidations, or a loss in faith in value, which would need some kind of an event, either rapid liquidation or some sudden shift in sentiment I'm guessing it will be part of a larger sell-off in Tech and BTC will be lumped in⁶
• incomingpain 8mo ago
  Last 2 reported quarters have 3.8% and 4.4% gdp growth. Next report is end of february. So it's minimum 4 months away at earliest. Stock markets are at 10 year peaks. Unemployment is a little bit high at 4.5%. Inflation is a little bit high at 2.7% US government debt is very high at 125% PMIs are strong across the board. Also in context, trillions in declared new investments in the usa. Probably trillions more in undeclared new investment trying to avoid tariffs. No competitor possible on reserve currency status, Euro in about 2013 was looking like hot stuff but they regulated themselves out of it. So I consider, the crash probability of the US economy is certainly not going to be happening.
  • koe123 8mo ago
    Is this the case with all bubbles? Might be a naive question
  • CamperBob2 8mo ago
    The person declaring "trillions in new investments" is Donald Trump. He doesn't understand how tariffs work, he doesn't understand how trade works, and he doesn't understand how the truth works. So many of the stats you mention are based on potentially-untruthful statements from the Trump administration. When the facts and figures aren't favorable to Trump, his strategy is to shoot the messenger and install his cronies. Works great, right up until it doesn't.
    • amenhotep 8mo ago
      And the person you're replying to is someone who thinks "The case where Canada must be annexed is if Greenland somehow remains part of Denmark"! The veneer of civility on this site lets some really incredible people slip under the radar.
  • benrutter 8mo ago
    I don't think this proves/suggests a crash will happen, but its worth considering most of what you've said would have been true right up until both the 2008 financial crash and the dotcom bubble.
  • 8mo ago
• deleted 8mo ago
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• daft_pink 8mo ago
  I think the government is laser focused on reducing regulations, reducing energy costs, reducing interest rates, a weaker dollar that makes exports better, minimizing taxes. Technological innovation is increasing overall productivity. There are definite headwinds like upward pressure on labor by reducing the worker population, stagnating population growth, undertainty, tarriffs, a weaker dollar increasing inflation. There’s the looming threat of geopolitical world war that has been overhanging the world since the combination of the pandemic isolating different countries and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It’s really a mixed bag, but it’s not clear to me that we are headed into a total economic crash as the government is definitely focused on doing a lot of good things for the economy, but also is creating lots of different headwinds.
  • donmcronald 8mo ago
    The thing I don’t get is that IMO Americans have a higher standard of living due to demand for the dollar. Being a net importer means they make less and the countries they’re importing from make more. Money = labor = people working, so people in other countries are working harder than Americans to benefit Americans with a higher standard of living. It’s like a roofer working for a contractor that’s a millionaire and the contractor is upset because he’s paying the roofer while having a higher standard of living because of the profit made off the roofer’s labor. No one is working for that rich contractor if his money is worthless. Isn’t a weaker dollar for America a disaster? The world works to serve America right now because of the dollar. Life’s going to be tough when America has to “get a job” and start earning their keep with real productivity contributions, isn’t it? Maybe I’m just dumb, but all I can see is a massive drop in the average standard of living if the US maintains their current trajectory. It might even be too late already.
    • pixl97 8mo ago
      >massive drop in the average standard of living if the US maintains their current trajectory. Very rich people control the narrative in the US and get poor people to repeat their claims. Hence where we get statements like this from. >“John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” The thing is the billionaires/trillionaires don't care as long as they get more power. They'll eat the goose that lays the golden eggs. You see a ton of this with Trump voters like my grandma that are getting screwed over with medicare changes and live in some kind of grand delusion that Trump is doing exactly what he said he was going to do in cutting benefits, and yet somehow it's all the democrats fault (???).
• yomismoaqui 8mo ago
  If you predict a crash every month and it happens after 2 years... can we call you a visionary?
  • mrbombastic 8mo ago
    Yes and thank you in advance
    • cbdevidal 8mo ago
      ZeroHedge has correctly predicted two hundred of the last two recessions ;-)
      • slfreference 8mo ago
        ZeroHedge can stay irrational far longer than you can stay sane.
  • pinkmuffinere 8mo ago
    I know the question is tongue-in-cheek, but I think it’s a fascinating question, so I’ll take it seriously. If you predict the crash and it happens two years later, i think you basically cannot profit off that guess, so I’d say no. Although i haven’t provided data for the two-year claim, there certainly exists some period N for which the prediction no longer pays off, given a fixed drop. But if you can predict it 6 months in advance, you probably could profit! I think a certain amount of annoying repetition is fine for profitability.
    • Breza 8mo ago
      If a company has a fundamentally good business model, I can just buy the stock and forget about it for years. I wish there were something equivalent for companies with bad business models. You can't just short something and come back ten years later to check the price.
  • diogenescynic 8mo ago
    There's a real estate YouTube channel that's been calling for a real estate downturn for like 8 years (pre-Pandemic). Eventually they'll be right.
• oxag3n 8mo ago
  I like how the last image based on "C'mon, Do something" with all the AI symbols, has hard to recognize body part shape, with Claude being right in the middle of it. Hank Green talked about it last year - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIbQTIL1oCo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIbQTIL1oCo
• tsoukase 8mo ago
  A have a bad feeling for the US economy. A decline comes soon, then prepare for impact with a financial crisis and in the end of the tunnel the IMF. I know it's super crazy but that was also for my country 16 years ago.
  • willhslade 8mo ago
    Greece? How did it go after the crisis?
    • tsoukase 8mo ago
      Yes. Until 2019 we stagnated. Since then we have the best Prime M of the last 100 years, Kyriakos Mitsotakis. He has made some incredible stuff and some mistakes, too, but they are nothing relatively to the Balkan traitors of the past. The country has rebooted and from an IMF victim it has become an exception in the current European/world shity situation. He decided to remain a third term, going to have almost a double score from the leftists in the 2027 elections, so I advise you to invest in Athens stock exchange.
• nine_zeros 8mo ago
  [dead]
• robinsoncrusue 8mo ago
  The question is there is no other place for money to go. Liquidity is still in abundance and no other market can capture that liquidity. Eurozone is a total mess, ECB is doing one reckless thing after another which will inevitably lead to Germany leaving Eurozone at some point. Japan market is a joke, Asia and emerging market has huge governance issues. Bond market has penalized the investors and only more pain is in sight. All in all, there is a lot of doom and gloom out there. But I don't see a viable alternative. Sure, Mark Carney gave his little speech in Davos. The same Mark Carney, that led Brookfield while its finance arms operating out of US. But realistically, how is opening up to China more even considered as the alternative? When has any deal with China worked at a strategic advantage for the other side? Is not the whole reason the so called globalization project failed was because players like China did not play by the same rule or did not even have to play by the same rule? What gives they will when you open up the market more to them? All it takes is for them to take your product, copy it and sell it 20x cheaper and flood the market everywhere else.
  • saguntum 8mo ago
    What is a mess about the Eurozone and reckless about the ECB?
    • robinsoncrusue 8mo ago
      https://robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/the-principal-agent-problem-at-the https://robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/the-principal-agent-prob...
      • red-iron-pine 8mo ago
        save people a click: > The incentive structure at the ECB has become distorted and favors high-debt countries [that underperform or are risky]
      • PeterHolzwarth 8mo ago
        Able to summarize what you mean vs just a link?
• mahirsaid 8mo ago
  The Typical language of believers is to say no that wont happen and how? I learned and studied enough history and the usual narrative is to not accept something that is possibly so catastrophic that it will change their way of life. The tech bubble is another story and to be study on it's own, but it was summarized well that is < its a cycle of delusional capital invested over and over. Along with the numerous indicators of "what ifs"> The housing market is simply stupid, im sorry i don't have another word for it that better describes the current take on this matter. Home prices are outrageous because of market driven assumptions. A house is technically worth $150 is now on the market for $350 and why is that. from 2 years ago. People truly think that home prices are expected to keep rising and to what extent and why? They couldn't tell you<< " my zip code is the place to live at the moment, the person living in the next zip code is saying the same thing about hiss home, Homes in silicon valley were above and beyond the national average and it was the only thing on the headlines during 2021 - 2022 but for good reasons that cant be argued too much/ Today it is the rest of US in the same mindset. All of the US economy seems to be in protection mode right now. As to say it's the mother that doesn't want you to go out again after falling of your bike and scuffing your knee on the pavement. tariffs were used the wrong way this time around, inevitably the very purpose of them was not so effective, it backfired, Damage is done and reputation is broken in a lot of ways. Britain is renegotiation relationships with china, Canada is renegotiation relationship with China, EU is renegotiation relationships with India and China. All with successful results. There is a lot of stake here the US has a lot to offer to the world and to use that as weapon is tends to not have a good outcome. The market is large, yes it is resilient to some factors but not all/ When collapse takes place there will be tremendous momentum and its going to be hard to stop.
  • bigbadfeline 8mo ago
    > People truly think that home prices are expected to keep rising and to what extent and why? Home prices aren't rising, the value of dollar keeps, and is expected to keep, falling.
    • mahirsaid 8mo ago
      https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPINSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPINSA I was taking this as an example.
• ron_woods 8mo ago
  This long read by Grant Williams really helped put everything into context. https://www.epsilontheory.com/there-can-be-only-two/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/there-can-be-only-two/
  • PeterHolzwarth 8mo ago
    A lot of us don't have time for all the long reads, podcasts, or in-depth videos posted in the discussion here. Able to provide a summary for us that expresses your general point? Those interested can then use your link to learn more.
    • deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
    • jaggederest 8mo ago
      LLM summary, for discussion only: The article’s core argument is that the U.S. dollar isn’t going to lose global dominance in some dramatic, headline-friendly collapse; instead, like every reserve currency before it, it will slowly erode at the margins as users quietly reduce reliance on it. Historical transitions (sterling to dollar) didn’t happen because of declarations or crises, but because the world gradually found alternatives that were good enough for specific needs. What’s changing now isn’t that the dollar has “failed,” but that the global financial system has evolved past some of the assumptions that made dollar dominance frictionless. The freezing of Russia’s reserves in 2022 shattered the idea that reserve assets are politically neutral, prompting central banks to hedge geopolitical risk via gold, bilateral trade arrangements, and non-dollar settlement systems. The result isn’t de-dollarization as revolution, but de-dollarization as creep: a long, largely invisible process that only looks obvious once it’s mostly done.
• yxuc77 8mo ago
  Ok, now that silver fell, are you going to write another article with the opposing view? That’s how the news does it.
• datameta 8mo ago
  If Russia's economy is kept afloat after 4 years of full-scale war... Why would one year of Trump 2.0 do us in? Don't get me wrong, a whole lot of problematic actions have been taken in that time-frame but that pales in comparison to 1.25 million casualties and about the same number having left the country (and our population is almost triple theirs) on top of infrastructure destruction.
  • m000 8mo ago
    Entirely different cases. Russia never relied on the strong rouble for its economy to function. Or having unfettered access to most of the world's markets. So it had some know-how on weathering the storm. But OTOH, if Trump is erratic enough to trigger a world-wide de-dollarization trend, and close down markets that were traditionaly open (e.g. Europe), then US would be facing an unprecedented storm that would be much harder to navigate.
    • actionfromafar 8mo ago
      Have we seen any signs of any limits to erratic behaviour?
      • 0xDEAFBEAD 8mo ago
        Ever heard of the acronym 'TACO'?
• zahlman 8mo ago
  > Here’s the current price of silver. Not shown on the chart (and which couldn't have been predicted at the time of writing) is today's crash of almost 30% in that price. Speculative bubbles happen. The narrative of people losing faith in currency made no sense, because that should pump the prices of durable commodities as well, if not instead of precious metals.
  • hirako2000 8mo ago
    I don't see 30%. Maybe 12% from the very recent top, back to wherever it was just a few weeks ago.
    • zahlman 8mo ago
      https://www.kitco.com/charts/silver https://www.kitco.com/charts/silver There has been significant recovery in after-hours trading, but check out that "day's range". The low point was around 1:40 PM EST.
      • throwawaypath 8mo ago
        >There has been significant recovery in after-hours trading After hours has been flat. I think what you meant to say is it recovered a tiny bit from it's regular trading hours low. It's still down over 25% on the day.
        • zahlman 8mo ago
          I know it was recovering in the afternoon, but I didn't think it got to ~85 by the bell. Maybe I misremembered. It doesn't help that SLV is close to, but not equal to the price of 1 oz.
    • nofriend 8mo ago
      it was at 120 and now it's at 85. yes it's back to where it was a few weeks ago
      • 8mo ago
• raldi 8mo ago
  > To be honest I’m glad we are the ones getting out of that market first. Who is "we" in that sentence?
• zeckalpha 8mo ago
  A declining dollar will look like a good economy for those who think the economy is the stock market.
  • themafia 8mo ago
    Private equity and retirees with everything in a 401k.
  • gpt5 8mo ago
    This is true - all the global multinationals that essentially make the US stock market earn a good portion of their revenue in foreign currency, so their revenue and profits will increase. In addition, they are all cheaper when priced in USD, so their stock will go up regardless. This is just counting short term effect of currency devaluation. Long term there are also effects around trade balance and jobs.
    • 0xDEAFBEAD 8mo ago
      Declining USD makes US exports more competitive.
      • plasmatix 8mo ago
        One could argue that USD is a US export.
      • bootsmann 8mo ago
        Depends very much on the product, it also makes inputs more expensive to buy.
  • burnt-resistor 8mo ago
    Also, increasing billionaire wealth and burgeoning (but somewhat circular) market capitalizations of companies will seem like a good economy while real income and wealth for the bottom half of Americans keeps falling. The mainstream business media is a gaslight factory completely ignoring the ever-widening K-shaped economic reality that there's a very good economy for the highest income people and a rapidly declining/terrible economy for everyone else.
• deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
• stego-tech 8mo ago
  I can't time the market worth shit - I got my first investments out before the 2008 collapse in earnest, and got into the job market at its peak. I waited through the 2010s to accumulate money to invest, only to start doing so amidst rampant speculation in crypto, then NFTs, then meme stocks, then AI. So yeah. I am not getting a job at a financial firm anytime soon. That said, the societal gestalt seems primed for something to go horribly wrong. AI boosters are positing their models as solving all of society's ills, which first requires acknowledgement that these are in fact problems facing society requiring solutions. Everyone is broadly on the same side - wealth inequality is a problem, climate change is a problem, energy dependence is a problem, job security is a problem, housing is a problem, etc - but we're all varied on the approach to solving these problems based on personal biases and perspectives. YouTube is infested with AI slop, social media is filled with doomers and preppers, and subcultures are simultaneously splitting off from larger groups (like those leaving Twitter/X for BlueSky or Mastodon) while also forming newer alliances and communities around shared goals or ideologies. Even those in positions of power acknowledge the polycrisis before us, while exacerbating it further by firing swaths of workers to fund their own bunkers, yachts, and contingency plans via share price bumps. It's in the air, this horrid pit in the stomach that doom lingers just around the corner. It's been there for a decade, long before COVID, festering beneath the surface. Hell, for many of us pre-9/11 Americans, it's been a gradual decline since the heydays of the maximum-employment 1990s. So many of us feel it that it just cannot be ignored, and thus it becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy: enough of us believe something bad is coming, therefore something bad must happen to quell those feelings. There's two things that give me (and my OCD) solace of a sort: * We'll all find out together, regardless of status or strata * Most of us - statistically, generally, based on prior events and barring any explosive escalation - will likely be relatively fine Yeah, the shifting of geopolitics is likely to result in more violent conflicts with the potential to kill billions if things go NBC. If we don't address climate change, millions will die from wholly preventable causes and tens of trillions of dollars of property will be destroyed over the next century. Misuse of AI could result in doomsday scenarios that Sci-Fi has warned us about for decades. Wealth inequality appears poised to create a modern version of the Coal Wars, if current events are any indication. Technology alone won't save our asses. Neither will some mythical billionaire genius, or AGI deity. It'll have to be us, regular humans, rejecting the present and choosing to build a better future together. And I think we can do that.
• phendrenad2 8mo ago
  If you're going to chart-gaze, you need to have a healthy skepticism about the chart itself - is what it's measuring still meaningful? Every chart is an isolation of variables in an ocean of variables. The shark attack / ice cream sales chart will mysteriously stop working when everyone is on Ozempic and stops craving icecream! Likewise, there's a very real possibility that "inverted yield curve means recession imminent" logic only works during a particular era of USA dominance in the world, which we have thoroughly left behind. Food for thought, I hope.
• kittikitti 8mo ago
  The COVID economic depression is not accurately shown in the charts. The economy shut down for more than 2 years. Before RTO, the economy was in a depression. These charts provide indicators to what's happening on the ground. The classic indicators didn't accurately capture the Coronavirus lockdown. The economy is still growing from the quarantine lockdown. It's why we didn't see a collapse, it would have to be worse than what happened during the lockdown for the economy to be in a recession. That's not the case, and I don't see a collapse or recession for at least 3 years. For most of us, we work remotely and some people might be out of touch. Don't take this the wrong way, but people are just recently recovering from cottage syndrome. We're still in the transition period with the layoffs and AI doomerism being growing pains.
• oowahahahah 8mo ago
  "the" crash? you mean "a" crash.
• Animats 8mo ago
  Median house price / median income is at an all-time high for the US.[1] But what that means is that the rest of the country has caught up to California's overpriced housing. Hence the call for a 50-year mortgage. Still, looks a lot like the 2008 housing bubble. [1] https://www.longtermtrends.com/home-price-median-annual-income-ratio/ https://www.longtermtrends.com/home-price-median-annual-inco...
• etyhhgfff 8mo ago
  If you predict a stock market crash every year, eventually you will be right one year.
  • swordsith 8mo ago
    Today's the day!
• raincole 8mo ago
  Crash of the stock market != crash of the economy Of course the market will go down at some point.
  • IAmGraydon 8mo ago
    It's funny people still say this. The two are very much linked, as many millions of Americans have a large percentage of their net worth tied up in stocks via their 401Ks. Market tanks, net worth tanks, there's far less assets for people to borrow against, psychology changes, people stop spending, companies stop hiring, economy is now following the market.
• cjfd 8mo ago
  They say that prediction is difficult, especially when it is about the future. Unwise economic policies may be punished quickly, slowly or might be revoked before punished severely. The question is how much risk one is willing to take. Another matter is of morality. Being invested into something means supporting its practices and being partly responsible for them.
• HlessClaudesman 8mo ago
  The US was in decline, a vote for Trump was a vote to accelerate that decline.
• seydor 8mo ago
  As long as people predict a crash, things are good. It's far more dangerous when they stop doing so.
  • incompatible 8mo ago
    I would be surprised if a day went by without someone, somewhere, predicting a crash.
• hypeatei 8mo ago
  > It feels as though all we need is a spark. And yet, many sparks seem to have come and gone. Big market moves, in stocks or yields, that have recovered Yes, in a five year span we've had three 20% drawdowns in the stock market that have all recovered which is unprecedented. IMO, anyone who thinks we're going to crash and have a lost decade is not looking at the bigger picture. The Federal Reserve exists to allow the government to spend as much as possible by: - Making sure that as many people are employed as possible for as long as possible (tax base) - Making sure that prices keep going up and that the government can borrow below the rate of inflation (so they can spend even more and manage the debt) What this means is that people need to work to keep up, and that asset prices will continue to go up as people try to protect their wealth from inflation. The government also takes a cut from that via capital gains tax. Regardless, there is simply too much "free money" going around for the outlook to be bearish, IMO. I'm investing across my 401(k), Roth IRA, and brokerage accounts as usual with a little more focus on exposure to international funds this year in my retirement accounts. You should always take bearish outlooks with a grain of salt especially if they don't put their money where their mouth is and show their positions. Bears don't tend to make a lot of money over the long term: https://www.schwab.com/learn/story/does-market-timing-work https://www.schwab.com/learn/story/does-market-timing-work
  • dgb23 8mo ago
    You're missing one important feedback loop in this system: That debt is subsidized by foreign institutions, which have been slowly pulling out as they recognize that the US has been consistently consuming beyond their means. Also almost every continent has been working on circumventing the USD as the primary exchange currency in some way or another. This is reflected in the USD losing value at a higher pace, which means the debt cycle becomes unsustainable. Hopefully it will gradually managed, but that requires a large amount of political will, tax hikes and budget cuts. Very hard to do fairly and different people have extremely conflicting views on who should get poorer, because that's exactly what cuts and hikes mean. The current admin is trying to brute force a change, where they keep their cake and eat it too, but they are eroding international trust which just accelerates the issue.
  • BLKNSLVR 8mo ago
• pfdietz 8mo ago
  Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer.
• user3939382 8mo ago
  The debt clock is a proxy for the total amount of plastic we route from shipping containers -> landfills. Plastic is oil, oil is energy. Energy can be exchanged for labor globally therefore energy prices money not the other way around. It’s our civilizational bottleneck. The true cost of oil isn’t priced in to begin with and we have it bound up for 500+ years. This is creating a massive distortion in the global economy which physics will insist on regardless of monetary policy. Or we burn the oil -> heat into the atmosphere via silicon doing things like routing “wyd” texts around dozens of network devices across the country when the message doesn’t have that value. The economics of how we allocate energy makes no sense and we debate how to fix this via policy.
• aarontice 8mo ago
  3 more years, then the macroeconomic headwinds from aging millennials will be past peak earnings and rather than funding cap weighted index, they will be draining cap weighted index. 1929 silent generation decade or depression after. 1967 post war Baby boom from The Greatest Generation, followed by decade plus of stagflation and recessions. 1999, after a two decade run of the stock market going from 1000 on the Dow Jones in 1980 to 10,000 on the Dow Jones in 2000, the baby boomers born to the greatest generation, peak, earning ears, leading to the lost decade afterwards. Two decades of stock market returns from 6000 on the Dow to 60,000 on the Dow, followed by post peak millennial earnings… One does not speak unless One knows. You know nothing Jon Snow.
• christkv 8mo ago
  I find it crazy that people are so obsessed with the current administration they want the world economy to crash. I can tell you that in a current climate a complete world economy crash is going to play out very very badly politically all over the world. I have a real bad feeling it will be a replay of the 30s.
  • bthallplz 8mo ago
    I wasn't aware that there are people who want it to crash. I've just been getting the feeling that no one understands why it isn't crashing or hasn't crashed yet amidst a bunch of really destabilizing policies.
    • christkv 8mo ago
      If you are rooting for the us economy to crash you are rooting for the world economy to crash. Cutting off one's nose to spite one's face comes to mind.
      • yibg 8mo ago
        Speaking for myself, I’m not rooting for anything, let alone the us or the world economy to crash. I’m seeing the chaos and inflated prices and it’s defying my mental model of how the market works. So I guess if I’m rooting for anything, it’s reality.
• billystr 8mo ago
  Ok
• mmaunder 8mo ago
  What is different about this time is how much a crash is expected, which is reflected in the run up in the gold price, for one. It’s also reflected in the public discourse about the high probability of a crash - as with this post and many others over the past couple years. 2008 was sudden and unexpected by most. The dot com crash was sudden and unexpected by most. If we crashed today it would have been expected by most and many would make money off the crash. I’m not sure what the effects of a highly anticipated crash are, but I’d love to discuss what they might be. It’s priced into gold, which I think reflects negative dollar sentiment. It’s not priced into the VIX, which is implied volatility across the S&P. Suggesting a crash in equities is not priced in.
  • mrbluecoat 8mo ago
    The only thing that crashed yesterday was silver and gold
  • ccc3 8mo ago
    I don't think that's exactly true of dot com and '08. In both cases the developing bubbles were identified and widely discussed in the years prior to the burst. The surprise in '08 was not that there was a bubble in real estate, but rather that a massive fraction of the financial system was built on leveraging that sector. To paraphrase Buffett, you don't know who's swimming naked until the tide goes out.
  • PeterHolzwarth 8mo ago
    The dot com crash was absolutely expected - today's "cmon, get it over with! crash!" tone we see in regards to the AI bubble is hilariously reminiscent of the late 90s dot com bubble. It was the era that spawned the famous Economist leader "Crash Dammit!"
  • FrustratedMonky 8mo ago
    " different about this time is how much a crash is expected, which is reflected in the run up in the gold price" Isn't this an indicator of a coming crash, not a counter point. Doesn't Gold go up, specifically as people buy it as a hedge against a crash.
  • 8mo ago
• tejohnso 8mo ago
  Just look at TSLA and you might temper your expectations of a rational market.
  • bwfan123 8mo ago
    > you might temper your expectations of a rational market TSLA is like a snowball down a hill. It morphs from EV to autonomous driving to AI to robots to space to tera fab to space datacenters. Rolling in the next big narrative or gov handout as it speeds down the hill.
• chaostheory 8mo ago
  > People buy precious metals when they might be worried about the value of fiat currencies It’s not just people. Central banks are buying precious metals due to the dollar and new Basel rules. Gold needs to be allocated if you want it to be considered a tier 1 asset.
• kopollo 8mo ago
  If we look at it with a little imagination , this undulating, jagged line, when compared to Arabic handwriting, most closely resembles: “الله” (Allah)
• constantcrying 8mo ago
  Expecting the crash of the most important economy in the world based on two graphs, where you do chart astrology, is such an insanely stupid argument it is hard to fathom. With all these charlatans predicting imminent collapse it is always imperative to consider how strongly they believe in their revealed preferences, based on how much they have invested in their position. That said, how much money does OP have invested e.g. in shorting the S&P 500? Or any equivalent. Let me guess, zero dollars.
• deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
• harryf 8mo ago
  Google: USD CHF … set graph to max … it’s right there but it’s a slooooow rot. Swiss Franc is generally very stable so a good yard stick for other currencies over the long term
• d--b 8mo ago
  Trump is lowering interest rates, fueling the bubbles. We can’t know when it’s going to happen, but there is a good chance that one is going to be super bad. We basically borrowed our way out of the 2008 crash and through covid, but we havent repaid the debt. It is so high I doubt we can do the same next time.
• riazrizvi 8mo ago
  The argument is essentially a technical chart trade? It may as well be numerology or astrology. We are humans, finding patterns in data after the fact is what we do. Do yourself a favor, don't trade on this mumbo jumbo.
• nothrowaways 8mo ago
  Biden never got a credit for taking us out of the COVID mess. As a US citizen, I will vote to bring him back once again just to fix this mess.
• ks2048 8mo ago
  If you just do very crude pattern matching on the first chart he shows - it is warped by the (intentional?) way he drew orange overlay lines. The slope in 2024 and 2025 (the data that we already have) is much lower than the orange line drawn. Following the real visual trend, the next peak would be maybe another 5-10 years in the future. (Not that this is a good way to predict the future, as also stated in the article, "not very scientific").