4 ms·

US everything has become unappetizing for everyone outside the US.

toomuchtodo 8d ago
Exorbitant privilege is a gift that lasts only as long as the trust does. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47635834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47635834 covers this succinctly: > America was in practice running an empire that collected tribute from the rest of planet earth in exchange for entries in a database denominated in a currency they controlled and that was accepted everywhere. Really the only way it could go wrong is putting it under the control of someone who doesn't understand the kayfabe... from Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47635056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47635056 - April 2026 (250 comments)
- ProjectArcturis 8d ago
  [dead]
- rayiner 8d ago
  This argument fundamentally does not make sense. Look at a chart of U.S. GDP per capita growth: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zSCw!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fafa99d7e-749e-4e36-bf66-b4a7a043613e_2048x1249.png https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zSCw!,f_auto,q_auto:... The U.S. was growing at the same rate or faster as the UK from 1830 to 1930, when the UK had an empire and the U.S. didn’t. Then, in the second half of the 20th century when the U.S. had an empire and the UK didn’t, the growth rates were more or less the same in both places in the long run trend (ignoring the UK’s step change hit from WWII).
  - dixie_land 8d ago
    The £ was backed by UK's (perceived) military might just as $ is by the States'. The the war on Iran (and many years of war on terror) showed we have anything but
    - rtkwe 8d ago
      There are other backers to that as well. The main ones being oil trades being settled largely in USD and the need to acquire USD to pay for US goods/services. It's not all military might there's a lot of economic might in there too.
      - toomuchtodo 8d ago
        This is the important point. Oil was/is settled in dollars. The world is rapidly moving away from oil. China has already hit peak oil. China is 1/3rd of global manufacturing capacity. If you're leaving oil behind, and buying solar, batteries, and EVs from China, your need for dollars declines, and need for yuan goes up. Also, stocks vs flows. You have to keep buying oil every day from petrostates, while the clean tech you buy is yours for its entire service life (a decade or more for EVs, decades for solar and stationary battery storage). The US did well when the Saudis required dollars for oil as part of the US-Saudi security and military arrangement, and that arrangement is declining in value over time as the value of oil to the global economy declines. The US loses investors in US treasuries when folks who sold oil for dollars do not have dollars from oil sales. Shades of theta decay. China Adds Currencies to Central Clearing in Yuan's Global Push - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49736124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49736124 - September 2026 The Iran War Just Broke the Petrodollar - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-04-06/the-petrodollar-loop-supporting-the-treasury-market-is-broken https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-04-06/the-pe... | https://archive.today/RyJA8 https://archive.today/RyJA8 - April 6th, 2026 > "The petrodollar loop requires two moving parts: dollars earned and dollars invested. Both have stopped." > The standard reassurance is that there is no alternative to Treasuries — no other market offers the depth, liquidity and legal infrastructure that central banks require. This remains true. Foreign central banks will not abandon Treasuries wholesale. But “no realistic alternative” and “unquestioned safe haven” are not the same thing, and the Iran war is clarifying the difference. https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-explorer/ https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e... > As the world’s largest manufacturer of clean technologies, data on China’s cleantech exports provide an important early insight into the pace and scale of the energy transition. In 2024, China produced around 80% of the world’s solar PV modules and battery cells, and 70% of electric vehicles. (as of this comment, China is exporting EVs at a 12M unit/year annualized run rate, with the capacity to build 50M EVs/year; they are only constrained by not enough marine vessels to keep up with export demand; every 24 months of EV production destroys ~1M barrels/day of oil demand at current run rates, which continue to increase) China growth straining global auto shipping capacity - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49553327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49553327 - September 2026 (0 comments) China's Manufacturing Advantage, Explained [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49451076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49451076 | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgYKVpOsMJs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgYKVpOsMJs - August 2026 (think in systems)
  - stbede 8d ago
    Wouldn't the more relevant point of comparison be the difference between long-term government bonds. The exorbitant privilege is that it's easier to fund US government debt because trade in USD means that large institutions around the world need USD and store those dollars in the form of US treasuries, which in turn lead to lower bond rates and cheaper debt.
    - rayiner 8d ago
      What we care about at the end of the day is bottom line economic growth, specifically GDP per capita growth. Whether government debt is more or less expensive is a collateral matter. It just means you need to make different choices in taxation versus borrowing—as long as the end result is the same how does it matter?
      - toomuchtodo 8d ago
        Cost of capital is a direct input to growth (from both investment and consumption). The more expensive it is to borrow, the lower future growth is, and the cost to borrow is increasing. This means taxation must go up if you want higher potential future growth through reduced cost of capital. Bond yields go up (ie government debt)->consumer debt costs and cost of capital for business investment goes up (all consumer debt is priced off of "risk free" gov debt)->consumption slows->growth is reduced
        rayiner 8d ago
        > Cost of capital is a direct input to growth (from both investment and consumption). The more expensive it is to borrow, the lower future growth is, and the cost to borrow is increasing Right, which gets back to my point that US GDP per capita growth has been incredibly stable from 1830 to present, both before it had an empire and cheap borrowing and since it’s had an empire and cheap borrowing.
      - stbede 8d ago
        What we care about and what the exorbitant privilege is referring to can be different things.
rpdillon 8d ago
And many of us inside the US as well, tbf.
- cyanydeez 8d ago
  We're basically in some rendition of planet serenity, where 20% of the population absolutely is eating this shit up.
  - fhdkweig 8d ago
    I'm not getting the reference. Is "planet serenity" a reference to the 12-step program for addiction or the planet Miranda from the film Serenity, or something else entirely?
carefree-bob 8d ago
This is nonsense. The rest of the world holds 9.7 Trillion in Treasuries and this amount increased by $500 billion over the last year. So the opposite of this article is true. You can get all the data from the Z.1 release. Please don't take these types of flame bait articles seriously or try to spin up an entire world view based on them as you will end up not only directionally wrong, but believe in the exact opposite of reality. FYI, that $500B increase in treasury holdings is not the whole picture, there are also the agencies (housing mortage backed securities guaranteed by the govt) and foreign holdings of those also increased by $70 billion over the last year, and are about 1.5 Trillion.
- bflesch 8d ago
  Institutional investors are very slow to adapt, so I wouldn't take their continued investment as a positive signal. The sentiment shift is real, and a lot of goodwill has been spent. It's basically divide and conquer on a national scale tearing down the democratic world police and the democratic systems it supported.
  - carefree-bob 8d ago
    The point is that the entire article is wrong, factually. In terms of institutional investors and sentiment, I think you are fundamentally not understanding why the rest of the world holds US debt, it is to support running trade surpluses. That is a core economic need of much of the world, and as long as there is that need, you will see foreign government accumulation of dollar denominated assets. For some reason people either refuse to understand simple balance of payment accounting constraints or they are deeply offended by them, and want to live in a world in which moral outrage determines things like global capital flows. But we do not live in that world. The reason why the rest of the world accumulated a trillion of dollar denominated assets last year, split roughly 50/50 between private and public, is solely because China needed to run a trillion dollar trade surplus. And next year it will also need to run an even bigger surplus. That forces everything else.
    - lokar 8d ago
isodev 8d ago
Imagine, even Apple is moving itself to the shitlist.
glimshe 8d ago
[flagged]
- josefritzishere 8d ago
  [dead]
- rconti 8d ago
  No single alternative has to be better in all cases. Any diversification will end up reducing demand for treasuries. It's not a black and white issue.
gradus_ad 8d ago
There must always be a hegemon. Will it be Europe? No, too weak and divided..will it be China? No, too authoritarian.. The US remains the best option among a mixed field of weak, corrupt, divided and authoritarian alternatives.
- JumpCrisscross 8d ago
  We’re seeing a return to multilateral regional hegemony. Russia, China, India, a new Persia, Israel and Turkey duking it out in Asia. The edges of those conflicts trying to bring war back to Europe. And America getting potentially balanced by China and Europe in the Americas, with the Pacific theatre figuring out its own balancing game plan. The wild card being this will be the first time the world has entered this sort of unstable state since the invention of nuclear weapons. I expect to see a total failure of non-proliferation and the first nuclear civil war in my lifetime, if not the first nuclear war of territorial conquest. (I do not expect to see the first nuclear extermination.)
  - daymanstep 8d ago
    > America getting potentially balanced by China and Europe in the Americas I can't figure out a way to parse this sentence that makes sense. Are you saying that "Europe" will "balance" the USA in the Americas? As in, European influence will counteract US influence in the Americas?
    - JumpCrisscross 8d ago
      > European influence will counteract US influence in the Americas? Yes. If you’re Canada or Mexico or frankly anyone else in the Americas, you probably don’t want all your weapons systems to be dependant on American supply chains. And then if you think about it, you probably don’t want all your energy imports dependent on Washington’s noblesse. Et cetera. American exceptionalism was built on the trust the world put in us getting so unilaterally powerful without being balanced.
    - nostrademons 8d ago
      Would assume it's in reference to things like the EU offering associate membership to Canada, or China's trade deals with Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, etc.
qwerpy 8d ago
On the bright side, if enough people agree with this, I could finally buy a house in my neighborhood for <$3M. Prices remain stubbornly high and no amount of "America sucks" on HN and reddit are convincing these (mostly foreign, wealthy) people to sell their houses :(
jopsen 8d ago
Yes, but if you happen to have a few million spare dollars laying around that have become unappetizing to you, it won't be hard to find someone who thinks they are appetizing :)

Exorbitant privilege is a gift that lasts only as long as the trust does. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47635834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47635834 covers this succinctly: > America was in practice running an empire that collected tribute from the rest of planet earth in exchange for entries in a database denominated in a currency they controlled and that was accepted everywhere. Really the only way it could go wrong is putting it under the control of someone who doesn't understand the kayfabe... from Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47635056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47635056 - April 2026 (250 comments)

ProjectArcturis 8d ago
[dead]
rayiner 8d ago
This argument fundamentally does not make sense. Look at a chart of U.S. GDP per capita growth: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zSCw!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fafa99d7e-749e-4e36-bf66-b4a7a043613e_2048x1249.png https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zSCw!,f_auto,q_auto:... The U.S. was growing at the same rate or faster as the UK from 1830 to 1930, when the UK had an empire and the U.S. didn’t. Then, in the second half of the 20th century when the U.S. had an empire and the UK didn’t, the growth rates were more or less the same in both places in the long run trend (ignoring the UK’s step change hit from WWII).
- dixie_land 8d ago
  The £ was backed by UK's (perceived) military might just as $ is by the States'. The the war on Iran (and many years of war on terror) showed we have anything but
  - rtkwe 8d ago
    There are other backers to that as well. The main ones being oil trades being settled largely in USD and the need to acquire USD to pay for US goods/services. It's not all military might there's a lot of economic might in there too.
    - toomuchtodo 8d ago
      This is the important point. Oil was/is settled in dollars. The world is rapidly moving away from oil. China has already hit peak oil. China is 1/3rd of global manufacturing capacity. If you're leaving oil behind, and buying solar, batteries, and EVs from China, your need for dollars declines, and need for yuan goes up. Also, stocks vs flows. You have to keep buying oil every day from petrostates, while the clean tech you buy is yours for its entire service life (a decade or more for EVs, decades for solar and stationary battery storage). The US did well when the Saudis required dollars for oil as part of the US-Saudi security and military arrangement, and that arrangement is declining in value over time as the value of oil to the global economy declines. The US loses investors in US treasuries when folks who sold oil for dollars do not have dollars from oil sales. Shades of theta decay. China Adds Currencies to Central Clearing in Yuan's Global Push - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49736124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49736124 - September 2026 The Iran War Just Broke the Petrodollar - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-04-06/the-petrodollar-loop-supporting-the-treasury-market-is-broken https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-04-06/the-pe... | https://archive.today/RyJA8 https://archive.today/RyJA8 - April 6th, 2026 > "The petrodollar loop requires two moving parts: dollars earned and dollars invested. Both have stopped." > The standard reassurance is that there is no alternative to Treasuries — no other market offers the depth, liquidity and legal infrastructure that central banks require. This remains true. Foreign central banks will not abandon Treasuries wholesale. But “no realistic alternative” and “unquestioned safe haven” are not the same thing, and the Iran war is clarifying the difference. https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-explorer/ https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e... > As the world’s largest manufacturer of clean technologies, data on China’s cleantech exports provide an important early insight into the pace and scale of the energy transition. In 2024, China produced around 80% of the world’s solar PV modules and battery cells, and 70% of electric vehicles. (as of this comment, China is exporting EVs at a 12M unit/year annualized run rate, with the capacity to build 50M EVs/year; they are only constrained by not enough marine vessels to keep up with export demand; every 24 months of EV production destroys ~1M barrels/day of oil demand at current run rates, which continue to increase) China growth straining global auto shipping capacity - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49553327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49553327 - September 2026 (0 comments) China's Manufacturing Advantage, Explained [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49451076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49451076 | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgYKVpOsMJs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgYKVpOsMJs - August 2026 (think in systems)
- stbede 8d ago
  Wouldn't the more relevant point of comparison be the difference between long-term government bonds. The exorbitant privilege is that it's easier to fund US government debt because trade in USD means that large institutions around the world need USD and store those dollars in the form of US treasuries, which in turn lead to lower bond rates and cheaper debt.
  - rayiner 8d ago
    What we care about at the end of the day is bottom line economic growth, specifically GDP per capita growth. Whether government debt is more or less expensive is a collateral matter. It just means you need to make different choices in taxation versus borrowing—as long as the end result is the same how does it matter?
    - toomuchtodo 8d ago
      Cost of capital is a direct input to growth (from both investment and consumption). The more expensive it is to borrow, the lower future growth is, and the cost to borrow is increasing. This means taxation must go up if you want higher potential future growth through reduced cost of capital. Bond yields go up (ie government debt)->consumer debt costs and cost of capital for business investment goes up (all consumer debt is priced off of "risk free" gov debt)->consumption slows->growth is reduced
      - rayiner 8d ago
        > Cost of capital is a direct input to growth (from both investment and consumption). The more expensive it is to borrow, the lower future growth is, and the cost to borrow is increasing Right, which gets back to my point that US GDP per capita growth has been incredibly stable from 1830 to present, both before it had an empire and cheap borrowing and since it’s had an empire and cheap borrowing.
    - stbede 8d ago
      What we care about and what the exorbitant privilege is referring to can be different things.

rpdillon 8d ago

And many of us inside the US as well, tbf.

cyanydeez 8d ago
We're basically in some rendition of planet serenity, where 20% of the population absolutely is eating this shit up.
- fhdkweig 8d ago
  I'm not getting the reference. Is "planet serenity" a reference to the 12-step program for addiction or the planet Miranda from the film Serenity, or something else entirely?

carefree-bob 8d ago

This is nonsense. The rest of the world holds 9.7 Trillion in Treasuries and this amount increased by $500 billion over the last year. So the opposite of this article is true. You can get all the data from the Z.1 release. Please don't take these types of flame bait articles seriously or try to spin up an entire world view based on them as you will end up not only directionally wrong, but believe in the exact opposite of reality. FYI, that $500B increase in treasury holdings is not the whole picture, there are also the agencies (housing mortage backed securities guaranteed by the govt) and foreign holdings of those also increased by $70 billion over the last year, and are about 1.5 Trillion.

bflesch 8d ago
Institutional investors are very slow to adapt, so I wouldn't take their continued investment as a positive signal. The sentiment shift is real, and a lot of goodwill has been spent. It's basically divide and conquer on a national scale tearing down the democratic world police and the democratic systems it supported.
- carefree-bob 8d ago
  The point is that the entire article is wrong, factually. In terms of institutional investors and sentiment, I think you are fundamentally not understanding why the rest of the world holds US debt, it is to support running trade surpluses. That is a core economic need of much of the world, and as long as there is that need, you will see foreign government accumulation of dollar denominated assets. For some reason people either refuse to understand simple balance of payment accounting constraints or they are deeply offended by them, and want to live in a world in which moral outrage determines things like global capital flows. But we do not live in that world. The reason why the rest of the world accumulated a trillion of dollar denominated assets last year, split roughly 50/50 between private and public, is solely because China needed to run a trillion dollar trade surplus. And next year it will also need to run an even bigger surplus. That forces everything else.
  - lokar 8d ago

isodev 8d ago

Imagine, even Apple is moving itself to the shitlist.

glimshe 8d ago

[flagged]

josefritzishere 8d ago
[dead]
rconti 8d ago
No single alternative has to be better in all cases. Any diversification will end up reducing demand for treasuries. It's not a black and white issue.

gradus_ad 8d ago

There must always be a hegemon. Will it be Europe? No, too weak and divided..will it be China? No, too authoritarian.. The US remains the best option among a mixed field of weak, corrupt, divided and authoritarian alternatives.

JumpCrisscross 8d ago
We’re seeing a return to multilateral regional hegemony. Russia, China, India, a new Persia, Israel and Turkey duking it out in Asia. The edges of those conflicts trying to bring war back to Europe. And America getting potentially balanced by China and Europe in the Americas, with the Pacific theatre figuring out its own balancing game plan. The wild card being this will be the first time the world has entered this sort of unstable state since the invention of nuclear weapons. I expect to see a total failure of non-proliferation and the first nuclear civil war in my lifetime, if not the first nuclear war of territorial conquest. (I do not expect to see the first nuclear extermination.)
- daymanstep 8d ago
  > America getting potentially balanced by China and Europe in the Americas I can't figure out a way to parse this sentence that makes sense. Are you saying that "Europe" will "balance" the USA in the Americas? As in, European influence will counteract US influence in the Americas?
  - JumpCrisscross 8d ago
    > European influence will counteract US influence in the Americas? Yes. If you’re Canada or Mexico or frankly anyone else in the Americas, you probably don’t want all your weapons systems to be dependant on American supply chains. And then if you think about it, you probably don’t want all your energy imports dependent on Washington’s noblesse. Et cetera. American exceptionalism was built on the trust the world put in us getting so unilaterally powerful without being balanced.
  - nostrademons 8d ago
    Would assume it's in reference to things like the EU offering associate membership to Canada, or China's trade deals with Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, etc.

qwerpy 8d ago

On the bright side, if enough people agree with this, I could finally buy a house in my neighborhood for <$3M. Prices remain stubbornly high and no amount of "America sucks" on HN and reddit are convincing these (mostly foreign, wealthy) people to sell their houses :(

jopsen 8d ago

Yes, but if you happen to have a few million spare dollars laying around that have become unappetizing to you, it won't be hard to find someone who thinks they are appetizing :)