Originally posted by: Evan
China is set to make a ton of money from this, they're not worried about the U.S. going bankrupt and neither should anyone who is sane.
They're not worried about a formal default, they're worried about us inflating away our debt obligations to them now and in the future. Seeing as how 0% of the trillions we are asking them for are going towards reducing our trade deficit with exportable production, there is every reason to be worried about continued and expanded purchase of our treasuries.
One worried comment from the Chinese doesn't exactly prove they're about to dump T-bills, mostly because it would be incredibly stupid for their economic growth prospects, which they still want to keep at 8% this year. They don't benefit from it. So despite the fact that you think "products" are always better than "paper" (as if that layman shit is relevant),
Irrelevant? Irrelevant? That's the whole fucking point of trade. An unbacked dollar is an IOU, it is a supposed placeholder for a future product. If we are showing no signs of ever creating an exportable product, of what value to the Chinese worker is continuing to accumulate them? Trillions of paper promises that stay promises does a Chinese laborer no good at all. They'd be far better off consuming their own production or loaning it to a country that produces something they lack.
fact is that deficit spending has its place and always will, it has been part of the American way of life since we first borrowed millions from the French/Netherlands during the Revolution, with the whole country as collateral. Deficits will hopefully get under control and we'll be back to a more responsible debt load in the future.
Deficits is not a black/white thing, there is a huge disparity between what we did then and now with the borrowed money. Historically, we always borrowed to PRODUCE, now we borrow mostly to CONSUME, and our "growth" has become a function of how much debt we can increasingly incur to consume. If everyone borrowed to consume, there would eventually be mass poverty, we can't all ride in the cart, someone has to push it. You are so unbelievably brainwashed, you don't even understand that money's purpose is to better facilitate the exchange of goods. Goods. Goods. Goods. Beat it through your head, that's what ultimately makes money important, ease of exchanging goods. To the extent that money facilitates that, that's what makes money important. Gold is better than paper because it can't be conjured into existence by an issuer, all gold is guaranteed to be backed by the labor and materials required to obtain it,
just like the products whose trade it is facilitating.
Except you have no independent monetary policy with a fixed exchange rate, whether it's to gold or another nation's currency.
What is that supposed to mean? No one in international trade can substitute promises for products in perpetuity when money is based on a product? Wow, what a horrible, terrible thing.
History shows this conclusively, specifically with ridiculous and unnecessarily painful recession/depression like we saw in 1921 (20% unemployment and the highest deflation in U.S. history)
The 1921 bust was caused by an inflationary bubble that preceded it due to WWI. Many countries went off gold to finance the war, which wouldn't have gone on so long if international players had accepted the debt currency in place of it. Subsequently, there was mass repudiation of debt obligations as countries began devaluing and leaving the standard completely. The great inflation of 1921-1930 by Fed Chairman Strong was an idiotic decision to prop up the devalued Pound, leading to a large bubble whose bust was not allowed to play out like the 1921 bust, or else it would have lasted a mere 2 years as well. Prior to the Great Depression, there was little government interference and they were not allowed to draw out the misery by thinking it could help, the market always delivered the shortest correction possible.
and again in most of the 30's, with 15%-25% unemployment and near record deflation.
The natural consequence of inflation that preceded it. Recurring theme: when gold "fails" countries are printing way more notes than they have gold to back them.
Layman excuses about how the Fed caused those disasters don't fly (since they're not actually true), but plenty of other examples abound, specifically the 1907 run on banks, the worst run in U.S. history, 6 years before the Fed was created.
Fractional Reserve banking sucks and creates runs, it's just fraud on the private level. When you create redeemable notes for which no metal exists and loan it out at interest, you are no longer solvent, and that insolvency can be exposed through runs. I agree with you, it definitely creates disasters to allow this practice in the banking industry and it should have been stopped instead of backstopped.
Investment per capita now, even in a severe recession dwarfs any other period of equity investment in U.S. history before the 60's because no one had any confidence in the stability of the market place.
This has nothing to do with anything. Confidence is a bad thing when it is put into the incorrect activity. Madoff's victims were supremely confident and it was stable for 20 years. It's a meaningless attribute, what matters is how prosperous we are and whether or not we are sacrificing future prosperity in order to achieve it.
As it turns out, equity has consistently returned 6.5% compounded annually since 1802, so their confidence wasn't necessarily well placed in some respects. Of course, you're the same guy that didn't know what compound interest was until I told him last week.
I know what compound interest is and it takes effect on the current principal, not on the principal at the beginning. If you pick the wrong stocks or the wrong buy and sell time in these inflationist bubbles of ours, compound interest won't fucking matter because the principal will get wiped out. It's incredibly easy for you to pick an interval in hindsight. And as the world's largest debtor nation, compound interest works against us, we service those debts through future taxes and inflation. To the extent that people have no additional money from wage debasement to even invest because of this should concern you, but it doesn't.