Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries(reuters.com) |
Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries(reuters.com) |
Last year, AkademikerPension had a return between 3 and 6 percent, which is lower than other Danish pension funds[2].
[1] https://akademikerpension.dk/nyheder/vi-ekskluderer-tesla/ (Danish)
[2] https://akademikerpension.dk/nyheder/afkast-mellem-3-og-6-pr... (Danish)
I moved my mails from M365 to a 2€ Hetzner cloud server in one day, it's quite easy with docker-compose apps like mailcow. Plus you have encryption and less errors when using thunderbird.
"The reason for the sales is an increased risk linked to the US's more unpredictable policies under Trump's leadership, says asset management manager Pablo Bernengo. Alecta assesses that the risk in US government bonds and the dollar has increased at the same time as the country suffers from large budget deficits and a growing national debt."
Just impeach the guy already. His mental capabilities aren’t far off Biden’s at the end.
“You are already not respecting your obligations” is rich from a guy with a Dutch phone number. You have some split personality right there. Make your mind up about where you are.
The whole situation is been caused by a single guy and 400 enablers, whereas the US is a 400 million people country.
The correct form of reaction is a punch in the face during a bilateral meeting, Zelensky came close to doing it but unfortunately he resisted his impulse , that's where the epicenter of all newly generated global problems in the last 10 years lies, in that octogenarian brian of his.
In reality that one man is backed by half of the US voters, the Republican Party a lot of rich and powerful people, a clear majority of the police forces and an unknown part of the US military.
False. People who say this don’t know that a large percentage of Americans don’t care to vote.
Also, them having elected Trump TWICE, why would they ever be trusted ?
Also when the alternatives are people like.. Hilary Clinton ?
Would she have been worse than this?
And the US had a better choice the second time.
- 9/11
- Iraq War
- Covid
The US did recover a bit deficit-wise in Obama years, but have not reset the fiscal picture from Covid.
The US imports a lot from Mexico, 15.5% of the total $3.36 trillion of US import, right here in the Americas. The EU about imports are about 18.5%.
Merz's mother-of-all-deals needs to have India lower its imposed tariffs on Germany of 100-150% on autos, which would cut against India if the new FTA goes through by Q2 2026.
May you live in interesting times is a wish or curse coming to fruition...
If this pace keeps up for 10 years I don’t see how methane will be useful in the energy sector. Let’s face it, we’re investing in a dying industry. In 20 years our kids (or grandkids) will laugh at any country burning methane to make electricity.
38% for Harris, 39% for Trump. Larger number wins. The other 23% who did not vote are null choice and could have made a difference.
I'm assuming you're from outside the US, because literally everyone in the US is well-acquainted with MAGA wearing shirts like "better Russian than a Democrat"
All of these people folded immediately when a fat TV retard won. I’ve seen them literally call for the nationalization of private companies that act contrary to Trumps desires in the last couple of years.
Like Keir Starmer has in the UK. He got elected for saying nothing too. Country didn't get much worse. Maybe we should have 5 years off changes now and then?
But as you say, was there a worse option? It’s hard to find it.
It's all a sliding slope until it reaches a breaking point and falls off like a cliff.
EDIT: to quote the Canadian PN earlier today:
“American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, a stable financial system... this bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition... recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as a weapon. Tariffs as leverage ..."
It's not. This is where the financial rubber meets the road, actions have consequences, and the rest of the world is looking at the US as increasingly unlikely to pay above inflation on its debts.
The people managing the pension funds (if they are acting in good faith) really want to generate yield, and really want to preserve capital for the Danish people. They don't want to symbolically do those things, they want to actually do them. If treasuries were still part of what they believe to be the best strategy, they would still be holding them.
This is shoehorning. We’re threatening to go to war with Denmark. You don’t want to be owed money by folks who are attacking you.
This is $100M. No one will notice it.
Be a bit realistic here.
Maybe you have no skin in the game, so you can be idealistic.
Inflation may spirale, but it's going to be a US citizens problems (as well as US bond holders) in terms of inflation and budget cuts.
Treasuries are not the best way to do this. Almost any investment is better than yeeting a substantial portion of your net worth into Treasuries or a savings account.
> really want to preserve capital
Fiat currency, or bonds that promise payouts in fiat currency, are excellent for short-term capital preservation and terrible for long-term capital preservation, as every government that uses fiat currency has succumbed to the temptation to print more of it whenever it seems expedient.
Gold or Bitcoins are far better for preservation of capital.
There an interesting analysis on whether the EUs threats on financial markets actually bear any meaning here:
https://x.com/Kathleen_Tyson_/status/2013314168250675456
Edit: March 2022 peace deal that Boris Johnson sabotaged
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/15/world/europe/...
But in the last month, the U.S. President has pushed for a criminal investigation of the Fed chair because he isn’t doing what the U.S. President is asking, has threatened to start a war of conquest against a NATO ally, has simultaneously said increased taxes on imports will reduce the deficit but also that he will distribute it all away, has used import taxes as a geopolitical weapon, has said he runs Venezuela and one of the first things he’s done is injected the US government ahead of all other creditors.
All of this in the first few weeks of 2026. And every one of these actions destroy the very basis of why the world has confidence in the finances of the U.S. govt.
> AkademikerPension has in total 164 billion Danish crowns ($25.74 billion)
So they are moving about 0.4% of their investment.
Not pure symbolism, but $100 million is really nothing when we're talking about US treasuries. In the past decade, China has reduced their holding by about $600B.
The US isn't going to passively give up its hold on the world order. You don't think this would trigger a world war?
And if / when the US does topple (whether in 10 years or in 1000 years), at the moment it looks like the only viable next leaders in the world order are autocratic dictatorships.
How is this a best scenario from a global perspective?
Which is exactly what this administration is doing. What do you expect to happen when the POTUS and DOJ overtly pressure the sitting Chairman of the Federal Reserve to cut Fed Funds rates and print more money, thus creating more inflation in direct violation of a crystal-clear Congressional mandate? Do you think that's good for the U.S. as a destination for safe assets, or a "reserve currency"?
Do you remember the situation that precipitated the Nazi takeover of Germany? Wasn't it hyperinflation and economic collapse? And you think it would be a good idea to push the US further in that direction?
You'll get worse, not better.
> A new civil war that drives the US to fragment into several independent regions over the course of the next ~five years would kind of be the best scenario from a global perspective.
Are you serious? That's an utterly insane idea. The best scenario from a global perspective is the US regains its stability. Europe is in no position to defend itself militarily, it relies on US support via NATO. I believe similar is true of Japan and other countries. A US civil war would only help Russia and China (Russia would gobble up Ukraine and who knows what else, China would take Taiwan and dominate/subjugate the rest of Asia, like Japan, in some fashion that non-Chinese nations wouldn't be happy with).
Also US polarization isn't regional (e.g. a big part is urban/rural). There's no "fragmentation into independent regions" that would really solve the problem.
I really don't understand why people keep saying that despite the fact that Stephen Miran, Trump economic advisor, made it an explicit goal to devalue the dollar:
> The root of the economic imbalances lies in persistent dollar overvaluation that prevents the balancing of international trade
https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/rese...
They want the dollar's value to go down. You don't make someone change course by doing what they want as a punishment.
"How did you go bankrupt?"
"Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
* https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/102579-how-did-you-go-bankr...
[0] - https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3316875/ch...
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-russia-discuss-ukr...
[2] - https://fddi.fudan.edu.cn/_t2515/57/f8/c21257a743416/page.ht...
It's hard to see any country wanting to get into conventional war with China, regardless of size of army and airforce - even the US is not going to do it unless actually attacked. At the end of the day if China seizes Taiwan (something Trump has made more likely by his seizing of Venezuala, now talking about Greenland, Cuba ..), then the US will just complain, create trade sanctions and/or tarrifs etc.
Macron has also said that he wants no part of Trump's (billion dollar entrance fee) "peace board" that he's going to be pushing at Davos.
A divorce from the USA would certainly hurt Europe, but it will also hurt the USA and it's ability to defend itself if it loses access to European intelligence and ability to have forward located military bases and refueling locations.
The Republican's are really shooting themselves, and the US, in the foot here by not standing up to Trump and therefore indicating that all this craziness is Trump rather than an enduring US policy that they support. Even if they flip flop when Trump is out of office, the rest of the world is never going to trust the US again.
On the one hand I do want someone (or a group of someones) to stick it to the US and "teach it a lesson". I see the US as a bully, and I want to see the bully get punched in the nose.
On the other, I don't wish harm to the US (mostly the people). Also because the US backed against a corner can have potentially devastating consequences for the rest of the world.
Ah no... this is people's money, and they likely came to conclusion the US bonds are inconsistent with the funds goals and risk appetite. Within the first few paragraphs of the article you see this:
> The decision is rooted in the poor U.S. government finances, which make us think that we need to make an effort to find an alternative way of conducting our liquidity and risk management
If you're dealing with peoples pensions, even if there are higher growth portion of the funds allocation, you've got to make sure there are portions of the fund that's stable enough to be regularly liquidated to send out regular payments.
Given the whole hoo-ha with trump trying appoint their own guy into the federal reserve, it isn't that surprising the fund managers have decided to decrease their allocation.
It might very well be that the USA will face a period of high inflation soon if we continue down this path of high government spending and no independent central bank to put a break on it.
And I can't even understand why this obsession of lowering interest rates in the USA. The economy is doing great, there's no shortage of investment money going around. There's really no reason to lower in the interest rates before we tackle the leftover inflation that still comes from the COVID measures.
It's Trump's personal insecurities playing again and not allowing anyone to tell him "no". What a child.
You have to understand how much the middle and lower classes can become addicted to cheap lines of credit made accessible to them.
Quebec is famous for the "Quebec Special". Cars with manual everything. No AC. Manual windows. Completely stripped down to be as affordable/disposable as possible. Also the roads are absolute shit, they never wash off the salt, there used to be no inspections and title-washing is common practice there.
So does the U.S.
It’s not. If we go to war with Denmark, there is a real chance we sanction them as well.
--Ernest Hemingway
Would it be a gradual decline or a step change after some point?
Maybe I overreact, but what a change of opinion from my grandad who saw the US land in Normandy... This credit we gave them is running out and I'd rather have a cold calculating dictator that tells me the population is too stupid to vote (common feeling in China) than an unstable mercurial dictator whining he didn't get a pretty prize.
And if Trump wants to talk about boats 500 years ago, how long does he think we've been in friendly contact with Russia and China ?
But doing that would undermine Euro's credibility, as the EU is a loose union of countries with their distinct interests and politics, also member countries would compete on outspending each other as the Euro would have been essentially free money, a Euro debt crisis on turbocharge.
So, the EU can never print like the US. The EU and China will be rivals.
The better move would be to invest internally. China wants a hegemony, whether they acknowledge it out loud or not. As Europe and Canada start seeking Chinese investment, the Chinese will seek something in return. They're not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts.
I'd also like to think that the American/Western investment in places like China and Russia are part of how we got to where we're at now. It became apparent for Western capital that human rights aren't necessarily compatible with economic growth and can even run contrary to it. Eventually that mindset permeates a society, and it has in the US. A large plurality of the population thinks that a billionaire strongman is necessary to remain competitive in the global marketplace. This mindset didn't show up overnight, it was a slow burn.
Some of it was fueled by the demographic transitions of the last fifty years, some by American economic anxiety - which was caused by American/Western investment in China - and the rest of the West has the same problems in those departments that the US has to one extent or another. The European/Canadian welfare state that provided protection from some of the economic anxiety that was seen in the US must get its funding from somewhere, and you get it from taxing economic expansion. Economic expansion relies on at least some population growth. Right now, you don't see native population growth in most Western countries. They have to have people immigrate in to stay competitive. In pretty much all of these countries, you've seen at least some friction between the "native" population and immigrants. You'll see more of that in the future, and that's how the Canadian/European Trump will show up. Doubly so in Europe, because their nation-states are partially defined in terms of ethnicity.
of course they aren't but it's also obvious what they want. Design a new global order where they have a seat at the table and get to determine standards, processes and technologies. That's the point of investing in telecommunications, cars, and so on. But what they don't want is annex European territory.
China is still ambitious enough to imagine itself as creating new international orders rather than just creating disorder, and so they'll likely make for a better partner for any civilized country than powers that descend into 19th century colonial neo-imperialism run by people who may as well come straight out of the Warhammer universe.
In the Canadian example at least the deal is signed. It's not just words.
> Chinese are our adversaries
Increasingly the US is a European adversary. They are literally threatening to invade the territory of a European country! China isn't doing that.
Very easy to dismiss it as the rantings of a madman but no-one is holding him back. People didn't take the tariff bluster seriously and then it became very real.
Whereas I remember multiple times our allies pillaging and colonizing the country.
Not a fan of their espionage, lack of IP respect and human rights record (albeit we should also look at ourselves on the last one as well). But those are things that could've been challenged diplomatically through economical levers imho.
The only reason China suddenly became the enemy is because their GDP growth put them as the world's biggest economy in few decades and Washington wasn't happy with this.
The further we get away from that being true, the more precarious things become.
Edit: Yes, I am being sarcastic.
Is that a lot? Seems relatively inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but perhaps a warning of larger moves to come.
Mind you I'm a small investor (my portfolio is 100k-ish euros). I'm still exposed to US securities through ETFs though, as I have 3 different ones holding US companies, but that I ain't gonna sell them.
But for new capital I may as well provide it to others.
When you consider that historically our US fiat has been 65:1 (Au:Ag), it's scary to see the ratio back around the levels when Bretton Woods was implemented (50:1, 1930s-1960s). It's even scarier to see the rapid rate we are approaching to-when USD was gold-backed (22:1), considering that less than two years ago it was over 100:1 .
----
What else is a fiat-based country supposed to do after creating all these unfunded pensions/liabilities ?— ¡¿..then to inflate away the guaranteed difference..?!
Without the G7 piling up dollars, there is no American exceptionalism.
Europe could apply all the same sanctions to the US that it has applied to Russia and Trump would still serve out his full term.
But that's just American hedge funds playing in an unregulated country so you could call that domestic as well
Nobody is reducing spending and delivery continues to go down.
“I’m a real estate developer, I look at a corner, I say, ‘I’ve got to get that store for the building that I’m building,’ etc. It’s not that different. I love maps. And I always said: ‘Look at the size of this. It’s massive. That should be part of the United States.’”
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/20/us/politics/trump-greenla...
VIU: Vanguard FTSE Developed All Cap ex N Amer Idx ETF
Hopefully they'll sell off their Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, and other US equity holdings too. Part of the reason US equities are so expensive is massive foreign inflows. Foreign divestment of US equities would mean more Americans could buy them up cheap.
Regularly claimed to be the worlds largest stock market investor.
"The fund is the largest single owner in the world’s stock markets, owning almost 1.5 percent of all shares in the world’s listed companies."
https://www.nbim.no/en/about-us/norges-bank-investment-manag...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...
https://scanx.trade/stock-market-news/global/swedish-pension...
Not a political decision. Still a bad sign for the US, but not really unexpected.
The Roosevelt Corollary stated likewise the US would police any Latin American country's mismanagement.
Yet, all these people are proclaiming a certain person a warmonger instead of completely in line with historical US policy.
"The fund’s managers stressed that the decision was not a reaction to America’s territorial threats to Greenland, a Danish territory, but a judgment on Washington’s rampant overspending.
The fund is certainly not ditching American stocks, which make up 60% of its holdings of listed equity. Its private-equity assets tilt similarly heavily to America. Of its high-yield bonds, American issuers account for an even larger share, almost 80%."
and
"Despite the Danish sale, foreigners own more American government bonds than ever."
and
"Even after the s&p 500 slid by 2% on January 20th, following another tariff threat from Donald Trump over Greenland (since withdrawn), American assets continue to attract investors."
I'm sure he does.
But only a fool would piss off the Chinese.
Both in Macron's own country and his region, there will be hundreds of companies who are already cut-off from Russia, Africa, Middle-East and Central Asia due to geopolitics. China doesn't care and is busy selling there.
So what's left is the remainder of Asia, which is China's home turf where they are already ultra-competitive as they have the geographic advantage.
And of course there will be companies in Macron's country and region using Chinese manufacturing or otherwise engaged in Chinese JVs to get access to sell to the Chinese market.
So for Macron to go full-Trump on China would be a textbook case of cutting your nose to spite your face. The Chinese are masters at playing the long game and the West needs to be careful about knee-jerk short-termism actions.
All the people complaining about "US Debt" and $26T of "net investment" or whatever don't realize that this is/was the benefit of the US being stable, strong, and friendly.
When the US is unstable, weak, and a bully, as it is now, all that goes away. The bill comes due, and the US will pay dearly. The rest of the world will pay nothing.
And which is harder? Bringing back production to satiate domestic demand or increasing domestic demand? Historically, demand deficiency is much harder to restore.
Just because the US changes political direction, that doesn't equate to instability. Its aims are changing, like it or not, good or bad. The US deciding it wants Greenland is not a proof of instability, it's a change in the strategic goals held by the people controlling the superpower.
And the US is at a high level of strength, not weakness. Its large corporations hold sway over the globe in a manner the likes of which has never been seen before in modern history. Its military has force projection to nearly every point on the globe, with hundreds of global military bases. Its national wealth is at an all-time high. Its stock markets are at all-time highs. Its median income is at an all-time high. Its median disposable income is at an all-time high. Its housing wealth is at an all-time high.
Nazis did it in Germany. They lost parliamentary seats in the November 1932 election, but remained the largest party with 33% of seats. The next year the country was already a dictatorship.
Communists did it in Czhechoslovakia in 1948. They led a coalition government but had just lost the previous election.
I'm worried that United States 2027 will be added to this list. If MAGA sees their grip on power starting to fade after November elections, they may try increasingly extreme measures.
Most of the US borrowing is domestic, very little of it is now foreign. No foreign entity can afford to absorb $2 trillion of new paper every year. That's equal to the total holdings of China + Japan. Going forward you might as well regard all US Govt borrowing as domestic, as that will essentially be the case given the scale. The UK holds $885b of treasuries, what are they going to buy annually that will make a difference at this point?
Every nation has a limitless ability to borrow internally via currency debasement, with obvious consequences. That USD debasement is why gold has gone up 10x in 20 years when priced in dollars. It's why healthcare and housing is so expensive - when priced in dollars. Cash pushed into gold in 2005, $100k, would now buy you a million dollar house. It's the dollar of course that has been hammered (among other currencies, the Euro has not done well against gold either).
The US won't stop being able to debase its currency and buy its own debt. What the US is doing is eating its hand. If it continues to get worse, it moves on to eating its arm, and so on (the US is de facto consuming its national wealth through stealth confiscation via currency destruction, rather than paying the bills with taxation directly).
Mechanically, "they" being sovereign banks serve as price-insensitive marginal buyers that close treasury auctions regardless of price because they buy treasury for storage/liquidity. VS domestic buyers (hedgefund insurance), who are price sensitive = raise rates to attract discriminate buyers who buy for yield/valuation = worse debt servicing = faster debasing. Foreign sovereign buyers still play governor role in making sure domestic buyers get a shit none-market deal, i.e. US gov gets a good deal which moderates velocity of debasing. Of course past certain level of debt brrrting, the ability for sovereign buyers to absorb is compromised, in which case it makes sense for US to fuck foreign buyers over and inflate away as much debt as possible while still reserve currency - US can inflate/soft default faster than world can unwind. And TBH US will probably be "fine" as long as US can still gunboat diplomacy. If can't be banker anymore, be the mob boss.
Suppose these guys sell 10% of the daily trading volume. How do the traders in the market react? One possibility: Buy at current prices. Another: Speculate that there'll be more sales and the price will drop by a couple of per cent in the coming days/weeks, and delay their buying in order to buy the dip.
I'm sure the Americans have laid plans for how to avoid a major Oops.
I can't find the program name at the moment, but the Treasury plans for situations like this regularly.
For attacking allies?
I know that’s not what you meant but we must be pushing up against scenarios that haven’t been considered possible.
how about at the companies that supply that grocery store?
and so on up the chain.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-18/foreign-h... | https://archive.today/4pfum
So a drop in the bucket, but we’ll have to see if it’s a domino.
So we need a better metric to evaluate this against. If we look at recent auctions, they typically move around 35-40 billion in 10 year notes and about 25-30 billion in 30 year notes. With the rest being short term.
In 2025, the Treasury issued $30 trillion total over 400 auctions.
So yes, $100MM is not a lot, but it's still three or so auctions worth of bonds. There's also the downstream impacts of this, as the Netherlands is likely no longer buying t-bonds in any form. And this is just one country.
Rounding error on a global scale.
https://ticdata.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-cent...
For the USA - massive inflation. All of those dollars are coming back home, which will weaken the dollar.
Plus, there's the second-order effects from a president taking control of the fed by trumping up charges on its members. So high inflation + low/zero/negative interest rates.
It is not necessarily a question of "takes its place", but more about being more serious about diversification. Or to paraphrase the old IBM saying "nobody got fired for buying USD" is no longer the case.
In terms of options you have JPY, EUR and CNY as the big-three and maybe tag AUD on top.
I guess AUD has higher GDP (but much lower GDP per capita and worse forex rate to the us dollar)
Anybody who can (EU, Yuan) does not want to. Primairly because as export based economies, they want a weak currency in relation to a strong reserve (dollar) so they can make their goods more competitive, and also because surplus naturally appreciates a currency without central bank intervention via buying US treasuries to offset the appreciation. And for China, they're not going to accept the liberalized capital controls neede for it either.
So the answer is if the US dollars fail it would be global economic collapse and then chaos, but contrary to the rhetoric the rest of the world's economic systems are too uniquely vested in the USD to see it fail. As for gold, well we come to the same problem as noted above but worse, and in that situation the US actually holds the highest gold reserves so they still benefit the most out of it.
In the past it made things easier for everybody to use the same currency, but is that still the case with modern electronic transactions?
Maybe it splinters into Euro, BRICS, and USD?
Now that we really do have a destructive realignment underway, maybe gold will actually be useful again. I doubt it, but I’m no currency expert.
The other problem seems even bigger: we don’t have many high-skill workers available, but our wages are high enough that anyone bringing manufacturing back is going to try to automate it as much as possible. That seems like a real bind for the Republicans’ isolationist strategy: exports will be down due to a trade war and a difficult price/value ratio in the areas other countries currently dominate, and if we’re heading into a more automated economy we’re going to have a growing number of people who won’t be able to afford to buy much. This seems like a vicious self-inflicted cycle if it gets rolling.
We've been printing pretend money for quite some time, and supressing the value of precious metals (which is why you're now seeing silver bullion sell for $100+ an ounce). Copper is also selling out now.
These precious metals are extremely valuable because they're used to manufacture all of the technology consumers and nation states rely on daily. We're going to see a regression towards mercantilism and commodity hoarding. Most likely fiat will be abandoned in favor of crypto as we enter a new era of hyperinflation.
Buckle up - 2026 is going to be a wild ride.
If there is need you can now build very complicated systems as everything is digital anyway.
Maybe stable coins would be finally useful. Each currency has own stable coin and then they are automatically traded in massive market... /s
Really curious what your reasoning is here.
https://www.npr.org/2026/01/17/nx-s1-5680167/major-plumbing-...
US Navy would have have no parking spots left in Europe if they try to annex Greenland.
And that’s definitely going to upset the gold bugs.
(In reality lots of things are held in reserve)
USD is a routing currency that is used because it is cheaper than the mesh alternative. When it stops being cheaper whoever is then cheapest will get the routing transactions.
I've wondered if maybe large metals funds get better rates, but also have no idea.
This depends on soooo many factors (mainly: mint, store, and your relationship(s) within). I buy and sell both stocks and bullion on long-term (years), and am typically only selling when I get over-extended on a project (construction renovations) and absolutely need liquidity [e.g: today's visit]. Young-forty-something.
But today at my US coin store (in a no-tax state), you could buy/sell a Canadian Mapleleaf (an ounce of 99.99% gold in easily-recognizable coin format) for 2.5% spot. For real physical gold that you can hold & hear (isn't fake/heavily-leveraged "paper gold").
I never recommend anybody transacts less than an ounce because the fees rapidly increase on smaller denominations (e.g. tenths are fee-prohibitive, other than as less-expensive gifts for recent graduates). Buy ounce coins, long-term, at regular intervals (no timing the market, only time IN the market!).
Silver is a wildcard, at least at my local shops. Today it cost me 6.5% to unload a few hundred ounces — which sucks, but shops are buying lots of silver right now given its recent increases; this increases their risk (should the market correct, which it probably will around $100 IMHO). Typically this would have been about 4.5% — still, I more than quadrupled my original investment (from just a few years ago).
So definitely you shouldn't be buying/selling bullion short term (fees will eat you alive!) — but it is always nice to have an emergency fund that isn't fiat (i.e. losing value guaranteed) but is also immediately convertible back into currency (no mail / ACH / bank delays).
I have about a year of my normal income in physical bullion. Most I've been holding on to for years — which is how you should transact physical metals. Timing any market is impossible... it doesn't always even rhyme.
[•] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_cost_averaging
Disclaimer: I am a forty-something electrician — not your financial advisor — and am the type of risk-taker that has "stupidly" taken 10% of his paycheck in bitcoin/bullion, since 2013.
Unfortunately most young people don’t realize they are being hoodwinked and so poll extremely supportive of this scheme.
I'm against putting any more money in 1%-ers pockets. None of your tax money does anything except... make the "rich&old" more rich.
The debt ceiling is literally not a problem at all, unless the US were to do something as monumentally stupid as to stop allowing its GDP to grow through trade, and devalue the US dollar, in which case everybody flees US treasuries, resulting in collapse of value, causing more people to flee UST, etc....
The debt hawks are very wrong about the fundamentals of currency, but they are less dangerous than the war hawks in the White House to the US's economic future.
It's one thing to do a epically stupid invasion of Iraq on faked intelligence, which ally support. It's another thing entirely to invade allies. It will totally end US dominance in the world.
"Thus, it is not directly related to the ongoing rift between the U.S. and Europe, but of course that didn't make it more difficult to take the decision," he added.
quotes from the Reuters article
The US pays $800B/year to service debt. It pays $800B-$1T/year for the military. What would you like cut that is discretionary? There appears to be no appetite to raise taxes on the wealthy, pay down debt, and reduce military spending. So US credit card go brrr. We’ll hit a debt spiral eventually.
I think you need to call it by its real name.
One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
You can tell how much care and considering went into if from the name.
How do you run a country without taxation? Can you point at an example?
/s
Serious answer: deficit spending and let inflation act as the taxation mechanism.
Bonds are considered low risk, but with the fiscal policy of the current US administration, the risk may have gone beyond the Danish's appetite.
Bitcoin on the other hand, which sane person would invest in such a volatile product as preservation of capital?
Why would anyone believe that this is the last time a president will use Tariff threats in the next 12 months? it was reasonable to negotiate last year based on the observation that trade imbalances had been a growing issue for the American people. Using trade as a lever for territorial concessions is almost certainly a hard red line.
Everything I said about the roads and title washing still applies.
Did USA cause that
No. Why would you claim something that is easily refuted? 75-80% of all residences in Canada are owner occupied.
No.
China now leads the world on R&D and hard science, and is already making strides in chip design and chip making. How far off do you think a Chinese ASML is? Two decades at most? Or more like one?
And what would be the solution? I think we've all learned that protectionism doesn't work.
Automation Engineering, Materials Engineering, Biopharmaceuticals, Automotive Engineering (already mentioned), and Genomics.
China has made tremendous gains, but that should not undermine the fact that the fundamentals still exist within the EU, but Europeans on the Internet seem to vaccilate between chest-thumping Euro-nationalism (which is dead in the water and easily disprovable) or defeatism (which doesn't make sense and is also easily disprovable).
> How far off do you think a Chinese ASML is
1. ASML's EUV/DUV IP is owned and airgapped from the rest of ASML by the US DoE's JV with ASML called Cymer
2. Around 5-7 years, which is a loss from a Chinese NatSec standpoint and shows the Sullivan doctrine is still intact (keep China 1-2 generations behind the collective west in semiconductor fabrication capabilities).
> And what would be the solution? I think we've all learned that protectionism doesn't work.
The EU never actually tried protectionism or industrial policy. When most other countries and trade blocs were flouting the WTO, the EU kept trying to prop it up in order to negotiate with the US.
Also I'd be willing to bet that if interest rates dropped, car purchasing would skyrocket even at current prices.
Car loans would be ticking time bomb on the U.S. economy. All it takes are waves of layoffs and therefore droves of unemployed people saddled with car loans.
In the absence of perfect competition and perfect information, one cannot infer from the absence of sales that there is no demand for item X.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dismissed_as_improvidently_gra...
Fair question. And in some circles people would substitute AUD for CHF, and SGD is essentially in the same position as CHF (small, stable, well-connected country).
But AUD mostly because Australia is commodity-rich and so AUD has a naturally high exposure to international trade especially in Asia-Pacific region. Its a bit like CAD but the problem with CAD is its neighbour. ;)
The approach is tried and true with a small deficit, but surely you need some decent source of revenue to keep the inflation under control.
Maybe indeed the relatively best solution is in the middle: proportional representation with well-chosen thresholds.
We're threatening to go to war with Denmark and all of their allies.
If all Danish Pension Funds etc. decide that we better divest because of imminent war, we are talking way, way more money. I have no idea how much, but Danish pensions are big.
This may indeed be a warning shot.
This move by itself doesn't do much. The question is if it will influence others.
That does not mean it is "symbolic". It is very real choice made out of rational reasoning. There is nothing to suggest it was not meant to be a symbolic gesture.
Edit: percentage down from 30% clarify debt
[•] <https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_drawing_rights>
SDR's are a type of Keynes' "Bancor" concept, but only transactable between countries. Citizens may resort to the commoner's bancor, e.g. bitcoin (but also gold, silver &c).
You do know similar people to SBF have been pardoned by Tump, right? Not related to the money they gave him and his family, of course..
Secondly, 77,302,580 americans voted for trump. That is one in three.
I am sorry you get blamed for this, I know you are not to blame. But you have to see how it looks from the outside, given the incredible effects it has had (most importantly, making millions lose faith in the world. And who knows what more to come.)
When the US applies country level sanctions or goes to war in places like Gaza, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Cuba, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Iran - I don't see much thought given to it really not being the peoples fault.
> The same thing could happen at any time in any country.
Exactly.
Like, we're all amateurs on a web forum, but it's best to avoid monomaniacal, first-order thinking.
If you honestly believe that the EU wants the US to descend into civil war then you you have your parties grossly mixed up.
Previously, it was content to treat UKR as a puppet, but after a color revolution and their man in Kiev was deposed, their hand was forced.
We're only now seeing it as an overt tug of war between the Great Powers
I agree with you, one dimension of the cultural split is urban / rural. The other dimension is actual culture as based on history -- deep south, southwest, cascadia, breadbasket, eastern seaboard -- these areas have different enough cultural heritage you could see them as separate regions if you squint hard enough. But the key deciding factor are the centers of military power -- where the major air, navy, and nuclear bases are. Overlay that over the cultural map, and you get the Independent Regions. The urban centers would define the voronoi centers of the subregions, with rural areas becoming more of no-mans-land, roving-bands boundary scenarios.
I mean yes it all sounds fantastical, but most unprecedented things do until they come to pass. There's so many patterns and echoes that gently indicate that this unfortunately may indeed be the way.
People buy treasuries because they expect a return. If a party is threatening to get into a shooting war with you your expectations of a return drop significantly. This then causes that party to protect their investment, the last one to defect will hold the bag. The US is signalling on all wavelengths that it is no longer the safest place to stash money, long term or otherwise.
Only historically. The calculus is rapidly changing. If the US can't even respect sovereign territory of friendly countries, it doesn't inspire trust that they would repay debt.
Also there are other tax havens.
IMHO.
They've more-or-less directly supported Russia's ambitions in Ukraine. If they don't want to annex your territory but are willing to support someone who does in the bloodiest war on the continent since the end of WWII, is there really a difference? They know they aren't in a place to project power over Europe, but they have a partner that absolutely is. I'd keep a close eye on how forgiving European countries have to be of Russia in order to curry favor with the Chinese in the coming years.
> so they'll likely make for a better partner for any civilized country than powers that descend into 19th century colonial neo-imperialism run by people who may as well come straight out of the Warhammer universe.
The problem is, deep down, none of that means anything to the ruling class of any European nation. If it did, Russia doesn't get the chance to do anything of consequence internationally after their incursion into South Ossetia in 2008. There would be no ambiguity regarding the future of Taiwan vis-a-vis control under the PRC. There wouldn't be investment deals now.
And mind you I'm not very sympathetic what we in Germany call "Russlandversteher" but it's also become clear, the war in Ukraine not withstanding, that Russia isn't an existential military threat. There'll come a time, maybe after Putin is gone, when there's an opportunity to have a security architecture that covers the whole continent. A Europe with Russia even though it's impossible now wouldn't be this vulnerable. And at some point this has to be resolved because it's untenable long term.
Kissinger wrote a book in 1994 Diplomacy where he pointed out that the biggest threat to European independence is over-reliance on the US, not China or Russia simply because of the predominance of the US militarily and economically. And if the US continues to be this beligerent, unlike Russia it is an existential threat.
I'm sure that's of incredible comfort to the citizens of Ukrainian cities that have missiles raining down upon them; missiles that contain electronics that were made by China as a direct result of Western embargoes. It's the middle position, helping a belligerent tyrant slaughter civilians, in a quest to be tzar in everything but name.
> They simply can't afford Russia to lose, they're dealing with their own US problem.
Of course they can. Same with North Korea. If they'd sworn off those two nations a decade - or more - ago, they'd just be sitting there with sweet Western investment cash and far less American antagonism. But they need those two nations to cause problems, to break rules, and to generally paint the world order as a farce. Otherwise, what vacuum are they to fill? They'd just be a bigger Japan: existing in an America-centric world order, comfortable, downsizing, and utterly without incident. That's not going to give the CCP the external threats it needs to justify its totalitarianism.
> that Russia isn't an existential military threat.
> Kissinger wrote a book in 1994 Diplomacy where he pointed out that the biggest threat to European independence is over-reliance on the US
Ah, that old ghoul. The very embodiment of interests over values. Hopefully a Cambodian child is dropping bombs on Kissinger's village somewhere.
Regardless, his assessment is flawed. The US begged, for decades, other NATO members to take defense seriously after the creation of the peace dividend at the end of the Cold War. With the exception of former Warsaw Pact countries that wanted to make damned sure the Russians stayed out, that seemed to fall on deaf ears until relatively recently. During the pustule's time in office, there has been discussion of moving the strategic focus from Germany, which was not particularly warmly received in the area around Ramstein. [0]
As for whether or not the Russians are an existential threat, well, for now, no. Despite Trump's best efforts, at least as of this writing, Article 5 still exists and any sort of mass movement towards NATO territory by Russia would likely quickly decay into a thermonuclear war that would involve the entirety of the American and Russian strategic arsenals. Life on this planet as we know it would be over. Get rid of that - and the pustule seems like he wants to - and there would be no effective counter against Russian WMD forces, because they would have an advantage over France and the UK in such a conflict. The likelihood of Russia becoming an existential threat increases if NATO's current configuration breaks apart.
Any time someone has thermonuclear warheads pointed at your cities, they're an existential threat. I'll leave it to you to guess whether the US or Russia has more targets in central and western Europe.
[0] https://fortune.com/europe/2025/03/05/ramstein-germany-us-ai...
When $100M in armaments can take out a $10000M carrier, it's time to rethink things.
https://bsky.app/profile/runestahl.bsky.social/post/3mcuyopn...
Doing a small amount of CYA as a fiduciary, while causing bond rates to rise, is merely prudent.
HN seems totally fine with this behaviour too, also super reassuring.
Buy. Because the Fed is about to monetize the debt.
Except for France's ASMP-A nuclear warning shot (which is not a tactical option by the way), all other independent European nuclear options (French or British SSBNs) are not only strategic, but they imply wiping entire countries off the map. All options also depend on whether the French President or the British Prime Minister decides that this course of action is warranted.
If Trump indeed invades Greenland, shoving a French-made nuclear fireball in front of an American carrier battle group off the coast of Greenland would probably not be our first option. Besides the massive political cost of breaking the nuclear taboo, if kinetic actions are deemed necessary, deterrent also comes in conventional varieties.
Also, while the British nuclear deterrent might be operationally independent, it relies on American-supplied Trident missiles.
Also, our nuclear doctrine says that it's a nuclear warning shot, meaning that the next step on the ladder is French-delivered Armageddon by SSBNs. We're not supposed to keep lobbing them in case of a persistent problem.
no they wouldn't, we know this because we here in Europe are facing American antagonism and a trade war right now and we're American allies. The Chinese on this have been vindicated, not only has the United States been waging a trade war on China, it's now waging a trade war with threats of annexation on her allies. They were right and we were naive.
I'm not claiming China is morally spotless or doesn't clash with us on countless of issues, but they act rationally, long term in their own interest, and their view of the world is being vindicated by the week at this point. If I was China I'd keep Russia and North Korea around as a buffer too if I saw what the US pulls on their friends.
Mind you Denmark is a country that lost soldiers for the US when Article 5 was invoked. The US is the only country to actually invoke it. They were so absurdly pro-American they spied on us for the US[1]. And this is what you get for it? If that's how the biggest military power and up until now guarantor of global order acts, yeah people are going to hedge their bets quickly. Russia is weirdly enough small fish in comparison.
[1]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/31/denmark-helped...
They are literally right in the middle of imploding their soft power; so maybe you are right about passively giving it up when they're actively doing so instead?
No, instead they're actively throwing it on a bonfire.
No, I don't know why either.
Trump is an asshole, but the strategy hasn’t really changed in the last decade or so. Obama tried to isolate China with European help, Trump 1.0 tried to convince Europe to step up, Biden showed them we were willing to move on, and now Trump 2.0 is following through.
People fail to realize how anti-European this past decade has been, and not just under Trump. Europe had significant issue with the Inflation Reduction Act. Not to mention the war in Ukraine, which while illegal and entirely caused by Russia, was capitalized upon by American diplomats to the absolute benefite of the US at the expense of Europe.
The overarching plan has been evident for a while, Trump is just blatant about it. He lacks the decorum to make someone happy about being gifted a lemon. Past administrations have had much more tact in that regard.
America does not want direct conflict with China. China doesn’t want direct conflict with America either. It would be catastrophic for both honestly. Neither side would emerge cleanly victorious. Both would be limping away scarred by the experience. To that end America is just trying to let the underlying structural issues play out. China and Europe both have some structural issues that need addressed. America is gonna build up it’s own hemisphere and simply wait the rest of the world out.
Is it the best plan? Honestly it might be. The more I see of it, the more comfortable I am growing with it. I was more worried about it in the Biden days simply because I was still under the mindset of Europe being an important ally. America was undermining the European economy on multiple fronts and it seemed like we were alienating some of our closest allies. Ironically what I think a lot of people are feeling now.
The truth is though that Europe is dead weight. Their economy is anemic, their still too fragmented militarily and they have been actively undermining America’s effects to derisk supply chains from China. Trump’s broad tariffs would have been handled better under someone else, but the end result would have been the same out of simple necessity. Since COVID America has grown more dependent on China due to second order effects. Everytime we close a door someone else opens a window to let them back in. And it’s not just Europe, but Canada, South Korea, others too. Honestly Mexico has probably been our best ally in that regard.
If you follow the geopolitical sphere most of what’s happening is not new. Trump hasn’t really changed the plan - he’s just subtle like a brick to the face. He is loud and boastful about it where before it was clever and subtextual. That is really the only change. Geopoliticallt he tries to dominate while Biden and Obama would convince people something stupid was what they really wanted.
I don’t know if that helps the anxiety at all. I’ve felt it, I’ve been there. I’ve yet to see a better plan though. Honestly, the next decade is gonna be bumpy, but if you look at the long-term trajectory, America is gonna be well ahead of the rest of the world by the 2040s. We are easily in the best strategic position I would say. Once you really wrap your mind around the various aspects of it, it’s not a bad plan. It’s not Trump’s plan, it’s not Biden’s plan, this plan has roots going back over a decade. I’m sure at some point it was just a COA under discussion with multiple decision points and alternatives. Could it have worked itself out differently? Probably. But given where we are it’s probably the best plan for now.
This has been repeated elsewhere in this story. What's your thinking here? I assume you mean the non-US members of NATO, but you seem to have forgotten two G7 members if you're equating NATO - US with the EU.
The remaining members include two nuclear-armed states, five or so aircraft carriers, submarines, several large air forces, navies, etc. What would make them unable to project force into the Pacific?
https://warontherocks.com/2024/04/two-theater-tragedy-a-relu...
What an incredibly ignorant statement. Europe's economy in real terms is doing fine, their productivity is growing. The US's economy only looks good on paper, but outside of the AI bubble, companies aren't growing wages are stagnant with inflation.
Europe is also on the verge of federalization. But you have to understand getting over two dozen countries with vastly different cultures, histories and languages to cooperate is a gargantuan task. One the EU has been incredibly successful at.
I hope the EU moves to a more Federalized model of governance - it would certainly benefit them. And I agree that it won't be easy. I am not sure California and Texas would agree to the model the United States has today. I can't even imagine what it would be like for Germany and France. But they have some serious issues to address. These are some foundational changes that are unlikely to happen in the next year or two.
Hopefully. It needs to do something about veto powers and the fact that Orban exists.
NATO is literally the North Atlantic Treaty Org. Basic map-reading tells you that the Pacific is not the North Atlantic. Sure, securing the Pacific might take a "Pacific Treaty" of regional powers, but we see no signs of that kind of thinking at present from the USA. Bridges are being burned not built.
> Trump is an asshole, but the strategy hasn’t really changed ... Trump hasn’t really changed the plan -- he’s just subtle like a brick to the face
Is this the new talking point? That it's business as usual with an uglier face? This is rubbish though on multiple dimensions, this is now a kakistocratic and kleptocratic US administration, that is going out of its way to alienate allies .
> America is gonna be well ahead of the rest of the world by the 2040s.
I think you'll find that kleptocrats don't tend to have that "get ahead" effect.
It does not look as if it's serious. But this is a deeply unserious administration, so it's hard to guess.
But the simpler answer is that Trump seems to personally like the idea of adding a big landmass to the US for ego reasons. He talked about it last term too with the same excuses mostly.
Does anyone really need to? We're not getting Greenland and everyone knows it, ESPECIALLY the people screeching the most about it. Trump's whole thing is giving the media lots of fresh meat to go wild over so they're distracted. I'm sure it's some sort of Sun Tzu thing he read about and has latched on to.
However, this one in particular is really baffling in that he can't let it go and it just makes everything worse.
> People didn't take the tariff bluster seriously and then it became very real.
I mean, not really? There's been some tariffs here and there but nowhere near what was originally claimed, things have been walked back and forth multiple times, etc. That's really what's caused the most damage, the uncertainty moreso than the actual tariffs. And this is also something he's particular fixated on and I wish he'd drop since it's obvious it's not going to have the intended outcome.
It feels like the rest of the post answers your own question. Yes, Vance and basically everyone below him know full well that the US acquiring Greenland would be utterly pointless and utterly disastrous.
But he won't let it go, and in the mean time he's doing lots of stuff with real world consequences like tariffs and incinerating alliances to try to get people to agree with his stupid idea. Can't even use it as a "negotiation chip" when its the fruits of actual completed negotiations being threatened and the US could put any military installations in Greenland they wanted if they said "please" instead of "we are going to take you over".
The value of the dollar is based on the promise of 2% inflation of a basket of goods. Breaking that promise is default.
Unless words just don't mean anything anymore. In which case, yes. Which could also mean no.
Or who is "we"?
Paying taxes to fund an army.
The EU isn't doing any direct fighting in the Russian-Ukranian war, we are however donating and selling things, and being a refuge for those who quite understandably fled in fear of their lives.
Nobody's actually violated our sovreignty yet, we have no casus belli to go to war. But as the phrase the bullet cartridge is named after goes: Si vis pacem, para bellum.
This is all preformative nonsense of EU elites that despise the European public and call Trump daddy to continue riding the Eurocrat gravy train. It's actually good for Europe that this mess is coming to an end. But the price was way too high and unnecessary.
Ukraine hasn’t had an election in 7 years.
This whole thing is due to one country not playing by the rulebook because they think they're big enough to fuck over the world. Guess what? No single country is big enough for that. Trump is way out of his depth when it comes to statesmanship and has replaced it with brinkmanship, that's not a valid substitute unless what you're looking for a a disaster.
Canada and Australia are low risk, but don't have the returns of the US. Brasil, Argentina, have higher risk.
The allocations get spread across different risk profiles, and the money gets spread across different investments. Of course, this is on the assumption the majority of this money stays in Treasuries. These large funds have options beyond that. It's a mathematical calculation where every asset in the world is an option. $100B can be spread around pretty easily I'd think.
It's just a way to hedge their bets. In the larger scheme of things $100B isn't all that much (it may be to you, but even a small trading desk of a mid sized bank or multinational, say Royal Dutch Shell, or such) have access to that kind of money. They are not going to take the chance that Donald Trump on Monday morning, after eating a bad burger the night before, decides to unleash the might of the US military on their territory and be left holding the bag.
One downside of running a trade deficit with the rest of the world is that they have you by the short and curlies; if they dump your paper you will have to buy it back as fast as they can dump it to avoid a crash of your currency. That can get expensive really quickly.
Take care.
They are nothing like paper currency outside of being another abstraction of actual value and being issued / controlled by the banking cartel.
I don't think it does, but I'm not responding to them. I'm responding to someone who made a bonkers comment up-thread.
Except that's not an either-or alternative. Even if the US had a civil war and somehow disappeared, other belligerent actors would be free to start conflicts that had been held back by US pressure. You still have your "global" war. Like if the US disintegrates right now, Europe can kiss all of Ukraine goodbye, and probably the Baltics, too.
And even if somehow the US was the only problem (it's not), there's a decent chance that the end result of a civil war is a non-fragmented and even more belligerent US.
You clearly don't have any idea what you're talking about.
The UK's two aircraft carriers were commissioned in 2017 and 2019 and carry 60 and 48 aircraft respectively.
One might be able to hide the money printing for a while, though, while the haircut is explicit.
Maybe we’re lucky and adults come back into power, but hope alone is not a strategy. No one is coming to save you, prepare accordingly. I have prepared accordingly to decouple from the US entirely as a citizen, if necessary. It’s regrettable and I have no other solution for those inquiring. You can’t control the winds, but you can adjust your sails. My genuine condolences and sympathies if one cannot escape the US either via income, wealth, or some form of visa (lineage, family, work, etc).
(derived from first principles)
Through the actions above, I feel that I have diversified away from the US sufficiently for my risk appetite. I don't feel I need to renounce my US citizenship currently (due to foreign earned income exclusions), but I am also prepared for that in the future if necessary.
Resources for others I have assembled helping folks exit:
https://relocateme.substack.com/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AmerExit/comments/urwlbr/a_guide_fo...
https://old.reddit.com/user/Shufflebuzz/comments/1iv4dud/shu...
https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se... (Canadian citizenship by descent)
https://healthcareinfusion.org/ (for healthcare workers interested in Canada)
https://lookerstudio.google.com/reporting/b58914ce-b98d-4330... from https://pancakeonastick.substack.com/ (Digital Nomad Visa Map)
Just say "Fiscal responsibility" enough times and it's magically true, and nobody will listen to the educated people pointing at literal receipts because they are "the elites", which is a group that somehow doesn't include the people who's wealth has grown 10x based on explicitly pro-rich person fiscal policy for decades.
It's why they blame democrats for "globalism" as well, despite the fact that the entire country loudly voted for Reagan because of his "lets reduce taxes and magically get rich" narrative.
Or how it's constantly said that "Democrats turned their back on blue collar workers". Said by people voting for the "Unions are inherently bad" party.
Everything about American behavior makes sense when you understand them as especially prone to swallowing marketing and ideology as truth.
> Beijing did not want to see a Russian loss in Ukraine because it feared the United States would then shift its whole focus to Beijing
How does this statement make sense though? I don't see the A -> B. The US pretty clearly does not want to see a Russian loss either, and seems more fine with Ukraine losing.
It should depends on how much the US wants Europe?
If the US does not want more of Europe, and Russia wins, the US could let Russia take over Europe -> focus shifts to China.
If the US wants more of Europe, and Russia wins -> focus would be off China.
If the US does not want more of Europe, and Russia loses -> it's mostly whatever, but perhaps focus shifts to China.
If the US wants more of Europe, and Russia loses -> focus would be off China.
Perhaps I'm just really daft.
Yes, in some ways. Europe is a LOT less important than it used to be a few decades ago. A much smaller proportion of the world's economy, population, or military power.
Despite Trump, the US (and rivals of China like South Korea and Japan) have continued to supply the Ukrainian armed forces and their allies like Poland and Romania.
A protracted Russia-Ukraine War with the balance of power in favor of Russia means the US, SK, and JP remain bogged supplying Ukraine and it's allies like Poland and Romania, instead of diverting stock to the Asian front.
Additionally, China and Russia are increasingly collaborating to respond against Japan should a conflict occur [0] and North Korea is already an active participant in the Russia-Ukraine War.
> It should depends on how much the US wants Europe?
The issue is both the US and China view the EU as a regional power that can be pushed around - not as an entity that can retain strategic autonomy.
This is the crux of the EU's current diplomatic malaise - neither the US nor China view the EU as an equal, but rather, as a junior partner.
> Perhaps I'm just really daft
I won't say daft, but the issue is Europeans view themselves as deserving of being on the same table as the Americans and Chinese. Neither the Americans or Chinese see it that way now.
In order for the EU to build strategic autonomy, some very painful steps need to be taken which simply aren't being taken (as Draghi pessimistically pointed out a couple months ago) [1].
Additionally, periphery regions of the EU have increasingly started operating independently of the rest of the EU - as with China's CSPs with Spain [2] and Hungary [3]; Israel+India's defense alliances with Greece [4] and Cyprus [5] against Turkiye; and Poland coming out against committing resources to defend Greenland [6] - so a unified EU response is steadily degrading as members decide to take defense matters into their own hands.
Basically, if a naval standoff between Greece and Turkiye was to arise in the next 6 months in the Aegean Sea, would the rest of the EU sanction Turkiye (and thus lose a major defense partner in Ukraine [7][8][9] and the Baltics [10]) or ignore Turkiye (and thus destroy the EU and NATO defense commitment).
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-russia-discuss-ukr...
[1] - https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/business/20250916-mario...
[2] - http://en.cppcc.gov.cn/2025-11/13/c_1140641.htm
[3] - https://english.www.gov.cn/news/202405/10/content_WS663d3b83...
[4] - https://geetha.mil.gr/kyklos-synomilion-staff-talks-kai-ypog...
[5] - https://www.bankingnews.gr/amyna-diplomatia/articles/851003/...
[6] - https://www.reuters.com/world/poland-will-not-send-soldiers-...
[7] - https://ukrainesarmsmonitor.substack.com/p/ukraine-turkiye-s...
[8] - https://www.cats-network.eu/publication/ukraine-turkey-strat...
[9] - https://www.rnbo.gov.ua/en/Diialnist/3345.html
[10] - https://www.turkishminute.com/2026/01/13/nato-asks-turkey-to...
Military supplies have not slowed, that's true, the major difference since Biden is that European nations are now paying for it, but diplomacy and sanctions-wise, interest is waning for every month, it seems. Trump is even derailing the Davos summit. That was supposed to be primarily about Ukraine, but now it's about Greenland.
> A protracted Russia-Ukraine War with the balance of power in favor of Russia means the US, SK, and JP remain bogged supplying Ukraine and it's allies like Poland and Romania, instead of diverting stock to the Asian front.
I'll confess I didn't consider ROK and JP. That's a fair point. Poland and Romania are supply hubs, so I would've worded that "via Poland and Romania" and not made it seem like they are supplied for their own benefit.
> The issue is both the US and China view the EU as a regional power that can be pushed around - not as an entity that can retain strategic autonomy. > [...] neither the US nor China view the EU as an equal, but rather, as a junior partner.
There's no disagreement from me there, and I don't think I claimed that. Europe trying to improve relations with China would be with cap in hand.
> [...] the issue is Europeans view themselves as deserving of being on the same table as the Americans and Chinese. Neither the Americans or Chinese see it that way now.
Certainly many (not all) Europeans have been arrogant and babied with blinders on, and pretended not to have been glorified vassal states to the US via Pax Americana. I think that view is quickly changing. What irks me the most is that I still hear people talk about kicking out the US from NATO, not understanding that without the US, there is no NATO.
Not true. US is not giving any material support. Only intel.
China needs to keep close ties with Russia due to national security interests in Central Asia and North Korea. Additionally, Russia maintains its autonomy by retaining military and economic ties with India and military deployments and listening bases in Vietnam and North Korea, which adds pressure on China to have to collaborate with Russia.
> ...counterweight to the US...
Chinese foreign policy is almost entirely viewed through the lens of the US-China rivalry. Europeans underestimate this to their peril. And to China, an unaligned Europe is still not pro-China enough.
At the end of the day China cares more about Europe than Russia. Because that's where the real money is.
“Real money” aka resources are very obviously in Russia, not Europe.
The EU signing an FTA with India on Jan 27th is also a negative sign for China-EU relations.
Ukrainians have been repeatedly polled and the majority don't want to hold elections in wartime. That's democratic.
Holding an election while a foreign aggressor is occupying part of your territory and terrorising its population, enabling them to suppress and manipulate their votes: that's undemocratic.
Work, Invest, Inherit: How Americans Can Actually Move to Europe - https://www.bloomberg.com/explainers/how-americans-can-move-... | https://archive.today/IYsA3 - January 2nd, 2026
Dedollarization means that the US market is far poorer and can't import as much as before, yet the new reserve currency(ies) make holders that much richer, enabling greater demand for either imports or self-consumption.
It will be an adjustment, but there will be many winners, none of which are the US. There may be some losers who do not negotiate trade deals or can't find new markets, but it's unlikely. The supposed US trade war on China has resulted in their GDP growing by a massive 5% last year. Canada, losing its exports to the US, negotiates deals with other countries.
The pain for other countries is more organizational than anything economic. The US will face massive economic disaster in the form of devalued dollars and the need to close the government deficit after decades of being addicted to massive reserve-currency-enabled deficit spending. The US will be plummeted into massive recession by those sudden changes, while the rest of the world merely trades with whoever are the winners.
If, for example, China decides that it finally wants a consumer economy, and the Renminbi becomes a partial reserve currency, the consumer demand will be absolutely massive. Europe may have a harder time signaling to Europeans that they are far wealthier, but make imports cheaper for Europeans, and people who find that they suddenly have a lot more left in their bank account at the end of the month usually find ways to spend at least part of it.
This is a fantasy that the CCP leadership will not entertain, because it would mean losing their control as the (export/industrial) king. Their national security descends from having that crown firmly in their hands & making everyone else reliant on their industries, and will do as much as they can to make sure it stays that way.
A strong currency runs counter to what the CCP leadership wants, having seen how it has hollowed out the US' industrial capacity (as a result of strong currency demand leading to comparatively higher labor costs).
The manufacturing stage is just a stepping stone to getting to where the US already is.
The end goal of the CCP is not to be a middling power, with middling wealth. It's to be the greatest power. That some in the US want to go down the value chain and take China's manufacturing spot just as China zooms ahead of the US, is, well... It would be comical if it weren't so sad.
I'd take those numbers with a grain of salt. China is known to play with the numbers to hit goals when they feel that they need to.
>The US will be plummeted into massive recession by those sudden changes, while the rest of the world merely trades with whoever are the winners.
The massive devaluation in the dollar would mean that the country would become incredibly attractive for manufacturing exports, which would prevent a massive recession.
>If, for example, China decides that it finally wants a consumer economy, and the Renminbi becomes a partial reserve currency, the consumer demand will be absolutely massive.
If you think that China is going to shut down the majority of its factories, move them to other countries, and let their currency float freely (well, freer than it is today), you're delusional.
First, the US will not be attractive in any way for investment because it is run by a madman that has ridiculous tariff policies that make starting manufacturing supply chains nearly impossible.
Second, even if the US could transition its economy back to manufacturing, that's a massive slide down the value chain to far less profitable industries than our current tech, biotech, and service driven economies. The idea as presented is a serious downgrade in quality of life compared to today.
> If you think that China is going to shut down the majority of its factories, move them to other countries, and let their currency float freely (well, freer than it is today), you're delusional.
China wants to transition its economy up the value chain to the high tech industry that the US currently has. It has the educational system and the brain power, and the biggest impediment, brain drain to the US, has now been shut off.
If climbing the value chain, out of manufacturing, requires China to shut down factories or open up currency somehow, they are far more likely to do that than to abandon their ambition of economic growth.
in 2022 China, Russia exported around 630 billion USD, US imported around 950 billion USD. maybe the world will not end if these three just go and play in a separate sandbox;)
> it's going to be a painful adjustment.
even if demand falls a bit it's not the end of the world if it becomes more sustainable afterwards (less overproduction, consumer waste, gassing the environment)
There's an implication here that the country *wants* to become a consumer economy, and not remain an export economy.
Furthermore, it relies on the leadership wanting to wind down that production, and not use that subsidy to further bolster their industrial capacity & crush global prices, in an attempt to wash out the others & only have their country be the sole remaining place capable of meeting demand at that subsidized point.
Unfortunately, my understanding based on reported surveys [1] is that if the non-voters had voted, Trump's margin of victory would have been even greater. If that's the case, then those who say that my 1/3 figure is too low are correct.
1: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/26/2024-election-turno...
Put another way, if someone asked you to estimate what the split between the one third of the population that didn't vote was, what would you use as a reference point? Social media posts? Vibes? Or maybe polls leading up to the vote that showed the same roughly 50-50 split found in the actual results?
So I don't think we can extrapolate confidently at all. So we really don't know whether it holds for the rest of the population at all.
Most other contemporary and historical parallels of authoritarians show far higher popularity of the authoritarian. Trump is nowhere close.
The biggest risk to the US is that the media is completely compromised, as are leadership at many institutions. Even in Silicon Valley, the loudest and most vocal leaders are self-destructively supporting this madness that will destroy the US's wealth, and their future wealth gains too.
You could almost make this case in 2016, but anyone who fell for Trump in 2024 will just fall for the next con man to come along. At some point we have to take responsibility for our own choices and stop blaming the media.
The truth about Trump was out there, and it was not hard to find.
Added here due to rate-limiting:
2024 was right after voters had seen Biden at that debate, while all the "responsible" people insisted he was sharp and smart. It really was more unique than its given credit for.
Both candidates were a disgrace to the parties who propped them up. However, nothing Biden said was any worse than what Trump said about immigrants eating peoples' pet dogs and cats.
At the Biden/Trump debate, the choice was between malevolent, incoherent senility and plain old garden-variety senility, and the voters choose poorly. At the actual election, there were even fewer excuses for voting for Trump, as Biden was no longer in play.
Most people who were tricked were people who don't pay much attention, and might only get a few articles of news, if anything. When the media doesn't tell people that there are plans for mass deportations at numbers that require legal immigrants to be deported, then the media is lying to its consumers. When the media is not willing to report that Project 2025 is Trump's plan, and instead places Trump's lie about ignorance on the same footing as the reality of people saying it is his plan, then the media lies to people.
Media consumers expect that journalists will react normally to extreme news. But instead the media is normalizing extremely unpopular and ridiculous policies that everybody would hate if they knew what the media knew.
I know large families of Mexican descent who have lived in the US for generations, that had many Trump voters in the recent election, from people that don't follow much news, and believed ridiculous things like Trump being a "Peace President." As you might imagine, there's a bit of intense discussion these days about how they were tricked into voting for secret police that will imprison family members and detain them for days without cause. If somebody reads a single article, they shouldn't have to read 5 more in order to get the real story merely because the media was more concerned about normalizing Trump's views than it was about reacting like a normal person would to the insanity of Trump.
Do people have personal responsibility to be better informed? Sure! But when they go to CBS they should get a real news article, not glazing of the most radical opinions out there on the political spectrum.
The Intel Chiefs meeting about Ukraine is still happening [0]
> so I would've worded that "via Poland and Romania" and not made it seem like they are supplied for their own benefit.
Poland [1][2][3] and Romania [4] are also choosing to buy Korean weaponry instead of European.
> Europe trying to improve relations with China would be with cap in hand
It's difficult because the EU can't go cap in hand to China as long as
1. Anti-China leaders like Babis (CZ) remain in power,
2. Deals with Chinese rivals such as the FTA with India (Jan 27th), French modernization of the Vietnamese Armed Forces, the GCAP project with Japan, and Eastern European defense procurement from SK and Japan continue,
3. the EU remains committed to the "rules-based order" (ie. the existing status quo including de facto sovereignty for Taiwan),
4. EU member states continue to have American boots on the ground in the Baltics, Romania, Poland, Germany, and Turkiye
5. The EU does not sign a comprehensive FTA with China
China will always view the EU as not aligned with China. Both China and the US have adopted a "either you are with us or against us" foreign policy.
> What irks me the most is that I still hear people talk about kicking out the US from NATO, not understanding that without the US, there is no NATO.
It's a conundrum.
I think the only way an American NATO commitment will remain is if all NATO countries publicly commit to providing a security umbrella in East Asia.
Similarly, the EU will always be viewed as a rival of China's as long as 1-5 are not resolved in China's favor.
The EU can potentially build it's own space in a multi-polar world, but it will require making some very politically unpopular decisions around rearmament at the expense of social services; aligning with other regional powers such as Israel, India, UAE, KSA, Vietnam, Japan, SK, Brazil, Argentina, etc despite domestic political backlash; and having to back down to the US or China depending on the issue.
[0] - https://www.intelligenceonline.com/europe-russia/2026/01/19/...
[1] - https://www.chosun.com/english/industry-en/2025/06/11/REUTAK...
[2] - https://www.chosun.com/english/industry-en/2024/08/19/GY7PG4...
[3] - https://www.chosun.com/english/national-en/2022/12/08/6DXIBF...
[4] - https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/southkorea/defense/20240710/kor...
As long as (eg.) France continues to support Dassault, Safran, and Thales - all of whom continue to support Indian [0][1] and Vietnamese [2][3] military modernization against Chinese aggression, CN-EU ties will never recover [4].
And that's just the tip of the iceberg depending on EU member state. Germany [5][6], Netherlands [6][7], and other individual EU states have similarly crossed Chinese redlines over the past year.
The DGSI is also actively prosecuting French nationals with ties to PLA adjacent institutions (public, private, and SoEs) for potential espionage risks [8]. Selon vos relations, vous pourriez également figurer sur cette liste, surtout après ce qui s'est passé en Nouvelle-Calédonie [9].
[0] - https://www.capital.fr/entreprises-marches/rafale-dassault-a...
[1] - https://www.lesechos.fr/industrie-services/air-defense/bombe...
[2] - https://www.intelligenceonline.fr/europe-russie/2023/06/27/a...
[3] - https://www.intelligenceonline.fr/asie-pacifique/2025/12/15/...
[4] - http://www.iis.whu.edu.cn/index.php?id=2986
[5] - https://taz.de/U-Boot-Deal-geplant/!6144706/
[6] - https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article247750774/Ruestung-Tai...
[7] - https://www.nu.nl/economie/6372336/china-is-boos-op-nederlan...
[8] - https://www.intelligenceonline.fr/asie-pacifique/2026/01/14/...
[9] - https://www.intelligenceonline.fr/asie-pacifique/2025/02/26/...
None of that requires a strong currency, only a strong industry.
That's what the CCP has done with their own currency, by deliberately weakening it & funneling the strength into drowning the global market with their industry's products. A strong currency runs counter to that by making their products more expensive as a result.
Had the RMB continued its original trajectory (2003-2015), it would've wound up at approximately 1EUR ~= 5RMB. Instead, the CCP made the decision to weaken the RMB to maintain industrial capability, and further expand into technological ventures without abandoning the other industries they've captured before.
> That some in the US want to go down the value chain and take China's manufacturing spot just as China zooms ahead of the US, is, well... It would be comical if it weren't so sad.
1) China is able to "zoom ahead" because they have a strong industry within their own borders, buffered from the political decisions of other countries.
2) The value of the lower parts of the chain is not obligated to be lower than the upper parts of the chain.
https://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/news/its-okay-to-move-down...
But the parent was — the implication being that if the other third had voted, surely they would have voted in greater proportion for Democrats than Republicans. That’s based on nothing but vibes and assumptions. I argue that the 64% share of people that actually did vote give you a lot more confidence in how the remaining third probably would have voted than whatever the parent suggested. It’s at least a starting point for extrapolation.
Empires rise and fall, pax Americana was not the world's first hegemony. The end of the British Empire is within living memory - while they sowed seeds of instability in a handful of former colonies that still flare up today, the rest of the world is fine. Britain, on the other hand, has had to enter a "managed decline", and is a much smaller player in world politics than it was a century ago.
The US doesn't have the cards to play, because the current US Government doesn't even understand where the wealth has come from. That US Government has risen to power by tricking the public into thinking that the very things that make the US wealthy and powerful are actually a scam making them poorer.
The current US Government has already broken the trust that makes the US strong. The repercussions will take years to become fully visible, and without immediate course correction those future repercussions will get far far worse.
This may be recency bias. The current age just has more immediate, global communications. "The sun never sets on the British empire" had a literal meaning based on how globalized it was then. They even laid intercontinental undersea cables.
If its going to be like this the rest of the world might as well cut its losses
I agree that at some point, governments and people will need to step up and fight back, but the idea that the US will somehow fall in a vacuum and everyone else will live happily ever after is laughable.
the US will somehow fall in a vacuum and everyone else will live happily ever after is laughable.
Not everything is a movie with a final battle. Alternatives are found and adopted all the time without violent strife.
I am not advocating that the status quo should go on, I am just saying that the repercussions will be vast and long lasting, likely resulting in a world war, and whatever follows after that(if anything).
The US has the benefit of the government borrowing insane amounts of money to juice it's economy, by being the world hegemony. That advantage has evaporated and you see the current capital going to unproductive industries.
And why would we do that?
I guess if you torture the data long enough it will confess to anything.
European productivity is beating American productivity. American GDP is heavily warped by money borrowing and previously foreign investment.
With the same amount of money you can do much more in Europe. Even in the few domains where USA had a traditional advantage, like the prices of electronic devices, e.g. computers, things have changed a lot recently.
Prompted by another discussion thread on HN, I have compared yesterday some prices for computers and associated components in USA and in Europe. Now the prices in USA are 30% to 40% higher, in sharp contrast with how the price ratio was in the previous years, when prices were lower in USA.
The real economic strength of Europe vs. USA is much greater than the values of GDP expressed in USD, and including some meaningless indicators, would seem to imply.
Perhaps the downvoter has not believed that the prices have become so bad in USA, but then he/she should have checked the prices instead of downvoting.
After another HN poster has said yesterday that he has just bought a computer in Europe and the same computer was more expensive by 37.5% in USA, I thought that this is unbelievable, so I have also checked myself the prices.
I have just bought an ASUS NUC computer in Europe at a price equivalent with $490 and the same computer is on Newegg at $679, i.e. more expensive by 38.5%, a value very close to that reported by the other poster.
Moreover, I have equipped that computer with an 1 TB SSD and 32 GB DDR5, at a hugely increased price in comparison with last summer, i.e. the DDR5 modules are more than 3 times more expensive now (thanks to the US companies hoarding memory devices). Even so, the total cost in Europe was equivalent with slightly less than $900 while the same configuration on Newegg was slightly less than $1200.
Q.E.D.
In past years the opposite was true, i.e. computers and related components were cheaper in USA, even if the difference was not so great as it is now in the reverse direction.
Therefore it is clear that the dollar is overvalued, its true value is much less in comparison with the euro than the official exchange rate says. For most non-electronic things, the prices were lower in Europe even before. So the GDP of USA is also not as big as it is claimed.
Why grind away relentlessly in industries with tiny profit margins, when there are high-margin innovation-driven industries that your economy can advance to?
Why stick with producing clothing, when you can move on to cars? Why stick with cars, when you can move on to chips? Why stay with chips, when you can move on to the next new technology that the entire world wants, but which only your economy can produce because it grew the industry from scratch and everybody is playing catch up?
Dictators love autarky because it gives them complete control of the population. Populations should not love autarky, because it makes them poor and robs them of wealth and opportunity.
1) A consumer economy is not required to extract wealth from other countries.
2) A consumer economy is metastable by design:
(2a) It inherently requires the buy-in of other nations to want to export to you in the first place, which is not guaranteed.
(2b) The wealth of the consumer economy is primarily derived from salesmanship and not the product itself, which is also metastable.
3) Knowledge work is not barred to an export economy, and can similarly be performed there without having to become a consumer economy.
> Why grind away relentlessly in industries with tiny profit margins, when there are high-margin innovation-driven industries that your economy can advance to?
(Previous point (3) similarly applies here)
> Why stick with producing clothing, when you can move on to cars? Why stick with cars, when you can move on to chips? Why stay with chips, when you can move on to the next new technology that the entire world wants, but which only your economy can produce because it grew the industry from scratch and everybody is playing catch up?
1) None of these decisions are mutually exclusive. Why throw away the $10 you picked up just because you saw $100?
2) Establishment of a new industry is not assured. Failure can still occur, even when billions are thrown. (see Abu Dhabi & GlobalFoundries semiconductor fab venture)
2b) Not very new industrial move needs to be made. Tech leapfrogging can occur at a later date.
3) The demand for those """lower end""" products do not evaporate. Unless a sensible smartphone-like revolution comes for clothing / cars (i.e. The unification of multiple former products under a new product), the industry's products & demand will rarely change. The tastes will shift, but the fundamentals of the product & the industry will remain.
4-IMPORTANT) Margins are not obligated to trend towards zero, and can in fact increase as more people make the same mental conclusions as described and abandon their own industries, eventually leading to an oligopoly / monopoly scenario that is harder to retake back.
> Dictators love autarky because it gives them complete control of the population. Populations should not love autarky, because it makes them poor and robs them of wealth and opportunity.
Wealth does not inherently manifest from (the ether / nothing), and neither does opportunity. Even in the EU, wealth is derived from the decisions of the State to create / retain wealth.
How many European powers have had their incumbent head of state violently attempt to hold onto power after losing an election after January 6th, 2021?
Instead, in the US, we have our supposed captains of industry wielding chain saws on stage to publicly support the wannabe tyrant, and donating billions behind the scenes to privately support the wannabe tyrant.
> Its military has force projection to nearly every point on the globe, with hundreds of global military bases
How are the hosts to all those bases going to react when suddenly the guest acts belligerent? When the ally drops down to an occupier, that force projection suddenly starts looking like occupation, which becomes a lot more expensive to maintain.
And the expense has worked until now because everyone else has wanted our currency so what's a bit more currency printing, but when we kick our own global reserve currency status because we fucked all of our allies, well now that "force projections becomes a lot more expensive" actually becomes expensive^squared.
This is absolutely idiotic for anyone who indulges in the privileges of empire.
I'm not confusing anything, right now Trump's mouth IS the political system in the US. Republicans control every aspect of the government completely, all the way through to the checks of the US Supreme Court.
No Republican has enough backbone to stand up to Trump, and if they do gain a backbone to stand up to Trump at all, like MTG, they exit politics quickly. Thomas Massie is the closest to somebody who is standing up to Trump. If Republicans in the Senate were willing to stay in office yet defect from the party, that would be enough to stand up to Trump, but even that's not happening.
Right now, the US is in a position not unlike Imperial Japan, right before they launched an attack on the US, forcing the US into WW2. High Command wants somebody to stand up and stop the obviously bad action, but nobody is willing to make the short-term sacrifice for the long-term good.
Besides Trump, I doubt there's another official in the WH who wants this. They are all just humoring the demented old man.
Literally a bang.
Or many bangs. The largest military in human history going YOLO won’t be a pretty sight. (The only way it sucks more in America than it does abroad is if we go civil war. But even then, it’s almost certain to go global.)
It won't.
This is in part because other countries allow American countries to come in and take over markets.
Can you name 26 countries with the same level of unity and cooperation with the US as what exists between the 27 members of the EU (and larger economic zone)?
The US is but one country. If you zoom into states, you’d see a lot more bickering and division - y’all just sent your military against your own people just now…
Eh?
If the US political system was stable and fit for purpose, the US would have got rid of the wannabe dictator by now; or at least held his power in check.
EDIT: Amusingly, I'm being downvoted by a class of American who refuses to believe their way might not be the best after all. Even when the facts are staring them in the face.
But I don't think that the people downvoting you are necessarily other US citizens. It feels like HN is very good at eliminating bots, but in these sorts of discussions lots of sleeper agent bots come out to try to shift discussion. Every bit of our social media is full of it and I think that the downvotes your comment probably come from that.
Interesting point. I (very likely) stand corrected.
Then why is everyone so damned unhappy all the time?
Those with housing have locked others out of housing, causing lots of "wealth" that those with housing don't even consider to be wealth. They think it's just "normal" and don't realize the massive advantage it gives them over everybody stuck renting.
But that's symptomatic of all the other inequality. Housing is the biggest expense, and most obvious form of rent extraction that the wealthy use to exploit those without wealth, but it's not the only one.
That has changed dramatically in the past few decades and with it, places where Americans can find common ground.
Other western countries are going down the exact same path, just a bit behind us.
No, homogeneity doesn't cause happiness.[1] And the US was always less homogenous than other "western" countries.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_in_Japan#Suicide_proble...
this is satire right?
the UK's system is close to 1000 years old
I doubt the current US system will last another decade
> with hundreds of global military bases
all of which will evaporate the moment it does anything to Greenland
no, it's evolved continuously from 1066
by the time of the US rebellion, the king was already neutered
> their first PM was in the 18th century.
the title of "Prime Minister" is a modern invention (and not a formal position)
there has been a Lord High Treasurer since the 1100s
a constitutionally limited monarchy is older than the US
meanwhile the modern US seems to be a absolute monarchy that isn't constitutionally limited
I'd argue we've never been closer to civil war than we are today[0], primarily due to trumps regime invading cities around the country, kidnapping citizens utilizing a bounty program, and killing people in concentration camps.
Ediot: [0] - Since the last civil war. I thought that was obvious, but it seems like it isn't.
A new civil war that drives the US to fragment into several independent regions over the course of the next ~five years would kind of be the best scenario from a global perspective.
is nutty.
For countries outside the US, it would actually not be a bad scenario.
Better than having your supreme leader threatening invasion, annexation, promoting coups and so on.
The closest the U.S. is to a Civil War now is akin to a Cold Civil War with, for example, states gerrymandering their Representative districts. Or the Pacific states joining together for West Coast Health Alliance. Did I read rumblings about separate trade deals with foreign countries?
Protesters battling ICE in the streets would not, in my opinion, count as Civil War. Civil unrest? Sure.
EDIT: this always turns out to be one of my unpopular opinions. Oh well.
The divide here is urban vs rural. There's no way to turn that into a set of successor regions.
If armed conflict does happen, it'll be much more amorphous, terrifying, and random, concentrated in the cities, and resemble things like the Tulsa massacre at a larger scale.
The government of Minnesota has readied the national guard, the Pentagon put 1500 soldiers on standby to be deployed to Minnesota, Trump is threatening to invoke the insurrection act, and there's no sign of this conflict cooling off.
5 years is a long time too, I don't see how you believe it's not at all likely.
Edit: to be clear, I'm not sure it will lead to the fragmentation that the other commenters was claiming. But an conflict between federal and state law enforcement/ military seems likely.
Minnesota might like a word with you
BlackRock CEO delivers blunt warning on US national debt - https://www.thestreet.com/investing/blackrock-ceo-delivers-b... - January 18th, 2026
The U.S. Deficit Will 'Overwhelm This Country': BlackRock CEO Larry Fink - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4d1GzgnhkI
The MN governor has called up their National Guard to help local law enforcement. The Pentagon is readying troops as well, presumably to help federal officials (ICE).
If both sides think they are following lawful orders, and neither side will give, what do you think will happen? (I have no answers.)
Further, there are folks that want a conflict because the West has become too decadent or something, and some conflict is needed to toughen up (?):
Nearly 40% of Young Americans Say Political Violence Is Acceptable in Certain Circumstances, Harvard Poll Finds - https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/12/4/hpop-poll-polit... - December 4th, 2025
Americans say politically motivated violence is increasing, and they see many reasons why - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/10/23/americans... - October 23rd, 2025
When your material needs are satisfied then only ideological battles remain to be won.
And having lots of material stuff you have plenty to throw at the enemy.
It's already happening. People are willing to forego their material needs and harm the country and themselves to 'own' and defeat the other side.
The only hope is that the ideological wars become so scattered and around so many topics and centers of power that it's not 70m people vs. 70m people or that the ideological wars are slow that people realize that they come with a loss of quality of life and material wealth and rebalance towards the latter instead of pursuing the 'owning the other side' doctrine
Be wary of normalcy bias, it's a big part of what lets the Trump admin get away with what its doing. People think "oh that can't happen"... until it does.
But I am sure the poster you are responding to was criticizing the take about US splintering into parts due to armed unrest within the next 5 years. Which sounds completely nonsensical to me as well.
So do you believe him? Let me guess: you'll pick and choose the parts
Global markets outperform the U.S. in 2025 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DERutj8lfY - December 30th, 2025
2026 Outlook: International Stocks and Economy - https://www.schwab.com/learn/story/international-stock-marke... - December 9th, 2025
(not investing advice, I am simply very curious and a degenerate gambler)
"Fink is still a big believer in the U.S. economy and argues things are looking mostly constructive at this point. He feels the bull story is still intact, but its durability matters a lot more."
It's the human equivilent of AI slop.
You think the most well funded and capable military in the world would sit idle and please itself with keeping conflict contained?
If your scenario plays out they will also be broke so that military may not be able to be funded. I wouldnt say its impossible but a civil war would break the country such that a lot of the aspects that make you fearful also cease to exist.
> For countries outside the US, it would actually not be a bad scenario.
I really don’t think I can help you, but the two obvious crazy ideas encompassed here are that civil wars never turn into wider regional conflicts and that losing a major trading partner never tanked an economy. Or that the ideological conflict here won’t possibly spread anywhere else (did you not even notice Vance and Musk’s support of afd ?) Good luck with all that.
The major trading partner that has been placing heavy tariffs on everyone but Russia? I just want to confirm we are talking about the same one.
> did you not even notice Vance and Musk’s support of afd ?
This is exactly the sort of problem we are talking about.
Funny though how all those European countries everyone on HN and Reddit point to as "how things should be" are all pretty ethnically and culturally homogenous, though that's changing rapidly. Interestingly, cracks are starting to appear.
> And the US was always less homogenous than other "western" countries.
The US was 85-90% white in 1965. That's pretty homogenous.
And that evolution itself tells the story of the US itself. The people in non-homogenous neighborhoods are happy and harmonious, but outsiders scared of cultural differences cause racial strife and discontent.
Those who let themselves get worked up about racism are the problem, not the non-homogenous races.
Instead of stopping there you're regurgitating, and it's unfortunate I'm confirming Poe's law, Mein Kampf.
> The US was 85-90% white in 1965. That's pretty homogenous.
I think you know nothing about culture, ethnicity, or the history of bigotry, xenophobia, and racism in the US if you can confidently make that statement. You're reducing all the diverse peoples that made up the nation into a single group based on their skin color.
There’s multiple components to what “happiness” entails. One might argue that a society filled with numerous cultures and ethnicities all vying for their own interests can make for quite a bit of unhappiness. E.g., if everyone was white, there’d be no hand-wringing over white supremacy. If everyone was straight, there’d be no hand-wringing over LGBT representation, and so on. That’s not saying that other social ills can’t exist in homogenous societies, but they do have fewer due to having more shared identity and values. Don’t be dense just to make a point.
> You're reducing all the diverse peoples that made up the nation into a single group based on their skin color.
Like people do today when lumping everyone of various ethnicities into the “white” bucket and decrying “whiteness”? If it’s a valid classification today why can’t we use the same term retrospectively?
Trump is the prime example , why did he decide to abandon the lifestyle afforded by his 500 million dollar net worth to pursue a job where 27% of his predecessors where shot at? Abandoning comfortable life to risk death.
Why don't rich celebrities quit after the first death threat letter, when they already have a huge bag of money?
The material wealth at the extremes is a recipe for unstable and unpredictable behavior , not for calm and collected behavior. People engage in ego battles and fall in love with their ideas and are willing to go to war for them as in a world of abundance they are the only thing that matters in order to 'win'.
The most abstract things (interest rates ring a bell) become personal because ideas about them were conceived in self reflection during the infinite hours of thinking and wondering free time afforded by material abundance, killing off ideas becomes akin to killing part of self and becomes unacceptable to the ego.
This Is true for individuals and countries alike.
You are skeptical that it was written by an American, but you have no proof that it was not?
Do you know who did write it?
Those guys in the Whitehouse, are they not American?
They are the ones steering you straight off a cliff and quite literally anything - including civil war - could happen as a result of that.
From the perspective of these allies it is better that American descends into a small civil war and sorts this shit out now rather than it keep simmering and escalting into a global conflict where more people including more Americans die.
You think people didn't find other ways to dislike each other when they were all "white"? Like I already said you don't know history very well or you're the one being "dense to make a point".
> If it’s a valid classification today why can’t we use the same term retrospectively?
I can't speak for today or say if it's valid. But that's not how things were back then because the people themselves didn't believe that. You've never heard the slurs people used for different ethnic and religious groups that all hailed from Europe and had light skin? The amount of "hand-wringing" about JFK being the first non-Protestant president? There was no feeling of "homogeneity" back then either based solely on skin color.
> you have no proof that it was not?
In other comments on their profile, they refer to Americans as if they are someone other than themselves. Also, the belief that a civil war splitting up the US is likely within the next 5 years seems like a pretty big giveaway.
> Those guys in the Whitehouse, are they not American?
As I said, multiple people can want bad things. I'm painfully aware of what the current admin is doing to our global reputation and what they are risking with their current games - and there are still 3 years on the clock.
Take care.
It's going to be a very long three years. Or a very short one. That choice is not up to the rest of the world but up to the USA.
US is being driven by the personal whims of a deteriorating tyrant, Congress is allowing it and the courts are only doing a tiny amount of checking his power.
You can't just say "despite everything happening we're still the good guys and China and Russia are the bad guys!"
Osama bin Ladin won. The goals he had when he attacked America have been entirely achieved. Americans got stupid and became susceptible to the society changing effects of terrorism. He got us to destroy ourselves.
This leftist idea that everything will just be ok and we don't need to do anything because it'll all be fixed in the next election needs to stop.
Right now the only people actually protecting the republic are the people in the streets because NOBODY else is accomplishing anything.
I think one of the effects of American narcissism and stupidity is not understanding that Osama bin Laden's primary goal was to replace the Saudi royal family with a Caliphate of his design, and no, he never actually accomplished that. He wasn't about us.
Why does Hacker News make Trump sound so much more interesting than he really is?
He's trying to use economic warfare to annex Greenland.
The most powerful man in the world is a delusional dementia patient and egomaniac being allowed to do literally anything he wants.
They are also exporting their surveillance state technology to dictatorships in Pakistan, Iran, and Venezuela. Look at Iran, 16000 protestors are dead in two weeks. That is the Chinese model of stability.
Bad leaders exist everywhere, Europe included. But in the US, they leave. Trump is gone in two years. Good luck aligning your economies and value systems with China. I’m firmly on the side of liberal democracy.
You're a European leader looking at this situation frankly trying to decide whose atrocities and foreign policy is worse, it's not exactly obvious and choosing China because at least China isn't trying to annex your neighbors and is behaving rationally even if it's not nice things it's predictable.
There's a big difference between "We're the good guys, we stopped the bad things happening in our country before they started" and "I know we're doing awful things but I bet it'll stop soon with our next election".
* https://time.com/7347191/minnesota-army-troops-standby/
whose deputy commander is a Canadian, as a part of an exchange program:
* https://11thairbornedivision.army.mil/dcgo/
so I'm not sure how sending him to Greenland is going to work.
Depending on the details of timing of the operation and the US-Canada diplomatic situation as a result, what happens after he is relieved might not be as simple as a return to Canada, he might conceivably even end up as a POW.
* https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/18/pentagon-ala...
There will not be civil war unless the military truly comes to assist in a Trump attempt to take power in 2028, which I think is very unlikely.
I very much hope civil war is unlikely, but the federal government is vastly undermanned if a conflict occurs on US soil.
(have four siblings who have decades in combined military tours across all service branches except the coast guard, and I leverage them as a resource collectively in these matters)
[1] https://www.fcnl.org/updates/2016-10/costs-war-numbers
[2] https://usafacts.org/answers/how-many-troops-are-in-the-us-m...
[3] https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-people-are-in-the-us-...
Denmark and the UK (to mention just two countries) also lost men fighting alongside America in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Look how they are being repaid.
Here is a rather sobering video from a British perspective: The Prime Minister responding to JD Vance by simply reading out in Parliament, the names of British soldiers who died supporting American operations.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/pm-honours-uk-troops-killed-123537...
Why is it that every normalizing "this is fine" commenter invariably drops into the same nonsense about "enforcing federal law" after a few short comments? The problem in Minnesota isn't that [some] federal laws are being enforced. Rather it's that federal law enforcement "officers" are abusing their immunity to work as lawless terror squads, abducting citizens and attacking protestors, backed up by a demented chief executive who has no respect for our American ideals of individual liberty or limited government.
Trump was elected as a specific reaction to the previous administration’s immigration policies. You’re right that voters supported that, but they didn't sign up for the rest. If you look at the polling, the tariffs and the Greenland push are explicitly unpopular.
> having free elections doesn’t make you the good guys if you elect a tyrant.
it does. The point of democracy is that voters make mistakes. Even European countries have elected tyrants in the past. The difference is that a free system allows you to survive a bad leader and vote them out; an authoritarian one doesn't.
Sometimes (it's not so rare) the majority of people WANT horrible things to be perpetuated by their government. It isn't just "mistakes" or being tricked or some sort of scam, governments act with the consent of the people and a ruling majority voting for atrocities is not uncommon.
I'm not saying democracy is bad, but I am saying it's delusional to think that just having democracy cures all ills.
---
I have heard first hand people I know, seen people in videos online, and seen plenty of comments online to the tune of "ICE is doing EXACTLY what we want, keep going". A lot of people want exactly what has happened and while I think either the majority is eroding or already lost in support for these things, it is by no means a landslide in public opinion against the rising fascist politics in America. Sitting by and expecting to win the next election and just gritting your teeth until then is not the right response.
A huge portion of why this has happened is democratic "knowledge" that they deserve to win so they will, and making really bad political decisions based on this attitude.
People in the US have been living with the insanity of Trump for so long that they have become numb to it, and don't realize just how crazy and out of bounds every day is now. We continue on, because we have to, but it's hard to reevaluate everything every single day because it's so crazy.
Europe and the rest of the world are making completely rational decisions in response to the utter self-destructive actions taking place by the entire US political system right now.
The US population has been cowed into complacence and numbness, but the rest of the world has not yet, and will take appropriate action.
No, it's an assumption that the people discussing the subject are sane and rational. It's one thing to argue that the US devaluing its wildly overvalued dollar is an effective default. Nobody would disagree with that, that's why we did it - to give us the continual option for rugpulls. But it's simply delusional and unserious to insinuate that the US won't just print paper to pay off nominal debt. It costs the US absolutely nothing.
If the US doesn't do it and defaults, it props up the value of foreign-held treasuries by giving debtors a claim, it doesn't reduce it. We happily let the presses run since 2008, running up the stock market by nearly an order of magnitude, and didn't see a drop of inflation until the last presidential term.
Also, it's extremely weird that European elites think of NATO as some kind of local government. It's simply a US-invented and controlled institution that it used to pressure Russia (the US's competitor in a bipolar world), has had nothing but a corrosive effect in Europe, and now they do the job for free.
NATO is critical for the European powers (those not named Russia). The US doesn't require it. The US doesn't need to defend Europe any longer. And it's clear the Europeans don't want the US there, so it works out great. Europe can boost its defense spending by ~$300 billion to make up the difference, or not, whatever they choose to do is up to them.
The US had the world's largest economy six decades before NATO existed. China is growing into a superpower entirely without a NATO-like participation. NATO is primarily beneficial to European stability. The US doesn't need NATO to defend itself at all.
There was also a benefit to the US maintaining NATO - it could nudge/encourage/guide other countries into doing things it wanted done (such as Afganistan). This soft power is being discarded with NATO.
The US economy is only the largest if you don't adjust for purchasing power, at which point the US and EU are in joint second place way behind China, and separated from each other by a rounding error despite Brexit.
If the US wants to go alone, sure we'd miss you, but it's welcome to go in peace… so long as it doesn't steal Greenland on the way out.
The only "good" thing it did was breaking Sarajevo's siege in the mid 90s, but event then it isn't actually clear if the Serb wouldn't have backed off anyway at the end of the month because they couldn't progress due to the UN presence. Still saved a few hundred civilian lives, in exchange for a thousand of proto-nazi, so i can't say it was bad.
No one will attack any EU country anyway, as long as france doens't change its nuclear doctrine, which, i will state here once again, include a "warning shot".
The EU itself was viewed critically from Washington until it could be proven that it had no intention of becoming a military alliance. So while it could be true that the US does not need NATO in a strict sense, the idea that it has not been net beneficial to the US is absurd. No Danish soldiers would have died in middle eastern wars if it wasn't for NATO.
only 1 country invoked article 5 until today and it's not in Europe)
Only because Europe was intent on destroying each other.
The European allies have put their money and more importantly blood into these conflicts.
Yes, we can all look at a geographical map and state that the USA is blessed geographically by being split by two oceans from anything major in the world and thus conclude that the US does not need Europeans to defend its borders.
In essence you're completely ignoring how US allies in form of NATO allowed US to thrive as the global military power by providing a deep web of support, logistics, bases, ports, intelligence and allowing the US to have a huge influence it has consistently leveraged for decades to its own benefit or needs. And that includes financial reasons (like buying US weaponry).
If US wants to pull out of NATO it is what it is, but this whole nonsense of NATO benefitting only the European allies when it's always Washington asking for other's blood and bases and logistics is just it: nonsense.
If we need Greenland so bad because Russia is that dangerous then isn't NATO important?
NATO is / was USAs way of controlling Europe to have something against Asia.
It's time for us / Europe to let the USA being whatever and kicking them out
We (Germany) are quite well equipped making guns and tanks.
And btw it was our strategy to try to win over countries by NOT being the big bully but sure Russia and USA made it clear that this no longer works.
I hope USA leaves NATO and we kick them out sooner than later
To be pedantic, Canada is a major non-European NATO member.
And then there are allies, some of them designated by Trump:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_non-NATO_ally
Or, they were, as there is no certainty under his rule.
If US pulls back from NATO, and Europe builds up military power to compensate, then the US loses this de facto leadership seat of an empire.
Today, the US appears in parallel to be doing two things:
1. Causing fragmentation in Europe, by promoting right-wing nationalist politics in the EU
2. Threatening to drastically reduce their role in NATO
At the very least we can both agree that these two efforts are completely in contradiction with each other, and it's very unlikely that Europeans will want to go for more fragmentation without the military power of the US on their side, right?
- If EU gets some more vertebrate leaders (something that tends to happen in times like this even in the most spineless countries), the first thing they will do is probably go get some allies in the Pacific to make up for this - and Pacific is much more sensitive to US.
Of course, all of this is phenomenally stupid and everyone will be far worse off.
right, why would you want to hold US treasury bonds especially if the value of the US dollar is being destroyed? Even if I believed that the US wouldn't default on its debts, or come up with flimsy arguments why it shouldn't have to pay all of them
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/trump-says-us-might-have-...
it just doesn't seem like a super-smart investment at the moment.
The procedure in times of war, at least by the US treasury is to put the payments in a blocked account that is then given to the citizen of the opposing country post war.
This is also why russian assets in US/EU banks, e.g., are only frozen: doing any other thing with them would instantly trigger the entire world to liquidate their holdings. Would Saudis or Indians or Danes hold assets that can be confiscated for geopolitical reasons?
"Here are the dollars we owe you. They're worth half as much as the ones you paid us."
Yet here we are.
Demonstrably wrong as Trump announced tariffs on the countries sending troops to Greenland.
Ergo, they increasingly do not want to hold that debt.
Why not? It has happened* before therefore it can/will happen again.
* (more or less). I would count significant debt restructure (1790) or replacing promised gold with paper (1860-1930, 1970) or even a significant delay (1979) as a default... even if it was temporary in 1979.
They would have to actively choose to default.
None of those are much of a stretch from all the laws already broken repeatedly
But I'm sure he would not do anything crazy. That's just inconceivable.
The finance world:
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
A year or two of NATO countries increased contribution doesn't make up for decades of underinvestment ripoffs.
Isn't that considered a "technical" default since you basically burned every debt holder by inflating your way out of debt? Almost like a TKO vs KO in boxing?
Until Trump says he's going to, then his boosters will declare its a genius maneuver and actually its Joe Biden's fault (Joe made him do it!)
Now, Trump is an opportunist and in the psat his talk of default has been a way to throw rhetorical stones at his political opponents and keep himself in the news while he was out of office. Back in office, he has sought to project some kind of commitment to fiscal responsibility and financial stability.
But let's be real here, he's making threats against a fellow NATO member on the daily and openly saying he wants to annex territory. If he gets it into his head that the Danes or the EU are being mean to him and hurting his fee-fees, he's fully capable of responding in irrational fashion and has a toxic personality cult that will back him up. Be honest, if I took this month's headlines and took a time machine a year into the past, would 2025 you have believed my warnings about what would be happening 1 year into the second Trump admin?
The US defaulting on its debt seems to be the plan.
The Mar-a-Lago Accord, or the Plan to Crash the US Economy -- https://umairhaque.substack.com/p/the-mar-a-lago-accord-or-t...
I'm pretty sure they all answered the call when the US invoked Article 5 after the 9/11 attacks, no?
> The US has paid 65 to 70% of the total of $1.4 to 1.5T/year from 2018 to 2025.
Are you suggesting that the US has paid over $1 trillion into NATO each year? That would be difficult because the US military budget has never crossed $1 trillion. The DoD budget is going to be $900.6 billion in FY2026. [0]
[0] https://www.meritalk.com/articles/senate-passes-fy26-defense...
For instance, when the East-European countries have been admitted into NATO they were forced to pay dearly for this, with many billions of $ for various lucrative and overpriced contracts assigned to some well-connected US companies (e.g. Bechtel), either for various infrastructure projects or for military acquisitions.
Those billions of $ do not appear in the US budget, but they have enriched certain US businessmen.
It is normal for a regular US citizen to believe that NATO has not been beneficial for himself/herself, because this is true, but what regular citizens are not aware of is that NATO has been a great source of profits for some US citizens who are more equal than the others.
Did you forget that the one and only Article 5 call to date on NATO to members was for the USA following 9/11?
[1]https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/us-contributes-16-nato-an...
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Treaty
> Following the September 11 attacks, the Secretary General of NATO, George Robertson telephoned Colin Powell and said that declaring an Article 5 contingency would be a useful political statement for NATO to make. The United States indicated it had no interest in making such a request itself; however, it would not object to the council taking such action on its own.[55][56]
Ultimately though, the Irak invasion shattered the trust and status quo, and i agree 100% with people saying NATO must die. Alliance that are more than a reactive defensive pact and force member into attacking unrelated countries should disappear. Just get nukes, and pray you won't have to use them.
2. "I helped pass the bucket when you were putting out that brush fire, and now you tell me you won't run into my burning house to save my children?!"
3. Mutual support is more like "I'll help you with your main adversary and you'll help me with mine". What we have now is "Fuck no I won't help you with your main adversary, we oughta stay out of it--wait, how dare you suggest you won't fight my main adversary for me?!"
Ironically, that will make some projects harder, especially if US laws such as NEPA start being applied on the Greenland territory. Hello environmental lawsuits from all sides.
There was some measure to ensure that Trump could not take the US out of NATO, he seems have been trying to find some alternative that has the same effect and he may well have found it.
A lot of pundits that were center-left in past years fall into this trap, and normalize extremely right-wing positions these days because of it. They are stuck in an media and information environment of politics and, lacking many core values to guide them, they navigate to the middle of the media that they consume, assuming that the truth will be there in the middle just like it was in the past.
This is a fundamental problem and one reason we're mired in this culture war. Social friction is caused by jostling based on group membership, and there's no common values-based scaffolding we can use to collaborate in building a better way.
I used to scoff when told to say the pledge of allegiance as a young person. Now, the closing words "liberty and justice for all" sound quite aspirational.
And also practicality. Extreme people are highly motivated to push their agenda, and that requires a party. They adapt and find a way to participate, one way or another. Often simply by ramping up awareness of the opponent party's inevitable extremes.
The real question is: how do the moderates in a party operate, and are they currently tolerated and reasonably well represented within the party.
(I am using extreme here to mean a lack of operating in objective reality, or a strong will to divide who "matters" from who doesn't. Usually they go together.)
In a representative democracy it doesn't matter what you believe only what the person you vote for believes.
However, IMHO this doesn't really matter because in the US both the left and the right tend to score high on authoritarianism on the freedom vs. authoritarian axis on a two-dimensional political spectrum view if you look at their actual policies and views they defend. That even includes the almost nonexistent US far left. Strongly anti-authoritarian viewpoints are extremely rare in the US. Even self-proclaimed "libertarians" in the US tend to have fairly authoritarian views when you press them about it, they're usually merely anti-federal-government pro business right-wing neoliberals.
Plenty of people wouldn't even count her as "left".
The exchange rate of the yen has dropped recently by a lot, but the inflation experience there has been the exact opposite of America's.
Trying to inflate away 40+ Trillion in debt would directly result in hyperinflation.
> they debased the Yen to garbage levels
Look at Yen to USD exchange rates and it’s clear they didn’t. “From 1991 to 2003, the Japanese economy, as measured by GDP, grew only 1.14% annually, while the average real growth rate between 2000 and 2010 was about 1%,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades Meanwhile the USD exchange rate in Jan 1988 was 127 vs 140 in 1998 vs 107 in 2008. It went up and down all through the 20 years of poor economic growth, but something else was clearly the issue.
I am not saying that the process will be pleasant for the US or its citizens. But it is not without precedent and is extremely unlikely to cause hyperinflation. My 2c.
The media the public consumes only gives them culture war BS to work with, though. It started with Fox News, and that eventually cowed the rest of the media to give in to Fox News framing on every topic, since Fox News was so successful at winning eyeballs.
The media were supporting and whitewashing republicans for years now. For years now, they were full of bad faith false equivalencies. Hysteria whenever someone says true but negative things about conservatives. Somehow, only rural people count as real Americans, people in cities dont. It was important to "challenge" liberals while it was equally important to scold anyone who says something negative about republicans. Republicans must not be challenged, their actions need to be painted in the best possible light.
> big corporations
Big corporations supported Trump, because they thought he will get rid of pesky rules that prevents them from harming more people. They like when the law allows them to harm the environment, when it facilitates frauds committed by big companies.
> big law firms
Is there anything to suggest they were opposed?
As opposed to what? The majority of people took away their power either by not voting for them or not voting at all.
Multiple universities have refused Trump's demands and Newsom even threatened universities in his state if they went along with it.
Democrats speak out about everything Trump is doing. They also worked with some Republicans recently on bills that Trump is against.
So please tell me how they are at fault?
Because it seems they are at fault when they are in power and they are at fault for Republicans when they are in power.
You're also generalizing the media. It's nearly impossible they are equally manipulative.
Since no political party will be perfect we should vote for the best option
If anything, the opposite is true. Citizens who've never protested in their lives are now in the streets. Off-year elections have had record turnouts.
154–155 million people voted in the 2024 presidential election; that's 63-65% of eligible voters, the second highest percentage in the past 100 years.
Most Americans took democracy for granted; the possibility of losing it has caused Americans to wake up.
And then trump got elected which is the reason of the crisis right now.
Perhaps American people wanted this?
Also, I think that America and Russia's probably the only biggest difference right now is protests and yea, I looked at some protests in America and how people are getting shot and even one veteran got detained who worked in iraq war for 3 days and was stripped naked and wasn't allowed to say anything and this happened a long time ago because of ICE
All because he looked brown. You could fight or die for the country & they would come to haunt you.
Veterans are calling ICE against the protestors even worse than how Veterans acted during the wars towards Iraqi citizens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y91VgKlJfLI
I have consistently called it out but most Americans from what I can gather want to desperately fit in the two boxes and not have independent support and especially when one party's effectively doing something like this. Bi-partisanship had always ended & you can't vote for anyone more than these two parties (one of which is causing an active war in greenland but the other party's better in this context but its also complicated and they still have very much an influence caused by lobbying)
You forgot another one: literally threatening two NATO members (Canada and Denmark, in form of Greenland) of annexation.
If that bet is actually being made by Putin, hmm, I'm worried, but then again the implementation of the anti-NATO project is being run by Trump, so I think the EU just might come out on top. The whole Greenland thing for example, seems like an EU solidifying step, at the same time as it is NATO destroying.
Why would anyone listen?
The US is unlikely to find itself the only industrialized nation without massively damaged infrastructure again anytime soon.
Actions like these where US leadership is heavily distorting the facts make it much easier for the AfD to present themselves as a legitimate political movement allegedly being wrongfully suppressed by the “authoritarian” incumbents. The AfD currently scores 25% in representative nationwide polls, higher than any other political party in Germany. In some federate-state elections they scored over 30%, in one of them again higher than any other party. You can’t just ignore them as “crazy“.
Same kind of thing that got Trump elected.
Insurers couldn't deny coverage due to existing conditions
Kids could stay on parents until 26 even if they aren't in school
There were also subsidies for the lowest income people to help pay for open market plans.
This is something right? This is a step in the right direction?
If one party wants this and the other wants to dismantle then the first is left and the latter right.
How do you know that was the case?
Nevertheless, they express extreme positions. Like "people should be treated preferentially by race" or "private property should be abolished/confiscated" or "the police should be defunded" or "transwomen should be allowed to compete in women's sports categories" or "illegal immigrants should receive taxpayer-subsidized healthcare." These are like 70-30 or 80-20 issues at the national level, with Leftists on the wrong side.
If that extreme is good or not is a mostly a value judgement - there is no right or wrong answer. There are consequences to what answer you pick though.
What's your evidence for this?
That's not peanuts.
Today, US policymakers see China as the main adversary. But European states have no real military power--certainly none that can be projected in the Pacific theater--and wouldn't have the will to deploy it even if they did. Europeans now expect America to fight Russia for them, not with them. So now NATO is basically all risk and cost for the US with no benefit against their main adversary.
I think it's a shortsighted view of American national security imperatives: American security relies as it ever did on security in both Western Europe and Eastern Asia. Abandoning one theater to focus on the other just leaves a giant blind spot.
However, this has led Europe to take its own security more seriously and stop relying on America to fight the Russians for them, something multiple POTUSes have tried more diplomatically to achieve--and failed--for decades.
As an European: nobody has this expectation, unless you're using some strange subreddit comment as a source of information.
That's changing, but for many years European nations did not spend very much on their militaries. A large part of why is the protection of NATO and US bases in various countries.
That is not evident at all in how any US policymaker acts these days. China is stronger than ever, precisely due to US actions. Every day, the US gives up power and throws it away, and China picks it up off the ground for free.
The supposed "China Hawks" are all chicken hawks without anything to back them up.
https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/...
I note in the current Europe/Ukraine vs Russia fighting there are no US troops, although they did send weapons for which we are grateful
>China as the main adversary
neither China nor Russia are about to bomb the US but in terms of threats to US interests and hybrid warfare we have the full scale war in Ukraine vs only some threats over Taiwan and on the hybrid front I hear rumors the the Russians cultivated a US property developer code name Krasnov and he went on to cause some havoc back in the US.
Are the French going to be parking the Charles de Gaulle alongside American aircraft carriers in the Taiwan Strait if push comes to shove in the Pacific? I wouldn't entirely discount it. But maybe more importantly, even if they're not, does making an enemy of the EU negatively impact the ability of the US to park American aircraft carriers there? Certainly damage to the Atlantic trade relationship is unlikely to do the US any favors economically, which is important if the US wants to keep funding the Navy. And a potential loss of European controlled military bases has the potential to negative effect the US military's logistics, which is where the real superpower status comes from. Maybe most significantly, how would such a shift in alliances impact the willingness of Pacific allies to support the US, which obviously does have a direct impact on any conflict with China.
That's a very uncharitable take. Europe relies on NATO to fight the Russians. Of course it does. There is no alternative, and the US would never allow other credible alliances to form. Because why would they? It's certainly not in their interest.
It's good that Europe spends more in security, and it's good that Europe seems to be serious about Ukraine. However western Europe is something else. If push really would come to shove, there is zero chance Russia could take and hold continental Europe.
The population is larger, the economy is larger by a ridicolous amount, and there are French and British nukes positioned all over. What Europe is mainly lacking military projection in the Pacific and the Middle East, and that's not likely to change.
This has been policy from at least the Clinton administration, and it has worked great to ensure that the US remains the biggest fish in the NATO pond, even if it is not bigger than all the others put together. Now that the current administration is tearing NATO in real time and the President is saying that his 'personal morality' trumps international law and treaties (never mind that ratified treaties stand on the same level as the Constitution, per the Constitution itself), I would imagine that the other members are working around the clock to implement their contingency plans and ramp up domestic military production and other avenues of procurement.
This is the usual claptrap Euros and Eurosimps come up with when Americans gripe about subsidizing Europe's defense.
"Soft power" isn't putting money back in Americans' pockets, and the primary beneficiaries of NATO clearly didn't like us very much even before Trump's return, when Biden was still president and the aid flowed freely to Kyiv: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/06/11/views-of-the-u...
> Sweden: 47% had a favorable opinion of the US.; Germany: 49%; France: 46%; The Netherlands: 48%
This is the "soft power" that Americans should rue having lost under Trump? A continent of entitled ingrates, who constantly crow about their generous welfare states ("six months paid vacation!") they enjoy partially through neglect of defense, and condescendingly lecture us ("As a European...") about how everything we do is wrong, who apparently don't like us very much even when we do come to their defense?
We the people are responsible for the government we get.
Don't like the consequences? Make better voting choices next time.
Obviously I don't agree with his threats over Greenland, but acting like the end of NATO would be a huge loss for the US is ridiculous. Look at how obsequious European heads of government are towards Trump, even in the face of these threats; that tells you all you need to know about whom NATO truly benefits. They know if the US withdraws from Europe completely, they'll have to up their military spending considerably to plug the gaps, which will strain the welfare state.
The EU has chosen to try to cooperate rather than to be at war all the time and it looks like that may have been a wrong bet but that is mostly because first one (Russia) and now another (USA) party have reneged on the deals that were in place.
But not while carrying Euros’ defense obligations
Here in the UK, I get 29 days leave, I buy 5 more, plus get 8 bank holidays - so 42 days leave - or 8 weeks. Plus volunteering days and training days... but that isn't that common.
I lived in Europe and can explain it for you.
In Germany, particularly in Bavaria with its 13 gesetzliche Feiertage (holidays including regional ones like Heilige Drei Könige, Fronleichnam, and Allerheiligen), Urlaubstage can be maximized through smart planning. The rule is that weekends (Samstag and Sonntag) and Feiertage do not count against your Urlaubskonto; they don't deduct from your vacation days. With over 30 Urlaubstage (the legal minimum is 24 Werktage, but many collective agreements grant 30 or more), you achieve over 60 free days (calendar days of absence) by using Brückentage (Bridging days) and longer blocks.
If you have more than 30 Urlaubstage (e.g., 32), it rises to ~70 free days. It is possible—plan early, as Brückentage are popular!
All teachers and most politicians. Teachers do enjoy the same vacation as students: schools aren't open during vacation. Two months of vacation + 6 additional weeks of vacation during the year + a few special one-day holidays.
As for politicians: my stepfather was working at a national parliament but only when there would be official questions and only when these would be in his native tongue (country had two official languages). And when the country would be without a government, he'd have as much as 500 days (500 days: you read correctly, and it didn't happen once but twice) of vacations. It's only if there was a super urgent matter where the parliament would be opened that he'd have to work: so he'd quickly hop on a plane and go back to his native country.
So "who": some public servants. Not all but some public servants definitely do enjoy 8 to 12 weeks of vacation and even much more than that.
At the expense of working, taxpaying, citizens.
EDIT: for the 500 days... He would not know beforehand it'd be 500 days. He'd just know there was no government anymore. So he was fully paid but basically had to do jack shit until there'd be a government again. Which nobody could tell when it'd happen. But you read correctly: half a thousand days+. You all read that correctly. His vacation on the sunny french riviera paid by the taxes of the people.
In the case of 32 days of vacation with bridging & holidays it is very possible to get over 70 days of calendar absence
It's hard to detect sarcasm through the screen but in case you're being serious and just repeat what Trump says, he does this because Americans are not stupid and are asking, why Europeans can enjoy free healthcare, education and 4-week holidays and we cant? The answer "because we sponsored them" makes no sense but finds fertile ground in the hearts of some people.
So why does the US spend more per capita on healthcare than the EU?
Russia obviously bears the moral blame for starting this war, but Putin clearly was tempted by Western weakness. Had European states kept large and effective militaries and credibly threatened to employ them in Ukraine's defense, we probably wouldn't be where we are right now. So in some not insignificant measure, historical European underspending has contributed to the need right now for dramatically increased spending across the entire alliance.
2. I disagree with GP and agree with your cynicism there. US domestic policy failures are in no way caused by foreign intransigence of any kind. IIRC we spend more on health care per capita than (almost?) any other nation yet rank nowhere near the top in health outcomes. That's on us.
And I think it's important to correctly identify the root cause of our broken domestic policies, because I suspect fixing that issue will fix more governance failures than just healthcare.
Way back in September last year, which feels like forever ago, there was this good summary from Politico:
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/05/pentagon-national-d...
> Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s policy chief, is leading the strategy. He played a key role in writing the 2018 version during Trump’s first term and has been a staunch supporter of a more isolationist American policy. Despite his long track record as a China hawk, Colby aligns with Vice President JD Vance on the desire to disentangle the U.S. from foreign commitments.
A supposed "China Hawk" is the one writing the policy that hands power to China! Calling them "frauds" is fully appropriate, and even though the author admits he dashed this off in a single day, I find it quite convincing:
https://secretaryrofdefenserock.substack.com/p/the-final-evo...
This is not the case of Europe externalizing the cost. It is the case of USA using other countries for own benefit, then starting aggression against them while trying to cast itself as victim.
Sweden just joined NATO in 2024, so what does the cold war have to do with it?
> a country where less than half of the population had a favorable view of us as a nation, before Trump.
Ok? Yes, it was looking like Sweden thought Russia was the bigger threat, so they joined NATO in 2024, but I guess Trump is making them regret this.
The US intelligence community is correct in its assessment, but US policy is not acting in any way consistent with both the US being the dominant world power and taking that ODNI assessment seriously.
Current US policy makers are instead trying to hide in their shell like a turtle, and greatly restrict US power so that it must not confront or deal with the threat from China.
> The National Defense Strategy — a dramatic shift from even the first Trump administration — no longer focuses primarily on countering China. Instead, it blames past administrations for ignoring American interests and jeopardizing the U.S. military’s access to the Panama Canal and Greenland.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/23/pentagon-national-d...
Edit: big news day for China Hawks proving to be frauds, this is from the WSJ
Trump Administration Pushes Out Key Officials Focused on China Tech Threat Departing staffers worked for a Commerce Department office charged with protecting the U.S. from Chinese technological advances
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/trump-adminis...
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/economic-defense-unit-how-the-u-s...
I wrote "Western" rather than "European" specifically because I believe American weakness has played a role, too. But would it really make it better if Russia invaded Europe solely because of American weakness? That European states are so weak and helpless that they hardly even factor into Putin's calculus?
Europe has spent less on military because after the cold war and still today, it never had any realistic threat. Russia can't even take few miles off Ukraine.
The only realistic threat is the US, which is an ally, in theory. Now a threat.
The realistic threat is Russia, which is currently winning a war in Ukraine through sheer attrition and will succeed unless Europe steps up big time.
I hate Trump and would much rather see the world keep on going the way it has been, but Europe's militaries grew around an American core after WWII. A few nations have serious armies (France, for one) but most of Europe is close enough to a US airbase for a small military to work fine.
This misses the point, which is that Europe and the US need each other. Without the US, Europe stands no chance against Chinese and Russian influence. Without Europe, the US cannot stand against China and Russia.
And yet Europe is unable to support Ukraine enough to change the course of war.
Which is the direct cause of the current situation. If Europe was so strong and ready, war in Ukraine would be over, Russia was defeated, and US wouldn't even think of doing what it is doing.
Everything else is copium.
It's not unable. There is little political will in Europe and USA to support Ukraine with arms to the victory. They support Ukraine just enough to not loose. It's in their interest to grind russian meat and tanks in Ukraine as long as possible.
That's the wrong comparison - the comparison in this context is the size of the European military versus Russia.
Is it just me that finds it odd that the same people say that both Russian is an imminent threat to Europe - where its tanks could roll over the continent - and at the same time say just one more push to win in Ukraine?
If Russia attacked a united Europe it would lose - the slow defeat in Ukraine is purely a matter of will, not capability. ie it matters more to Russia than Europe.
Note most Europeans don't see the war in Ukraine as an attack on Europe by the Russians - despite what the hawks would like to paint - that's why the hawks can't bounce Europeans to put significant boots on the ground in Ukraine.
The US spending could be the result of so many other factors.
I keep trying to make people here aware of that, but euro-enthusiasm is very good at hiding ugly and complex reality of European politics. And it is not even limited to Ukraine, but it shows itself with Greenland as well. If you really take a closer look, you'll see that different countries indeed made different reactions, even if they sent symbolic amounts of troops to Greenland.
And, above else, people tend to mistake words for action, and believe that a post made by some European leader on Twitter is somehow enough to bring things into reality.
> Seems like the threat should become more substantial before the whole continent awakens.
But Russia is not and won't be strong enough to pose a significant threat to German or French core territory, not to speak about Spain or Ireland. Moreover, as much as we in Europe like to equate Putin with some evil madman, for it makes the world simpler for us, Russian elite is rational, and invasion of Germany is nothing but stupid from their perspective. Of course there are broader interests that may motivate countries to act against Russia (for example French influence in Africa or Asia) but, at the same time, these interests may motivate them to throw Eastern Europe under the bus.
Therefore if anybody believes in some united European action, or a single European army that would actually be worth anything and won't be yet another initiative created mainly to come up with a nice catch-phrase (Steadfast Europe!), lives inside a fantasy.
But that's the point - will is everything. No one denies that Europe has enough money. Thing is, it doesn't have much else.