Joe Biden is now officially the 46th President of the United States of America

Main thing is "where is my $1600". If your going to promise to pay for votes than better be punctual when doing so. Fuck this other dumb shit and quit goin straight to giving China what they want. China's little bitch all over again.

 

or you know, just don't give two shits about politics since non of them are worthy to run this country.

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all over again? We have been chinas bitch for decades because of the money that is owed to them. No one has once pulled us from that debt.

 

Oh dear. Very glad I am not an American right now. I heard the AOC woman wants 're-education' programs to be set up in schools to 'de-radicalise' political beliefs that do no agree with the governments.

 

Well...I just woke up to find that Biden's administration is already ahead of Trump's. I mean...

Trump's first day:

Sean Spicer: we've had the largest turnout for an inauguration ever!
Reporters worldwide: erm...it was an okay crowd, but not the largest.
Spicer & Kellyanne Conway: you're wrong. Here: take a look at this picture!
Reporters: we were there, dude. Also: this picture's photoshopped.
Conway: yeah, well...we've got alternative facts to reality.

Biden's first day:
He signs 17 executive orders, namely (translated from Dutch):

1. obligation for facemasks in government buildings
2. rejoining the WHO
3. restructuring the government for a national response for covid-19
4. Renewal of eviction suspension and mortgage exclusion
5. Extension of the pause from student loan payment
6. Rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement
7. Rollback of Trump's environmental actions (including cancellation of US-Canada oil pipeline) to protect public health and the environment and restore science
8. Launch of Government Joint Approach to Advance Racial Equality
9. Rollback of Trump's Migration Decree, in Benefit of Undocumented Immigrants
10. Maintaining and strengthening the Daca program
11. Rollback of the Muslim ban
12. Rollback of Trump's internal enforcement decree
13. Suspension of funding for the border wall with Mexico
14. Extension of forced departure for Liberians
15. Prevention and fight against discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation
16. Decree on Ethics for Executive Staff
17. Decree and Presidential Memorandum for Regulatory Process

That's, apparently, a local record. But to be fair: it's mostly the circumstances. In the latter two years, Trump mostly ruled by executive orders because it wasn't worth the hassle to pass it into law, and executive orders are (at least relatively) easy to rollback. And of course the covid-19 situation is even more pressing. With millions infected and over a thousand dying each day, you can't afford a single day of inaction.


So basically: Biden's administration hit the ground running, whereas Trump hit the ground faceplanting.

I'd be more optimistic if the situation wasn't so dire. You can't resurrect those 400'000 deaths. It'd be foolery to think that once everyone/the large majority is vaccinated, everyone will get their jobs back. Global warming is still a growing problem. Iran is been pissed on for the last four years...it won't be easy getting them back into the nuclear arrangement. And last but not least: the USA population has a serious racist xenophobic problem. It takes more than banning a twitter account to solve it (assuming it can be solved in less than an entire generation). So...there's plenty of challenges ahead. More than any previous US president in my lifetime, at the very least. And having a great start isn't saying much...this is a marathon and not a sprint.

 

bidens still got a lot of shit to cleanup that that other lunatic left

 

You dont understand how that works, do you boy?

First for a normal developed country:
- That debt is 'relationship stabilizing' with other countries or entities. Basically, if you buy into my economy - you have less incentive to destabilize my country.
- That debt usually doesnt get payed back - but 'theoretically' whiped out through growth (and subsequently inflation). Think: A Ford Model T sold for 850 USD.
- Debt is different from interest management, during some peoriods in history (say crisis), its perfectly ok, for even a run down state, to do little more than interest management.
(Fun fact: The goal of US foreign politics in their 'factual colonies' was to get their interest payments so high, that the countries GDP (the taxable portion) would be just enough for 'debt services' - at that point you can control a country - which might, or might not go 'ok' for a while (usually means, the country gets run down))
- There is a large difference if your debtors are in your own country, or foreign (Japan is usually the example given)
- There is no point, where a countries 'debt' becomes "too high" - as defined by any metric.

So what are the limiting conditions?
a. Credit investment capability for future generations
b. Creditors believe in a countries ability to pay back
c. GDP growth at levels, where you arent just 'servicing debt'
--

Creditors usually 'stop believing' in a countries ability to pay back, if many of them want to divest - so move their investment elsewhere. Depending on the currency they'll do that in - this means, that this 'money' actually has to be produced. (Printing, selling something, ...)
--

Now to the interesting points.

If your investment capital is so high, that it becomes structural - moving it into other countries comes with serious 'risk of default'. Moving it into other Investments if they are not considered 'solid' comes with 'risk of default'. Getting that much rated 'solid' investments "elsewehere" in the world, isnt exactly easy.

If your ROI in a day is higher than what you can spend in a day - you will not spend that money in a lifetime.

(F.e.: If you are Apple, you currently have reserves at a scale, where you can hire private armies, and successfully annex quite a few small to medium size countries, no problem.)
--

So the question at one point - very distinctly - becomes, do you want a certain country stable - or not. And if you are invested into a certain country, do you want it stable?

If for some reason, stability is not what people can agree on, you will have factors that 'reset' all of that - f.e. wars.

Do you want a war? Probably depends how you are invested.
--

Special case US: US is the worlds hegemon, a superpower, which means - that its currency/infrastructure is _needed_ for several transaction flows in the world currently. They can basically print up what they want - and as a result would inflate most of the world currencies by an equal level. So money to you is free.

What you have to worry is - that parts of the world are "segmenting themselves off" of the US economy (like china does at the moment), because then your risk increases, that someone tries to pull large sums of money, and causes something like a default event - at which point you start printing money - but now china (f.e.) is decoupled - so their worth to investors skyrockets.
--

The goal is NEVER to "pay back all that you owe - that would be just stupid. The goal is to give investors confidence, so that they think that investing in your people/infrastructure, through producing growth, they can make more in return.

Or simply put - states are not housewives.

And there are a bunch of other small details, where f.e. you try not to sell out structural assets to large scale foreign investors, so you could f.e. always change laws, retake the land they own, kick them out of country - without this resulting in your economy tanking - because they owned important parts of it. (Those are events we havent seen in generations, but still -).

Normally the only thing that happens is that in good times, profit ends up at the top, and in bad times people in the middle of society pay. In the meantime - everyone invested big, tries to keep that racket going, because its pretty great - when you 'get a percentage' of 'something structural'. And by that I mean - a real percentage, so one that scales until a countries society stops growing.


edit: Oh, and so you dont just 'always print money' - which doesnt lead to good investments (it leads to prepping up bad ones - usually), you have the "government" decoupled from the entity "thats allowed to print money". Both of them follow different goals (one much more long term than the other), and they should be largely independent, but both still working in the interest of your country.

Also investors deciding, that they want to invest in china mainly - is _not_ the same as 'having become chinas b*tch'. And its not the same as 'so now they want the US to stumble and fall'. Its only about 'higher growth' in one region or another in 20 years or so. And the goal - roughly - is (or at least might be) more interregional equality and equality of income. (Basically allows more people to 'search for the next big thing'. Thats the globalist investors perspective (ideally).)

 

Sounds like a load of shit to me.

Does it? Or is it a few lunatics?

 

If it were just a few lunatics, I wouldn't have mentioned it. But now I think of it: I've used the wrong word. That should be a xenophobic problem rather than a racist one. And that's actually a much worse problem. I can rather easily point at the police brutality and say "well...those people just don't like black people" but that's creating a debate that's not digging deep enough. It's not "just" the discrimination of black people in jobs, inequal wealth and harsher treatment by the police (though each of these are important problems to deal with). It's basically the treatment of...well..."everyone not us".

Trump's retoric against China or his prolonged silence against the BLM-protests can be attributed to racism (and most likely is, but again: that's not the issue here). But the UN, WHO and the EU are organisations that are just as white as Trump's base, but none of those guys as much as blinked when Trump abandoned them, even if they were allies for decades before.
The sad truth is that many of Trump's base are earnest, willing, able people but that simply have no jobs or real future. And it's pretty easy to point at others and say that those others are to blame because...well...in a certain perspective that's not wrong. The EU produces cheaper steel, for example. It's how global trade works: if it's cheaper elsewhere, you buy elsewhere. But then a Trump came along and blamed us for "not playing fair", which obviously is just what the victims in this situations loved to hear (US steel workers...though you'll understand this is just one example of many).

It used to be a cliche that Americans had no clue about what happened outside of their borders. Thanks to guys like Trump and fox news network, the cliche is turning into the idea that Americans assume everyone outside their borders is out to get them. I mean...do I need to remind you that the past government wanted to quit the World Health Organisation IN THE MIDDLE OF A PANDEMIC? A normal government wouldn't survive even floating such an idea for a day. In the USA, it got Trump more votes than four years ago. If democrats hadn't turned out to vote in droves(1), the US would have been a literal third world country around 2024.

So yeah...it's far more than "a few lunatics".

(1): or more specific: mailed in their ballots in droves

 

You have to service the debt with tax income, in that regard debt can be too high.

 

Yes, but not if you can convince the debtors to still stick with you. Japan, or US WW2 bonds - as a rough example.

So if you are hegemon, you still have a leg up there.

Also if you are hegemon with investors invested in you, its much harder for them to divest into other powerblocks, maintaining the same 'low' risk quotient.

Also - not the case in case of a global pandemic (in the current phase) - so if everyone is printing money, then printing money has little effect. For a long while - until the first real competitor stops printing money.

 

They did, they just weren't triggered enough to tweet from their toilets.

You convince them by paying interest, as soon as you can't then it's difficult to convince them. This is what happened to Greece.

Debt can be too high, but I'm not aware that the US debt is currently too high.

 

Yes to Greece, but Greece is not structurally relevant (except for being a glacee (might have the wrong word here, green area with no trees, so you see the 'enemy' coming, in battle ).

If you are not Greece - and have enough investors 'bound locally' that for them its hard to divest (f.e. because everyone is doing it in half of the world, and they werent 'first') - rules can still change a little.


Also - not problematic, if you have high concentration at the very top (1%), because that gives them 'structural influence', for a longer while - without this leading to inflation. So if you (as a 1%er) can get that in one country - and buy up your R&D plant in another country.... You broaden your talent pool, and only have to watch out that societies dont crumble.

 

It's a small country, but that just means they hit the limit earlier.

I am not convinced that the US is too big to fail, if they mismanaged their way into a crisis.

It would come a point where there aren't any suckers left to prop it up. Financial institutions are unlikely to bet their survival on the US being able to turn it around.

 

I agree, but we were talking 'when will the US default' categories.

So find me different investment opportunities, for most structural investors in the US (or US markets, or US resources), and it gets a little harder.

(Part of the US housing crisis was caused by chinese money flooding the US investment market. With too little investment opportunities in the US. (The other part was boomer money.))

 

I don't think it's likely, but it's possible if debt was "too high".

The US housing crisis was caused by fraud in the US. Money flowed in from all over the world because cdo's seemed like a good investment. It seems wrong to blame investors without blaming the multiple layers of fraud occurring. From people building houses, to selling houses, to selling mortgages, taking out mortgages, selling on those mortgages, packaging the mortgages into cdo's & rating the cdo's

 

Yeah, but "too high" is largely debatable.

Because it hinges on some pretty wild criteria. Like what if f.e. the US decides 'yep, too high - lets go to war'. (Need a few economies that produce more profit for us.)

edit: And we'll do that with investors 1,2 and 3 - but we will wipe out all of investors 4,5 and 6 claims.

At this point it comes down to the discussion table...

 

Well, there is a subjective figure which people say is too high when debating current tax levels required to service the debt and an objective figure where the wheels have fallen off the wagon and it is unequivocally too high.

 

Also greece had no ability to print money - so they had no leaverage to discuss with investors, really.

Well - renegotiate tax rate then. Or write off some debt. (Issue - here we are talking serious events, where the market would react with 'loss of trust' -- but then again, you are a structural investor in the US (so pegged to US growth, regardless of what happens, as long as the US exists), you are getting those same investment opportunities in china? With the money you are able to get out of the US?

So 'freedom of investment' is very much a thing if you are talking about volumes that impact lets say 'one generations growth'. Then 'free market' is actually free, and you can move all your investments around like you want to. If it goes from that into "US might default" territory - very different game..

No, no no - not blaming investors, just describing the investment climate of the time. And yes, because there was too much investment money arround (every boomer tried to get a solid investment, but also safe ), people just started to make those opportunities up.

To sell them - against commission. (But the money was there - because investors thought that the US was a better investment environment than china - for those few years of the boom (and half of the investment money searching for returns in the US at that time (also because of tax flight issues from china... But also not.))

They (financial engineers) said: We have this great math you know - we can make high risk investments, and then segment them, and then bundle them with other investments - and as a result *poof* no risk anymore! Oh and house prices always go up! Everyone knows that! Otherwise people would loose their homes (because private investments in the US for a generation were backed by mortgages, as the 'real' economy didnt grow for most americans)!!

And then *poof* - and people lost their homes and entire houses were worth nothing over night.


There is also the explaination angle, that this 'guarantee those loans!' was always in the interest of the democratic party (Obama), because 'own house' is really the only security most americans had left. And also the only promise that still seemed attainable.

So it was their form of 'social cohesion'.

 

America has lots of land and cheap wooden houses that depreciate.

In the UK where houses are made of bricks and there is less available land then you can often stop paying your mortgage and you can negotiate with the lender to let you keep living there, either waiting for you to start paying the mortgage again or until the market picks up and they can sell the property.

I'd argue the houses were always worth practically nothing.

Right, as long as you are getting money out of the US.

It's interesting you think there can't be too much debt, but there can be too much investment money.

The problem was too much fraud & nobody was even acknowledging the fraud let alone tackling it.

 

Yes, that was "streched" to 'but all house prices go up over time' - in the interest of the democratic party (Obama), because it lead to more social cohesion. (House prices where part of the financial economy at that point, so their value grew by more, than the real economy for many people, so they took out loans, and... that stimulated (prepped up) the US economy. So it was the poor man 'partaking' in the financial economies growth.)

But then too much money, and too much fraud - and poof.

(Very, very high risk loans ('cheap wooden houses') green lit, because the democrats liked (social cohesion), and because 'house prices always go up', and then "stripped" of their high risk by the financial magic of segmentation and rebundling math - which sadly turned out to be bullshit. )