it would be better if the stock market crashes us into a consensus to impeach and remove before the dollar and US Treasuries are permanently discredited.
@interfluidity short term doomer perspectives on the harms of quantitative easing (which I assume you're referring to here?) almost never pan out.
@realcaseyrollins no, i’m not referring at all to quantitative easing, which is at this point ordinary and nondisruptive. i’m referring to madly scribbling and rescribbling tariffs, negotiating in ways that even usually reserved allies describe as extortion, generally behaving in ways that abruptly convince the rest of the world they don’t want to hold US paper. that might be good for trade balance, could even drive us into surplus! but via a miserably disruptive path.
@diego okay. but political consensus in the US would be badly shaken by a stock market crash, which even people who have little understanding of the stock market know is a disruptive event that reflects and portends economic difficulty.
but in fact, stock market fluctuations are far less dangerous than what’s happening to the dollar, US Treasury bonds, and gold.
it’s less costly, but more politically salient, so a useful signal.
@interfluidity @diego Yeah people know that generally red=bad
Also it shouldn't be underestimated how correlated bad #stockmarket seasons are usually correlated with a poor economy and high prices, it's a big deal because it truly affects everyone
@realcaseyrollins @interfluidity @diego
Lots of ignoring facts and ignorance in this disucssion.
The US dollar has been on a path to collapse for a very long time. Look how much value it has lost in the last 100 years.
The "allies" that are complaining about extortion, have been ripping off the US for almost that same 100 years.
Even the guy who came up with the theory of comparative advantage, David Ricardo, on which free trade is based, acknowledged that it wasn't absolute and 1/2
@realcaseyrollins @interfluidity @diego could not survive if it was unidirectional, without destroying the nation that was open without getting openness in return.
Suppose we buy 100 trillion dollars worth of goods from other coutries and only sell 50 trillion. 50 trillion dollars goes out, reducing our money supply, which than has to be increased. This deficie is partially funded with asset sales and partially with debt and partially with expansion of the money supply. first 2 lower our 2/3
@realcaseyrollins @interfluidity @diego
lower our wealth, the last is very inflationar and erodes the value of the dollar.
Brics was created long before tariffs and was a portent of the dollar losing its position as a world currency.
The exponentially growing national dept is also destroying the value of the dollar and will all on it's own, lead to collapse eventually.
The status quo is the problem. Restoring trade balance and high wages is the SOLUTION, not the problem.
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego The dollar was not on remotely a path toward collapse until your movement put it there. Sure, a dollar has lost a lot of value over the last hundred years, if you kept it in a mattress. If you put it anywhere else — earned short-term, credit and interest-rate risk free Treasury bill rates — its value has increased.
From me, https://www.interfluidity.com/uploads/2017/10/Fiat-Is-Effective-Minitalk-light-edit-to-share.pdf 1/
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego It’s true that there’s a strong case for keeping trade in general in overall balance, though there are reasons for time-limited exceptions.
I’ve spent the last month making that case:
https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/04/20/keynesian-compromise/index.html 2/
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego But there is no coherent case for insisting upon and imposing *bilateral* rather than *overall* trade balance. Which is what this administration has absurdly, destructively, I’m sorry but stupidly, tried to impose. 4/
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego The United States should broadly buy roughly as much as it sells. It matters not a whit if it buys more from Lesotho than it sells to Lesotho as long as it sells to somebody else more than it buys from them. 5/
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego The overwhelming majority of ways the world could be in overall balance — all countries in overall balance — involve a lot of offsetting bilateral trade imbalances. That is the space we want markets to explore and optimize over. Insisting on bilateral balance between all countries is the international equivalent of barter. You only trade where there is a double coincidence of wants. 6/
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego But the Trump Administration wants to personalize international trade into trade partners taking advantage, or ripping us off, when the only party that could have intervened to insure the US remained in overall balance was the US itself, and it would not have been hard, we just didn’t want to do it, persuaded ourselves (wrongly!) that we shouldn’t. 7/
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego So it destroys friendships and alliances, and takes down the US economy, by idiotically deploying tariffs intended to immediately bring all trading relationships into bilateral balance. 8/
@interfluidity @realcaseyrollins @diego
This is all BS.
You have something wrong with your thinking. In your mind, somebody can smack you around, but if you smack back you are destroying the friendship. This is your argument and it's retarted.
And you can not achieve this overall balanced trade, with out addressing individual trade imbalances. There is NO MECHANISM in which to do it, so it is also a retarded argument.
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego For Christ sake, read a little bit. I just linked to a mechanism, a foreign payouts tax:
The entire Bretton Woods order that prevailed from 1945 through the early 1970s was a mechanism.
Your movement is not “smacking back” because we need to. It is smacking back because it is full of people who like to smack.
@interfluidity @realcaseyrollins @diego
We absolutely do need to smack back. its the only sure way to stop people from smacking.
haven't you ever encountered a chronic bully? All it takes is a bloody nose, a black eye, and a fat lip and they will leave you alone for ever.
It's worked every time.
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego The biggest bully in public affairs I have ever encountered is the current US administration. And believe me, I mean to smack back in any way I can.
Our trading partners have not been bullies, even though we have allowed ourselves to — it was always under our control, Dorothy! — to trade with them on foolish terms.
@interfluidity @realcaseyrollins @diego
Do you have any idea how China does business? And have you at all paid attention to what Europe is doing to our Tech giants?
Have you tried to get anything approved for sale in Europe that is made in the US?
You have no idea what you're talking about. They have been bullies, you just haven't had the opportunity to encounter it personally so you assume it isn't there.
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego Have you paid attention to what our tech giants do to Europe? You only see “bullying” one way. Believe me, I’ve dealt with Europe’s difficult bureaucracies. They impose it on one another, at the country and individual level, as much as on trading partners. But you feel special, because it’s a lot of work to deal with them. Surely they’ve singled you out and bullied you.
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego MAGA is nothing more or less than a wrecking ball driven by pathetically un-self-aware personal resentments. It is a movement of disappointed toddlers wrecking what other kids have built with their blocks.
@interfluidity @realcaseyrollins @diego
No, MAGA is only wrecking a very destructive and corrupt status quo. It's wrecking the crony system and the take advantage of the US system. What it is wercking is entirel derelict and needs to be wrecked and it's glorious.
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego sayeth the glorious mad intoxication of the destroyer.
when you, and we, wake up from your hangover, all that will be left is the destruction.
@interfluidity @realcaseyrollins @diego
Want to put some money on it?
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego I participate in financial markets to put money on my views. Unsurprisingly, I’m short US equities, long foreign currencies, and long gold atm. Lower equities and a weak dollar might have been good developments, if the means of achieving them had not been so destructive. I don’t think I’m interested in making Bryan Caplan style interpersonal bets.
@interfluidity @realcaseyrollins @diego
Come on now, you could make an easy 100k on a simple bet.
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego i don’t have the wealth to make bets on such a scale. the Bryan Caplans of the world usually stick with $100.
@interfluidity @Phil @diego haha oh boy...what a take...
@interfluidity @realcaseyrollins @diego
Not me personally and you are wrong.
If we have a problem in a plant in the US, we can shift production to Europe and ship the stuff here no problem same with Japan excpet we have to pay tariffs. If there's a problem in a plant in Europe, no way can we shift production to the US and ship the same product to any European country. We get a local made new item approved pretty easy but not if made here.
our tech companies do not bully Europe.
@Phil @interfluidity @diego #Europe actually is notorious for bullying our tech companies. The idea that things are going in the other direction is hilariously absurd.
@realcaseyrollins @Phil @diego Do you think Europeans do not perceive the US as bullying? Again, it’s ordinary that interacting with governments, especially foreign governments, is difficult, businesses resent it, and always perceive, often not wrongly, discrimination in favor of the home team. 1/
@realcaseyrollins @Phil @diego But I don’t think US tech giants, which dominate European markets and use Ireland to avoid most US taxes, have been so hard done. /fin
> Do you think Europeans do not perceive the US as bullying?
The facts don't really care about their feelings, honestly. The #EU has been pushing around #BigTech and forcing to bend them to their will for at least nearly a decade now.
> But I don’t think US tech giants, which dominate European markets and use Ireland to avoid most US taxes, have been so hard done.
LOL that much is clear