YouBet said:
LOYAL AG said:
CDUB98 said:
I'm damned sick and tired of the US being involved in everyone else's grab ass conflicts.
This will exist as long as the USD is the global reserve currency and that will exist as long as global trade exists. We have built a world wholly dependent on us to maintain security as a means of propping up the global economy. This isn't changing anytime soon.
My only caveat to this is that Bretton Woods is certainly retreating at least to some degree under Trump with his focus now in the Americas. Of course, the next Democrat will simply come along and cancel that focus, open up our borders again, and try to refocus everything back to Europe to distract us the home land away from the barbarians at the gates.
Counterpoint to that is how long we can afford to actually police the oceans. We are running out of financial highway on that and there are no tailwinds to help.
I have mixed emotions on where we go from here. China is in a really bad place with regard to having the population to continue being the worlds #1 manufacturer. On the other hand there's nowhere else for that production to go without significant investment in infrastructure to automate what they do manually. I think as long as Asia dominates manufacturing like that region currently does then globalization is a fact of life. At a minimum TSSS has to become a U.S. based operation and we have to become the #1 supplier of electronics globally. That sounds great on TexAgs but it's a really heavy lift in the real world.
I'm honestly not as worried about the U.S. debt as most around here are for three reasons.
First, simply put there's not another option. The world runs on dollars and the dollar is propped up by Treasuries. And the Navy. You don't have to do business with us but if you do that's how it's done.
Second, the boomers retirement will be mostly behind us in 20 years and I like to think that as we approach that timeframe we'll see an easing of the deficit spending being generated by their demands on Social Security and Medicare. That may be wrong but I think it makes sense mathematically.
Third, the dollar isn't traded against gold or any other commodity. It's traded against other currencies and all other currencies are managed worse than the dollar so if a major bondholder were to cash out where do they take their investment? Theres just nothing else at the scale Treasuries exist at.
To be clear I'm not cheerleading for the current system but I'm also not fearful of a collapse. Love us or hate us the world needs to US in its current role to maintain their own way of life. We're the only nation that can completely retreat and be fine. Thats why China has bought so many of our politicians, they know they're entirely dependent on us staying engaged.
