Global doom and gloom.

[skjl47]

worries about "future debt" instead of addressing current economic disasters.. even though the last package clearly worked...

Hello; I for one am concerned about not just future debt but also more about the inflation that will result from the covid19 stimulus. The future debt will not fall onto me so much as I am 73 years old and will not have to deal with it long term. The inflation will hit me and the rest of us hard, especially after the lockdowns end at some future time.
Adding three or more trillion dollars to the USA's national debt will dilute the value of the dollar. It partly works like this. We as a country have been borrowing close to half of the money spent each year and with the stimulus my guess is it will be at or more than half. That might be OK except for two things I know of. One is we never pay any of the principal off. We only pay the interest that come due on the debt in the form of paying out to the holders of mature treasury notes. Not a terrible chore with near zero interest rates at this time, but interest rates will have to rise eventually. That may mean and likely will mean at some point in the future most of the money spent by the federal government will have to go to paying that interest with less and less available for other expenses. That can mean various programs will have to be cut or as will most likely happen they will print more money and the inflation spiral grows. If a government ever stops paying the interest then people will stop investing in the treasury notes.

The other thing is, by my understanding, when this new debt from the first covid19 stimulus goes to the treasury auctions not all of will be bought by people like you and me or by other countries. In fact it is my understanding for some years now the Federal government has been buying a huge amount of the notes itself. This means in some effect some large portion of those trillions of dollars is just in a sense paper.

I get the concepts of finance at government levels are more complex than this and that I am not a qualified finance person. This is just my take with a point sort of being that as bad as things seem now if reckless spending happens things could be much worse later. Just saying and not predicting.

 

[esoxlucius]

Hello; I for one am concerned about not just future debt but also more about the inflation that will result from the covid19 stimulus. The future debt will not fall onto me so much as I am 73 years old and will not have to deal with it long term. The inflation will hit me and the rest of us hard, especially after the lockdowns end at some future time.
Adding three or more trillion dollars to the USA's national debt will dilute the value of the dollar. It partly works like this. We as a country have been borrowing close to half of the money spent each year and with the stimulus my guess is it will be at or more than half. That might be OK except for two things I know of. One is we never pay any of the principal off. We only pay the interest that come due on the debt in the form of paying out to the holders of mature treasury notes. Not a terrible chore with near zero interest rates at this time, but interest rates will have to rise eventually. That may mean and likely will mean at some point in the future most of the money spent by the federal government will have to go to paying that interest with less and less available for other expenses. That can mean various programs will have to be cut or as will most likely happen they will print more money and the inflation spiral grows. If a government ever stops paying the interest then people will stop investing in the treasury notes.

The other thing is, by my understanding, when this new debt from the first covid19 stimulus goes to the treasury auctions not all of will be bought by people like you and me or by other countries. In fact it is my understanding for some years now the Federal government has been buying a huge amount of the notes itself. This means in some effect some large portion of those trillions of dollars is just in a sense paper.

I get the concepts of finance at government levels are more complex than this and that I am not a qualified finance person. This is just my take with a point sort of being that as bad as things seem now if reckless spending happens things could be much worse later. Just saying and not predicting.

There's a small detail I have never been able to get my head round regarding this "borrowing" that goes on. Trillions and trillions is being borrowed annually, and by countries who claim to be in the richest in the world.

Who the hell is lending all this money!?!?!?

The richest country on the planet, by a long way, America, certainly isn't lending to anyone because they themselves are trillions and trillions in debt.

It is something that's always intrigued me. It's as if somewhere we have a bottomless pit of world funds that everyone dips into. Bank of planet earth!

 

[lp85253]

as is the usual these days your understanding of "what is important" is different than mine .. my view of the covid/ economy crisis is : if the economy crashes hard *now* there may be no need to worry about next: week/ month / year / decade / generation.. because the house is on fire now ....you *might* be right.. but *if* i'm tight and congress does nothing inflation won't matter b/c every(most) small business will go tits up.. great news for exxon, amazon and gm .. pretty crappy for the rest of us...

 

[lp85253]

There's a small detail I have never been able to get my head round regarding this "borrowing" that goes on. Trillions and trillions is being borrowed annually, and by countries who claim to be in the richest in the world.

Who the hell is lending all this money!?!?!?

The richest country on the planet, by a long way, America, certainly isn't lending to anyone because they themselves are trillions and trillions in debt.

It is something that's always intrigued me. It's as if somewhere we have a bottomless pit of world funds that everyone dips into. Bank of planet earth!

actually the us lends (gives) money away at a staggering pace to other countries.. i'd like to see congress tap into that reserve to fund this crisis...the debt crisis , imo , is mostly a made up crisis so that congress can defung social programs all the while increasing debt with corporate/ foreign policy giveaways...

 

[esoxlucius]

actually the us lends (gives) money away at a staggering pace to other countries.. i'd like to see congress tap into that reserve to fund this crisis...the debt crisis , imo , is mostly a made up crisis so that congress can defung social programs all the while increasing debt with corporate/ foreign policy giveaways...

It's not just the US though, all the richest countries bail out these poor countries on, like you say, a huge scale, even though domestic problems are rife and that that money could be spent far more wisely. And then what happens? A very high % of this money lent to these poor countries is quoshed, so as you say, in realistic terms, the richest countries are giving them billions and billions.

It's all political. Underhand "favours" and "i'll scratch your back and you scratch mine" type shenanigans going on.

But we can't really go down that route on the forum so i'll say no more.

 

[jjohnwm]

They lend money...they borrow money...they incur debt...they pay off debt, or forgive others' debts...but there is nothing changing hands here. It's not like there are truckloads or freighters full of gold actually shuffling it about the globe. It's all on paper, or nowadays, not even there but rather in the digital ether. There's now apparently much controversy regarding the amount of actual gold...i.e. the basis for the economy...that the U.S. has squirrelled away. Everybody must have faith in the system or it falls apart.

An extinction-level event is not necessarily required to end the world as we know it. A complete global economic collapse will end our world...i.e., the artificial imaginary world occupied by humanity...just as surely as any meteor strike or other calamity, except that it will take a wee bit longer.

When I lived in Ontario I commuted daily to the city of Toronto...considered by its denizens to be the Center of the Universe, and looked upon by many others as the Anus of Canada. Don't forget, this place isn't exactly tropical, and experiences plenty of cold winter weather. I was continually stunned by the number of people who lived in its high-rise apartment buildings, rode the elevator down to the basement, boarded the subway, rode to work and returned...without ever venturing outdoors. They shopped, ate, went to the gym or the theatre or the club entirely in the subterranean warren of tunnels that linked the entire downtown core of the city. Winter came, but for many it was just something different to observe through triple-pane windows; they went on their travels dressed in indoor clothing, and some even bragged that they didn't own winter boots or coats. When the world economy collapses...I suspect most of these folks will last less than a month. They could no sooner provide themselves with food or water or heat or other life essentials than I could pilot a jet fighter. They rely entirely upon the artificial construct that we call civilized life.

As soon as the toilets stop flushing and the lights go out and the grocery store shelves are bare, panic will set in, and they will come pouring into the suburbs and then into the countryside like a wave of hungry, thirsty, thoroughly pissed-off locusts. I'm not talking about a media-inspired toilet-paper shortage here; these will be real emergency conditions, life or death stuff. Game over. A year later, 90%+ of the population of once-wealthy "advanced" countries will be dead, and the lucky...or unlucky?...survivors will be living like maggots in the rotting husk of the civilized world. The rest of nature will just breathe a sigh of relief and go on about its business as usual.

Throw in Covid19, maybe a new zombie virus, wild dogs roving in packs preying upon the homeless, water-borne diseases running rampant, the increase threat of nuclear strikes from equally-desperate other countries, giant comm satellites falling from the sky, no law enforcement (they'll be home protecting their own families)...apocalypse looms.

Closing in on 200 posts now in this thread, esoxlucius . Ya gotta be getting cheered up by now...

 

[esoxlucius]

They lend money...they borrow money...they incur debt...they pay off debt, or forgive others' debts...but there is nothing changing hands here. It's not like there are truckloads or freighters full of gold actually shuffling it about the globe. It's all on paper, or nowadays, not even there but rather in the digital ether. There's now apparently much controversy regarding the amount of actual gold...i.e. the basis for the economy...that the U.S. has squirrelled away. Everybody must have faith in the system or it falls apart.

An extinction-level event is not necessarily required to end the world as we know it. A complete global economic collapse will end our world...i.e., the artificial imaginary world occupied by humanity...just as surely as any meteor strike or other calamity, except that it will take a wee bit longer.

When I lived in Ontario I commuted daily to the city of Toronto...considered by its denizens to be the Center of the Universe, and looked upon by many others as the Anus of Canada. Don't forget, this place isn't exactly tropical, and experiences plenty of cold winter weather. I was continually stunned by the number of people who lived in its high-rise apartment buildings, rode the elevator down to the basement, boarded the subway, rode to work and returned...without ever venturing outdoors. They shopped, ate, went to the gym or the theatre or the club entirely in the subterranean warren of tunnels that linked the entire downtown core of the city. Winter came, but for many it was just something different to observe through triple-pane windows; they went on their travels dressed in indoor clothing, and some even bragged that they didn't own winter boots or coats. When the world economy collapses...I suspect most of these folks will last less than a month. They could no sooner provide themselves with food or water or heat or other life essentials than I could pilot a jet fighter. They rely entirely upon the artificial construct that we call civilized life.

As soon as the toilets stop flushing and the lights go out and the grocery store shelves are bare, panic will set in, and they will come pouring into the suburbs and then into the countryside like a wave of hungry, thirsty, thoroughly pissed-off locusts. I'm not talking about a media-inspired toilet-paper shortage here; these will be real emergency conditions, life or death stuff. Game over. A year later, 90%+ of the population of once-wealthy "advanced" countries will be dead, and the lucky...or unlucky?...survivors will be living like maggots in the rotting husk of the civilized world. The rest of nature will just breathe a sigh of relief and go on about its business as usual.

Throw in Covid19, maybe a new zombie virus, wild dogs roving in packs preying upon the homeless, water-borne diseases running rampant, the increase threat of nuclear strikes from equally-desperate other countries, giant comm satellites falling from the sky, no law enforcement (they'll be home protecting their own families)...apocalypse looms.

Closing in on 200 posts now in this thread, esoxlucius . Ya gotta be getting cheered up by now...

Yeah, it's got real stamina this one. We've gone off on a few random tangents along the way and then we roll our sleeves up and get back to the heartwarming subject of the title of the thread. Lol.

Long term future wise doesn't look that rosy, but why worry about it when more than likely we'll all be long dead when things get really really serious.

Do you realise than in as little as 120 years time, every single person who is alive on this planet today, as we type now, about 7 billion people.....will be dead!! (This is taking into account babies being born right now, and also that humans, well very very few, are not likely to live to 120). And in our places will probably be about 20 billion others. That is very weird and hard to get your head round.

So in effect, if the world's ok, and we muddle through for the next 120 years, then absolutely none of us on the planet currently need to worry about a darn thing.....because it'll then be the worry of the 20 billion or so that have taken our place.

I don't half think about some weird stuff me.

 

[jjohnwm]

I dunno...every so often a piece appears that seems to indicate science is on the verge of this or that breakthrough that will extend human life far beyond its current paltry span. You've really got to look for this info, because the media don't release just any old news...it's got to be bad news to make them deem it worth passing on. When it was revealed that the most recent generation would be the first in human history who were expected to live shorter lives than their parents, due to pollution/disease/chronic-stupidity/whatever, that was played up quite a bit, because it was bad news.

Then again, spending 120 or more years on this planet as it spirals towards chaos does actually sound like pretty bad news...

 

[esoxlucius]

I dunno...every so often a piece appears that seems to indicate science is on the verge of this or that breakthrough that will extend human life far beyond its current paltry span. You've really got to look for this info, because the media don't release just any old news...it's got to be bad news to make them deem it worth passing on. When it was revealed that the most recent generation would be the first in human history who were expected to live shorter lives than their parents, due to pollution/disease/chronic-stupidity/whatever, that was played up quite a bit, because it was bad news.

Then again, spending 120 or more years on this planet as it spirals towards chaos does actually sound like pretty bad news...

I think any future scientific breakthrough that prolongs peoples lives is more like a curse than something to look forward too. What's the point in being alive when your old decrepit body won't let you do anything to enjoy your extended retirement? Bed ridden in your 80's, shatting yourself everyday until you die when you're 162.

Your great great great great great grandkids will come to your bedside for sage tales of wisdom from the old wise one. And all you'll be able to say is, "my memories not what it used to be kids, all I can remember is shatting myself everyday for the last 40 years".

 

[Hendre]

As someone who enjoys having knees capable of jumping down a mountain, a long life of immobility would suck.