The Economist magazine cover for Oct 19th 2024 called the US economy "the envy of the world" and depicted a roll of USD taking off like a rocketship.
Turned out it was a Starship
Readit Newseigart commented on It's Beginning to Smell a Lot Like Stagflation paulkrugman.substack.com/... · Posted by u/rbanffy
eigart commented on It's Beginning to Smell a Lot Like Stagflation paulkrugman.substack.com/... · Posted by u/rbanffy
The post mentions the AI boom boosting the numbers. From Fortune[1]: "Analyst estimates from Renaissance Macro Research indicate that so far in 2025, the dollar value contributed to GDP growth by AI data center expenditure surpassed the total impact from all U.S. consumer spending"
That is worrying as that spending is constrained to a small sector that concentrates and solidifies a lot of wealth with diluted "trickle down" effects. If/when the AI industry corrects there will be a significant impact on the US economy & stock market, which I think will have a bigger negative effect on the "person in the street" than any possible positive effect from the current high spending on AI technology.
[1] https://fortune.com/2025/08/06/data-center-artificial-intell...
> Or as Rusty Foster, author of the widely read media blog Today in Tabs, puts it: “Our economy might just be three AI data centers in a trench coat.”
lol
I saw someone comment that US GDP is shrinking if you exclude AI cap ex.
eigart commented on InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger than steel techcrunch.com/2025/05/12... · Posted by u/LorenDB
If this could save material used for construction, that would be great!
Maybe (touring) skis could be a good application for this? Would be fun if somebody tried it.
eigart commented on Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries cnbc.com/2025/04/09/trump... · Posted by u/bhouston
"It’s the T-bills wot dun it."
That’s my read on why the U.S. just paused the global tariff hike to 10%.
From the beginning, I’ve believed the executive branch's real goal was to push down the yield on the 10-year Treasury. Why? Because Uncle Sam has to refinance a mountain of debt this year, and the cost of that depends heavily on Treasury yields — especially the 10-year. That’s the rate that sets the tone for everything from mortgages to corporate borrowing.
So they tried to spook markets. Introduce global tariffs. Stir up uncertainty. And it worked—at first. Yields dipped. Traders moved to Treasuries as a typical flight-to-safety.
But then something flipped.
Instead of being seen as a safe haven, U.S. debt itself started to look shaky. Maybe it was the deficit outlook, maybe the global response to tariffs — but whatever it was, yields started climbing. Fast.
At that point, the strategy backfired. The executive branch had no choice but to walk it back. So they paused the tariffs.
Because when your national budget depends on cheap debt, you can't afford a crisis of confidence in your bonds.
It remains to be seen to what extent this restores confidence.
eigart commented on Circuit breaker triggered in Japan for stock futures trading wsj.com/livecoverage/stoc... · Posted by u/perihelions
Kospi (SK) and Taiex (Taiwan) tripped as well. China's main index dropped 7%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index dropped 9% at open.
Europe opens pretty soon. That's going to be ugly.
Absolutely insane. We had an economy that was highly stratified with massive wealth inequality but was otherwise growing - pretty good job numbers, inflation was coming down at a healthy rate. We were doing better than almost any other country in the world in terms of recovering from the economic damage from COVID. a geopolitical situation that was very tense in several areas, but not much in the way of actual action except in Palestine.
All that, gone. A recession is guaranteed; businesses started shutting down factories and laying off people almost immediately. Tens of thousands of people likely lost their jobs Friday and I imagine it'll be even worse Monday now that the Orange Turd has made inflammatory comments insisting he's seeing great success.
Now realize that all the social safety net programs that would be vital during a recession? They're gone. Which means there will soon be a lot of very desperate people. And that means crime. And a lot of foreclosures. Guess what that means? Real estate market crash. That means that boomers watch their homes tank in value.
Mr. Very Stable Genius put oil production and export at the top of his list and the price of oil is plunging, too - the market likely anticipates a huge drop in global and local shipping.
To top it all off, while the market tanked, he was golfing and schmoozing with people who had paid millions to his campaign to sit at his table and get a few minutes of his time. Practically playing his violin while the country's economy burns.
He's spent the last 4-5 decades obsessing about this. It's his white whale. He will not blink. He won't surrender. If there's anything he hates more, it's looking weak. The only thing that will stop this is someone pulling him out under the 25th amendment; I think that is the sole reason he's stacked his cabinet with the imbeciles that he has - they're loyal imbeciles.
Putin is laughing his ass off right now. He's won. He's gotten his revenge for the economic damage done to Russia after much of the world slammed the door on them and I'd guess Ukraine falls within months at most.
Pooh Bear is laughing too and will probably try to invade Ukraine.
Israel is going to finish wiping out the Palestinians.
And who do we have in charge of our military? An alcoholic, wife-beating, ultra-right christian white nationalist Army captain who is more concerned about people being clean-shaven than anything else.
Did I mention that US antipiracy efforts are likely being strongly cut which means world shipping is going to get a lot more dangerous, expensive, and unreliable?
This is a hit to Russian finances too.
eigart commented on Utah becomes first US state to ban fluoride in its water bbc.com/news/articles/c4g... · Posted by u/Jimmc414
People who want to remove fluoride from the water should visit countries where fluoride is not added and look at people's teeth.
I live in France and it's just so obvious that people grew up without fluoride — even celebrities try to talk without showing their teeth when they're on TV!
I'm all for getting consent in most cases, but sometimes you'd have to be an idiot not to take the obvious win.
It's like we were delivering flakes of gold with the mail and people complained — that's not what mailboxes are for!
Where I live, dental health is good and we don’t have fluorides in the water (we have free, mandatory dental care for children). We recently banned the use of fluorides to make our skis go fast because of the environmental impact.
eigart commented on Ask HN: Are you afraid to travel to US to tech conferences? · Posted by u/throwaway98342
eigart commented on Shares of Starlink's European rival Eutelsat have tripled marketwatch.com/story/sha... · Posted by u/_fizz_buzz_
Unpopular opinion: How else should Ukraine pay for the military assistance it's receiving? That's not cheap. The US, NATO and EU taxpayers don't owe Ukraine anything for free since there's no contractual obligation to do so. Money doesn't just rain from the sky, the US and EU taxpayer are ultimately bankrolling this.
Sharing profits from your natural resources in exchange for military resources seems like a great deal to me. Nothing in life is ever free, someone is always paying for it, usually through taxes. If you think this logic is flawed, argument me why.
Ukraine is fighting on behalf of all of Europe. The cost is the least of our worries. They are sending their children so I don’t have to send mine.
Blackmailing them for profit is despicable.
eigart commented on Tesla sales in Europe down 45% in January ft.com/content/cdd0b5c8-2... · Posted by u/doener
What rights does this refer to? Normal shareholder voting rights or something else?