Why Investors Can’t Get Enough of Tajikistan’s Debt

This is Terrifying with a capital T. For one it’s the 90’s all over again. Tech bubble, white supremacy groups, Hillary Clinton, cryptoanarchists (saw that term online yesterday after having not heard it for 10+ years), and now super sexy debt being issued by the developing world.

I know someone always says there’s a terrifying bubble. To be honest this one won’t be too bad, but what concerns me is political instability. Steve Bannon has I think said a nation is its politics, not its economy (I think that is correct at least). Since Steve Bannon is intent on bringing about “the Fourth Turning”, there might be no Keynesian bailout to save the world this time (FYI there was a cover of Time magazine in 1999 literally titled “the committee to save the world” with a picture of the IMF and Greenspan).

All of this nonsense about companies in the stock market having plenty of cash on hand really upsets me. There is essentially a black-box stock market in private valuations where very very bad things are hiding. The stock market of the 1920’s was essentially private too due to lack of regulation. For background AirBnb has raised $4 billion in cash over its ENTIRE LIFETIME. Oracle and Amazon have on-hand cash of something like $40 billion each AVAILABLE RIGHT NOW. The unicorns are built on a pile of equally magic pixie dust. Can’t wait for the jokes about “unicorns, we should have known they aren’t real”.

There are powder kegs in the article linked, Bitcoin (worth more than AirBnB!!!), tech, and China (although people have been saying that since 2001). Which one will go off first?

This, along with Bitcoin, which is now basically worth as much as a Fortune 100 company, is not good. It’s worth more than Goldman Sachs.

That being said, the market can be irrational a long time. This could go on for many years.