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Comment by javert | Hacker News Reader

> instead of parking it safely while this global crisis plays out

Because interest rates will never go back up, or if they do, they will be counterbalanced by inflation. This is the view of Ray Dalio at Bridgewater and (presumably) many other very smart people. I'm not that smart, but I agree.

Thus, cash and cash obligations are no longer stores of wealth. Equities are, unfortunately. High volatility is just the price you pay. Equity prices are honestly not that high if this scenario plays out.

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Forgive me if I say this sounds awfully like the "new paradigm" / "this time it's different!" phase of a bubble.

But it is different this time. Productivity growth is slowing [1], people are aging rapidly (in the US, baby boomers are retiring at a pace of 10,000 people per day, 5,000 of them die per day) [2], and secular stagnation is taking hold in most first world countries [3]. Sort of strange to expect today or the next 50 years to look like the last 50 years.

[1] https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/ernestliu/...

[2] https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/economic-synops...

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20200629061702/https://larrysumm...

Yeesh, sounds like Japan in the 90's!

Japan is a time machine, showing us the future of all developed countries as their population ages. No country is immune once their total fertility rate drops below replacement rate for a sustained period of time.

Your comment is the equivalent of a defendant in a criminal trial saying, "I'm not guilty," and then prosecutor saying, "Forgive me, but this sounds awfully like what the last guy said, and he murdered his wife!"

In other words, we have to actually look at the evidence.

Dalio's point is specifically "this time looks just like all the others" but unfortunately his "this time" is referring to something much bigger and scarier than yours.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/big-cycles-over-last-500-year...

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