Ask HN: What are You Doing to Prepare for a Possible U.S. Default? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are You Doing to Prepare for a Possible U.S. Default?

13 pointsmrb11 comments

A U.S. default is sometimes depicted as unimaginable, but as the debate between Republicans and Democrats intensifies regarding how to raise the U.S. debt ceiling, it becomes obvious that the two parties have a certain ego and are unwilling to make concessions to each other. A default may, after all, be possible...

Therefore, what are you doing, as an individual, to prepare for such a scenario? Are you looking to diversify your dollar-based assets into other assets? Evaluating potential risks to your company? Stockpiling food? Or nothing?

View on HN

Lets stop conflating "default" and "cutting spending". The US government has sufficient income to pay off it's interest and debt. It does not have sufficient income to pay for the spending it is currently planning.

I'm in default if I don't pay my mortgage. I'm not in default if I plan a trip to Vegas but can't come up with the money to make it happen.

It's exceedingly unlikely that any sort of survivalist scenarios will come to pass, so stockpiling is sort of pointless here. About the only thing that might make sense would be to diversify your investments to include some denominated in other currencies; but that's a good idea in these times in any case, regardless of default likelihood. In the (imho still unlikely) event of a default, though, the dollar crash will be relatively gentle, because China will not let the US dollar crash too fast or too deeply since we're still their main market.

I agree, it is unlikely a survivalist scenario will come to pass.

I have only considered one aspect of the crisis, the financial one. Fortunately I have no family to support. I do not particularly depend on any financial aid from the government (virtually zero medical bills, for now!). My wealth is already well distributed evenly between hard assets, Euro-based assets, stocks in multi-national companies, and Bitcoin. I would consider moving back to Europe or any foreign country if the job economy worsen too much in the US.

Nothing. I don't rely on the government's debt for income. The world is not going to fall into anarchy. The dollar is not going to crash. We're not at a stalemate or a standoff. All we have is a game of progressive chicken. Each party is going to get as much as they can from the other and then pass a deal to raise the debt ceiling.

Buying Bitcoins.

Haha, but seriously. Not much, and if/when it happens, it's not like the world will implode, or the value of US dollars will go to zero overnight. If it really looks like it's all going to go up in flames, there's more than enough at-hand to barter with to leave the country. My laptop is worth a short plane flight.

I've been pricing local real estate, so I can move some money across from my AUD assets and buy up some cheap property just in case the US dollar gets really low.

I'm neither an optimist or a pessimist. If I have a bias, it's the belief that the future will look way more like the past than you think it will -- i.e. things pass.

Howard Kunstler writes and talks about this kind of stuff. Check out his book The Long Emergency and his excellent podcast at http://kunstlercast.com

It's a bit late to be wondering this at this point. A better question would be "What preparations did you make starting 10 years ago when you saw this year's events were inevitable." For me that answer is that it's been a lot of things. Among these are learning to grow my own food, how do canning, how to hunt and skin an animal, having a well dug, and drastically cutting my dependency on electricity and petroleum.

Uh...making myself essential at my day job and working on my technology based startup concept at night. Unless it's TEOTWAKI, not seeing those fundamental needs being reduced.

Candidly, if it is the TEOTWAKI in the US, what makes you think the rest of the world will be much better?

(I'm thinking of Gremlins II - "we're advising our clients to go long canned food and shotguns")

Absolutely nothing.

Buying Canadian dollars and gold. Big disclaimer: I live in Canada.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com