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Comment by alberth | Hacker News Reader

It's amazing that the USD is the strongest it's been in ~20 years; yet it's fighting inflation and has the largest national debt out of any country in the world ... is this simply a circumstance that the US is "less bad off" than the rest of the world?

Note: I'm no economist, so if I'm inaccurate in my statements - please forgive.

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> yet it's fighting inflation and has the largest national debt out of any country in the world ... is this simply a circumstance that the US is "less bad off" than the rest of the world?

Debt is usually benchmarked against GDP for a reason, by that metric the US doesn’t have the highest debt level, it also doesn’t have the highest level of inflation.

The USD is also the currency of basically all international trade and settlements, it’s value is determined by external factors to a significant degree, not only on the US economy itself.

Well, let's compare it to other countries right. (and this is just my feeling). Europe can't heat their homes this winter because of Russia's war on eastern Europe. Russia is fucked also, becasue they need to sell their oil at a discount to whoever will take it to fund their war. This has also caused a massive spike in food costs in emerging markets. Turns out Ukrainian crops were important. Meanwhile, China is struggling with its first real recession because of overleverage with Evergrande and the same supply chain issues that face the US. So yes, things are going badly in the US. But there are bigger problems elsewhere and in situations where things go crazy people flee to safety. Which at the moment seems to be the USD.

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