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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

The US defaulting isn't really the most interesting topic at this point - scenarios where it honours its debts became implausible a while ago. It'd be much more interesting to get an honest insight into the views of the Chinese & Japanese leadership (two countries with the largest US dollar holdings) on what they think they are getting out of this.

The numbers are obvious - someone isn't going to be getting much in the way of real repayments. It isn't quite clear who yet where the hammer will hit (my guess is #1 pensioners, #2 foreigners). What do the foreigners think is going to happen? Did they actually buy the outrageous line that the path to prosperity was feeding goods into the US consumer for paper? It seems a tough sell that anyone in a foreign government believed that.

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> It'd be much more interesting to get an honest insight into the views of the Chinese & Japanese leadership on what they think they are getting out of this.

Industry. They wanted it. They got it. This is how.

Remember, debt substitutes exports in the balance of trade. Issuing debt pumps assets and dumps exports. Buying debt pumps exports and dumps assets. Countries buy US debt because they want to pump exports. They want real jobs building real things with real infrastructure and real machines.

I wouldn't worry about China getting short-changed. I'd worry more about the implications of the US offshoring its industry. The implications to hard power are obvious, but the domestic implications are more consequential for most of us:

"We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now all we do is put our hand in the next guy's pocket." - The Wire

No better alternative for the Chinese. US Treasuries are the worlds most liquid and deep markets for money at the nation-state scale. Euro's are still in America's sphere of influence. Holding Yuan just destroys their export economy.

Japanese depend on America for security so they do it as a sort of quid pro quo.

I do agree though: pensioners (i.e. US public) will suffer first. International treasury defaults would threaten US hegemony.

China has been buying gold. They have been preparing for the collapse of the dollar for years. There are some claims that the collapse of the dollar is China's goal.

Allegedly they have some 2068 tons. For an economy of their size, this isn't that much. Italy claims 2452 tons.

https://www.gold.org/goldhub/gold-focus/2023/04/chinas-gold-....

I'm more in the Brent Johnson camp on the de-dollarization hype.

That number is suspect. China imported 1343 tons in 2022. The source for that import number doesn't say it was added to the government coffers though. The quantity reportedly added to reserves was only 25 tons.

China also has extensive gold mining operations in Africa and South America. I doubt the quantity of mined gold is counted in numbers based on market purchases.

https://oilprice.com/Metals/Gold/Reopening-Of-Chinese-Econom...

Personally I suspect all of these official figures. The unofficial speculation isn't much better either. The theme is something like, "The PBoC secretly buys gold to avoid driving prices higher", "Fort Knox is empty! They've been dumping to suppress the gold price" and one of my personal favorites, "The London bullion market is is rigged. Unbacked paper gold is used to suppress prices. When you ask for delivery, you can only get the currency equivalent".

None of this is impossible. I find it all interesting, but it is worth noting that it is heavily biased. The PBoC secretly has more gold than stated while the west is secretly bankrupt. A gold backed CNY will emerge as the new dominant currency.

Also of interest is the emergence of the BRICS as an acronym dates back to 2001 at Goldman Sachs. There's definitely more than meets the eye and the official numbers are suspect, but the alternative numbers are speculative. Not to say that I don't find the fringe theories interesting. I just find it hard to believe either side. For me the de-dollarization hype is too orchestrated. Meanwhile the Peter Zeihan theories are too neat and tidy.

https://www.goldmansachs.com/our-firm/history/moments/2001-b...

http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/archive/archive-pdf...

https://www.gata.org/node/20925#:~:text=Why%20have%20Western...

I am more in the orchestrated collapse to centralize power camp. The Federal Reserve was created with the intent to centralize power in the hands of the bankers despite stated goals. We are 110 years running under that regime. After a 110 years working towards a goal the ability to orchestrate on a global scale could be quite extensive.

I am with you on being dubious of official numbers though. We really have no idea who is telling the truth and who is fudging numbers. I believe that people with a goal to build their power will lie, cheat, murder, and steal to accomplish that goal. If some countries collapse or a genocide is committed in the process they do not give a shit as long as their power is retained.

The Asians have potentially just given huge amounts of real stuff to the US in exchange for ... arguably the exposure? They could have just taken the day off instead and been economically in the same position. "No better alternative" is a bit of a trick in assuming that the natural order of the world is Asians slaving away making life better for someone foreign. It didn't have to be that way.

I'm not saying that they've certainly made a mistake, but "no better alternative" is unimaginative. This is China and Japan we're talking about here, they absolutely had the power to make their own alternatives. Will they be surprised if the US doesn't pay them? The Russians saw it coming, they were doing exercises and whatnot years in advance of the asset seizures.

Japan doesn't. It is essentially a US vassal state when it comes to international disputes.

For China: Where would they put that money? They can't keep it in the Yuan because it strengthens their currency which destroys their export economy. So they have to buy other currencies to reduce demand for their currency while strengthening others. Which currency can they go to? The answer: USD. It's the only one that can support their scale.

Sure can they make up another currency? I think they've been trying to do a BRICs currency for a while now. However, you can be sure if that gains traction that the US will start doing something about it, either covertly or kinetically. It is that much of an existential threat to the US.

> The Russians saw it coming, they were doing exercises and whatnot years in advance of the asset seizures.

You're trying to pretend that causality goes the wrong way around. The invasion of Ukraine caused the asset seizures.

Well actually, the collective reaction of the west, including the virtual exclusion of Russia from all western economic activity could not have come as a surprise to Putin. This is in fact the only sense I can make of the overt aggression towards Ukraine: Putin and his clique already held the short end of the stick after Maidan, Georgia, Syria etc: i.e. the west were not going to make life easy for him anyway, so they devise a clean cut, a return to the cold war that they all were so familiar with - and with an expectation that the west would overstretch on armaments and financial crisis. This theory is supported by the obvious strategic investment in an alternative international currency that has been building for a long time - efforts that have been more fruitful after the invasion if anything - also possibly already predicted.

But I'm not sure. It might be crediting them with more brains than they have.

I don't disagree with you.

But consider this. The way you're putting is "Russia did X therefore they knew (meaning predicted/guessed) that Y was gonna happen". I don't disagree. However, the other person said "Russia saw it coming, it was doing X before Y". This inverts the causality because it suggests that Y was gonna happen regardless, and as a consequence they started X ahead of time. Russia wants to be a superpower, but somehow is always the victim.

I don't think the relation is all that strong. The US wasn't especially sanctioned after Iraq for example. As far as I know no US assets were frozen and seized. Although, to be fair, maybe people were sanctioning them and nobody noticed because the US is pretty robust. Stealing stuff isn't a usual global response to unjust wars.

The US was looking for a good excuse, and it got one. But I doubt there was a rule on the book saying that they were going to wipe their owings to Russia if the Ukraine was invaded. It isn't like Ukraine is in NATO or has some sort of defensive treaty with the US, all the activity is their initiative because they want to give Russia a black eye/topple Putin.

Hindsight is 20/20 here and the default hasn't even happened yet.

> scenarios where it honours its debts became implausible a while ago

Do you mean this debt ceiling cycle or in general?

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