There's no chance US will default on its debts, all it has to do is to print more money.
Inflation may spirale, but it's going to be a US citizens problems (as well as US bond holders) in terms of inflation and budget cuts.
Inflation may spirale, but it's going to be a US citizens problems (as well as US bond holders) in terms of inflation and budget cuts.
People in the US have been living with the insanity of Trump for so long that they have become numb to it, and don't realize just how crazy and out of bounds every day is now. We continue on, because we have to, but it's hard to reevaluate everything every single day because it's so crazy.
Europe and the rest of the world are making completely rational decisions in response to the utter self-destructive actions taking place by the entire US political system right now.
The US population has been cowed into complacence and numbness, but the rest of the world has not yet, and will take appropriate action.
The media the public consumes only gives them culture war BS to work with, though. It started with Fox News, and that eventually cowed the rest of the media to give in to Fox News framing on every topic, since Fox News was so successful at winning eyeballs.
The media were supporting and whitewashing republicans for years now. For years now, they were full of bad faith false equivalencies. Hysteria whenever someone says true but negative things about conservatives. Somehow, only rural people count as real Americans, people in cities dont. It was important to "challenge" liberals while it was equally important to scold anyone who says something negative about republicans. Republicans must not be challenged, their actions need to be painted in the best possible light.
> big corporations
Big corporations supported Trump, because they thought he will get rid of pesky rules that prevents them from harming more people. They like when the law allows them to harm the environment, when it facilitates frauds committed by big companies.
> big law firms
Is there anything to suggest they were opposed?
As opposed to what? The majority of people took away their power either by not voting for them or not voting at all.
Multiple universities have refused Trump's demands and Newsom even threatened universities in his state if they went along with it.
Democrats speak out about everything Trump is doing. They also worked with some Republicans recently on bills that Trump is against.
So please tell me how they are at fault?
Because it seems they are at fault when they are in power and they are at fault for Republicans when they are in power.
You're also generalizing the media. It's nearly impossible they are equally manipulative.
Since no political party will be perfect we should vote for the best option
If anything, the opposite is true. Citizens who've never protested in their lives are now in the streets. Off-year elections have had record turnouts.
154–155 million people voted in the 2024 presidential election; that's 63-65% of eligible voters, the second highest percentage in the past 100 years.
Most Americans took democracy for granted; the possibility of losing it has caused Americans to wake up.
And then trump got elected which is the reason of the crisis right now.
Perhaps American people wanted this?
Also, I think that America and Russia's probably the only biggest difference right now is protests and yea, I looked at some protests in America and how people are getting shot and even one veteran got detained who worked in iraq war for 3 days and was stripped naked and wasn't allowed to say anything and this happened a long time ago because of ICE
All because he looked brown. You could fight or die for the country & they would come to haunt you.
Veterans are calling ICE against the protestors even worse than how Veterans acted during the wars towards Iraqi citizens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y91VgKlJfLI
I have consistently called it out but most Americans from what I can gather want to desperately fit in the two boxes and not have independent support and especially when one party's effectively doing something like this. Bi-partisanship had always ended & you can't vote for anyone more than these two parties (one of which is causing an active war in greenland but the other party's better in this context but its also complicated and they still have very much an influence caused by lobbying)
A lot of pundits that were center-left in past years fall into this trap, and normalize extremely right-wing positions these days because of it. They are stuck in an media and information environment of politics and, lacking many core values to guide them, they navigate to the middle of the media that they consume, assuming that the truth will be there in the middle just like it was in the past.
This is a fundamental problem and one reason we're mired in this culture war. Social friction is caused by jostling based on group membership, and there's no common values-based scaffolding we can use to collaborate in building a better way.
I used to scoff when told to say the pledge of allegiance as a young person. Now, the closing words "liberty and justice for all" sound quite aspirational.
Insurers couldn't deny coverage due to existing conditions
Kids could stay on parents until 26 even if they aren't in school
There were also subsidies for the lowest income people to help pay for open market plans.
This is something right? This is a step in the right direction?
If one party wants this and the other wants to dismantle then the first is left and the latter right.
How do you know that was the case?
Nevertheless, they express extreme positions. Like "people should be treated preferentially by race" or "private property should be abolished/confiscated" or "the police should be defunded" or "transwomen should be allowed to compete in women's sports categories" or "illegal immigrants should receive taxpayer-subsidized healthcare." These are like 70-30 or 80-20 issues at the national level, with Leftists on the wrong side.
What's your evidence for this?
If that extreme is good or not is a mostly a value judgement - there is no right or wrong answer. There are consequences to what answer you pick though.
And also practicality. Extreme people are highly motivated to push their agenda, and that requires a party. They adapt and find a way to participate, one way or another. Often simply by ramping up awareness of the opponent party's inevitable extremes.
The real question is: how do the moderates in a party operate, and are they currently tolerated and reasonably well represented within the party.
(I am using extreme here to mean a lack of operating in objective reality, or a strong will to divide who "matters" from who doesn't. Usually they go together.)
In a representative democracy it doesn't matter what you believe only what the person you vote for believes.
However, IMHO this doesn't really matter because in the US both the left and the right tend to score high on authoritarianism on the freedom vs. authoritarian axis on a two-dimensional political spectrum view if you look at their actual policies and views they defend. That even includes the almost nonexistent US far left. Strongly anti-authoritarian viewpoints are extremely rare in the US. Even self-proclaimed "libertarians" in the US tend to have fairly authoritarian views when you press them about it, they're usually merely anti-federal-government pro business right-wing neoliberals.
Plenty of people wouldn't even count her as "left".
No, it's an assumption that the people discussing the subject are sane and rational. It's one thing to argue that the US devaluing its wildly overvalued dollar is an effective default. Nobody would disagree with that, that's why we did it - to give us the continual option for rugpulls. But it's simply delusional and unserious to insinuate that the US won't just print paper to pay off nominal debt. It costs the US absolutely nothing.
If the US doesn't do it and defaults, it props up the value of foreign-held treasuries by giving debtors a claim, it doesn't reduce it. We happily let the presses run since 2008, running up the stock market by nearly an order of magnitude, and didn't see a drop of inflation until the last presidential term.
Also, it's extremely weird that European elites think of NATO as some kind of local government. It's simply a US-invented and controlled institution that it used to pressure Russia (the US's competitor in a bipolar world), has had nothing but a corrosive effect in Europe, and now they do the job for free.
NATO is critical for the European powers (those not named Russia). The US doesn't require it. The US doesn't need to defend Europe any longer. And it's clear the Europeans don't want the US there, so it works out great. Europe can boost its defense spending by ~$300 billion to make up the difference, or not, whatever they choose to do is up to them.
The US had the world's largest economy six decades before NATO existed. China is growing into a superpower entirely without a NATO-like participation. NATO is primarily beneficial to European stability. The US doesn't need NATO to defend itself at all.
That's not peanuts.
Today, US policymakers see China as the main adversary. But European states have no real military power--certainly none that can be projected in the Pacific theater--and wouldn't have the will to deploy it even if they did. Europeans now expect America to fight Russia for them, not with them. So now NATO is basically all risk and cost for the US with no benefit against their main adversary.
I think it's a shortsighted view of American national security imperatives: American security relies as it ever did on security in both Western Europe and Eastern Asia. Abandoning one theater to focus on the other just leaves a giant blind spot.
However, this has led Europe to take its own security more seriously and stop relying on America to fight the Russians for them, something multiple POTUSes have tried more diplomatically to achieve--and failed--for decades.
As an European: nobody has this expectation, unless you're using some strange subreddit comment as a source of information.
That's changing, but for many years European nations did not spend very much on their militaries. A large part of why is the protection of NATO and US bases in various countries.
Europe has spent less on military because after the cold war and still today, it never had any realistic threat. Russia can't even take few miles off Ukraine.
The only realistic threat is the US, which is an ally, in theory. Now a threat.
The realistic threat is Russia, which is currently winning a war in Ukraine through sheer attrition and will succeed unless Europe steps up big time.
I hate Trump and would much rather see the world keep on going the way it has been, but Europe's militaries grew around an American core after WWII. A few nations have serious armies (France, for one) but most of Europe is close enough to a US airbase for a small military to work fine.
This misses the point, which is that Europe and the US need each other. Without the US, Europe stands no chance against Chinese and Russian influence. Without Europe, the US cannot stand against China and Russia.
And yet Europe is unable to support Ukraine enough to change the course of war.
Which is the direct cause of the current situation. If Europe was so strong and ready, war in Ukraine would be over, Russia was defeated, and US wouldn't even think of doing what it is doing.
Everything else is copium.
It's not unable. There is little political will in Europe and USA to support Ukraine with arms to the victory. They support Ukraine just enough to not loose. It's in their interest to grind russian meat and tanks in Ukraine as long as possible.
I keep trying to make people here aware of that, but euro-enthusiasm is very good at hiding ugly and complex reality of European politics. And it is not even limited to Ukraine, but it shows itself with Greenland as well. If you really take a closer look, you'll see that different countries indeed made different reactions, even if they sent symbolic amounts of troops to Greenland.
And, above else, people tend to mistake words for action, and believe that a post made by some European leader on Twitter is somehow enough to bring things into reality.
> Seems like the threat should become more substantial before the whole continent awakens.
But Russia is not and won't be strong enough to pose a significant threat to German or French core territory, not to speak about Spain or Ireland. Moreover, as much as we in Europe like to equate Putin with some evil madman, for it makes the world simpler for us, Russian elite is rational, and invasion of Germany is nothing but stupid from their perspective. Of course there are broader interests that may motivate countries to act against Russia (for example French influence in Africa or Asia) but, at the same time, these interests may motivate them to throw Eastern Europe under the bus.
Therefore if anybody believes in some united European action, or a single European army that would actually be worth anything and won't be yet another initiative created mainly to come up with a nice catch-phrase (Steadfast Europe!), lives inside a fantasy.
But that's the point - will is everything. No one denies that Europe has enough money. Thing is, it doesn't have much else.
That's the wrong comparison - the comparison in this context is the size of the European military versus Russia.
Is it just me that finds it odd that the same people say that both Russian is an imminent threat to Europe - where its tanks could roll over the continent - and at the same time say just one more push to win in Ukraine?
If Russia attacked a united Europe it would lose - the slow defeat in Ukraine is purely a matter of will, not capability. ie it matters more to Russia than Europe.
Note most Europeans don't see the war in Ukraine as an attack on Europe by the Russians - despite what the hawks would like to paint - that's why the hawks can't bounce Europeans to put significant boots on the ground in Ukraine.
The US spending could be the result of so many other factors.
That is not evident at all in how any US policymaker acts these days. China is stronger than ever, precisely due to US actions. Every day, the US gives up power and throws it away, and China picks it up off the ground for free.
The supposed "China Hawks" are all chicken hawks without anything to back them up.
https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/...
The US intelligence community is correct in its assessment, but US policy is not acting in any way consistent with both the US being the dominant world power and taking that ODNI assessment seriously.
Current US policy makers are instead trying to hide in their shell like a turtle, and greatly restrict US power so that it must not confront or deal with the threat from China.
> The National Defense Strategy — a dramatic shift from even the first Trump administration — no longer focuses primarily on countering China. Instead, it blames past administrations for ignoring American interests and jeopardizing the U.S. military’s access to the Panama Canal and Greenland.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/23/pentagon-national-d...
Edit: big news day for China Hawks proving to be frauds, this is from the WSJ
Trump Administration Pushes Out Key Officials Focused on China Tech Threat Departing staffers worked for a Commerce Department office charged with protecting the U.S. from Chinese technological advances
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/trump-adminis...
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/economic-defense-unit-how-the-u-s...
Way back in September last year, which feels like forever ago, there was this good summary from Politico:
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/05/pentagon-national-d...
> Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s policy chief, is leading the strategy. He played a key role in writing the 2018 version during Trump’s first term and has been a staunch supporter of a more isolationist American policy. Despite his long track record as a China hawk, Colby aligns with Vice President JD Vance on the desire to disentangle the U.S. from foreign commitments.
A supposed "China Hawk" is the one writing the policy that hands power to China! Calling them "frauds" is fully appropriate, and even though the author admits he dashed this off in a single day, I find it quite convincing:
https://secretaryrofdefenserock.substack.com/p/the-final-evo...
I note in the current Europe/Ukraine vs Russia fighting there are no US troops, although they did send weapons for which we are grateful
>China as the main adversary
neither China nor Russia are about to bomb the US but in terms of threats to US interests and hybrid warfare we have the full scale war in Ukraine vs only some threats over Taiwan and on the hybrid front I hear rumors the the Russians cultivated a US property developer code name Krasnov and he went on to cause some havoc back in the US.
Are the French going to be parking the Charles de Gaulle alongside American aircraft carriers in the Taiwan Strait if push comes to shove in the Pacific? I wouldn't entirely discount it. But maybe more importantly, even if they're not, does making an enemy of the EU negatively impact the ability of the US to park American aircraft carriers there? Certainly damage to the Atlantic trade relationship is unlikely to do the US any favors economically, which is important if the US wants to keep funding the Navy. And a potential loss of European controlled military bases has the potential to negative effect the US military's logistics, which is where the real superpower status comes from. Maybe most significantly, how would such a shift in alliances impact the willingness of Pacific allies to support the US, which obviously does have a direct impact on any conflict with China.
That's a very uncharitable take. Europe relies on NATO to fight the Russians. Of course it does. There is no alternative, and the US would never allow other credible alliances to form. Because why would they? It's certainly not in their interest.
It's good that Europe spends more in security, and it's good that Europe seems to be serious about Ukraine. However western Europe is something else. If push really would come to shove, there is zero chance Russia could take and hold continental Europe.
The population is larger, the economy is larger by a ridicolous amount, and there are French and British nukes positioned all over. What Europe is mainly lacking military projection in the Pacific and the Middle East, and that's not likely to change.
This has been policy from at least the Clinton administration, and it has worked great to ensure that the US remains the biggest fish in the NATO pond, even if it is not bigger than all the others put together. Now that the current administration is tearing NATO in real time and the President is saying that his 'personal morality' trumps international law and treaties (never mind that ratified treaties stand on the same level as the Constitution, per the Constitution itself), I would imagine that the other members are working around the clock to implement their contingency plans and ramp up domestic military production and other avenues of procurement.
This is not the case of Europe externalizing the cost. It is the case of USA using other countries for own benefit, then starting aggression against them while trying to cast itself as victim.
This is the usual claptrap Euros and Eurosimps come up with when Americans gripe about subsidizing Europe's defense.
"Soft power" isn't putting money back in Americans' pockets, and the primary beneficiaries of NATO clearly didn't like us very much even before Trump's return, when Biden was still president and the aid flowed freely to Kyiv: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/06/11/views-of-the-u...
> Sweden: 47% had a favorable opinion of the US.; Germany: 49%; France: 46%; The Netherlands: 48%
This is the "soft power" that Americans should rue having lost under Trump? A continent of entitled ingrates, who constantly crow about their generous welfare states ("six months paid vacation!") they enjoy partially through neglect of defense, and condescendingly lecture us ("As a European...") about how everything we do is wrong, who apparently don't like us very much even when we do come to their defense?
Obviously I don't agree with his threats over Greenland, but acting like the end of NATO would be a huge loss for the US is ridiculous. Look at how obsequious European heads of government are towards Trump, even in the face of these threats; that tells you all you need to know about whom NATO truly benefits. They know if the US withdraws from Europe completely, they'll have to up their military spending considerably to plug the gaps, which will strain the welfare state.
Sweden just joined NATO in 2024, so what does the cold war have to do with it?
> a country where less than half of the population had a favorable view of us as a nation, before Trump.
Ok? Yes, it was looking like Sweden thought Russia was the bigger threat, so they joined NATO in 2024, but I guess Trump is making them regret this.
We the people are responsible for the government we get.
Don't like the consequences? Make better voting choices next time.
The EU has chosen to try to cooperate rather than to be at war all the time and it looks like that may have been a wrong bet but that is mostly because first one (Russia) and now another (USA) party have reneged on the deals that were in place.
But not while carrying Euros’ defense obligations
Here in the UK, I get 29 days leave, I buy 5 more, plus get 8 bank holidays - so 42 days leave - or 8 weeks. Plus volunteering days and training days... but that isn't that common.
I lived in Europe and can explain it for you.
In Germany, particularly in Bavaria with its 13 gesetzliche Feiertage (holidays including regional ones like Heilige Drei Könige, Fronleichnam, and Allerheiligen), Urlaubstage can be maximized through smart planning. The rule is that weekends (Samstag and Sonntag) and Feiertage do not count against your Urlaubskonto; they don't deduct from your vacation days. With over 30 Urlaubstage (the legal minimum is 24 Werktage, but many collective agreements grant 30 or more), you achieve over 60 free days (calendar days of absence) by using Brückentage (Bridging days) and longer blocks.
If you have more than 30 Urlaubstage (e.g., 32), it rises to ~70 free days. It is possible—plan early, as Brückentage are popular!
All teachers and most politicians. Teachers do enjoy the same vacation as students: schools aren't open during vacation. Two months of vacation + 6 additional weeks of vacation during the year + a few special one-day holidays.
As for politicians: my stepfather was working at a national parliament but only when there would be official questions and only when these would be in his native tongue (country had two official languages). And when the country would be without a government, he'd have as much as 500 days (500 days: you read correctly, and it didn't happen once but twice) of vacations. It's only if there was a super urgent matter where the parliament would be opened that he'd have to work: so he'd quickly hop on a plane and go back to his native country.
So "who": some public servants. Not all but some public servants definitely do enjoy 8 to 12 weeks of vacation and even much more than that.
At the expense of working, taxpaying, citizens.
EDIT: for the 500 days... He would not know beforehand it'd be 500 days. He'd just know there was no government anymore. So he was fully paid but basically had to do jack shit until there'd be a government again. Which nobody could tell when it'd happen. But you read correctly: half a thousand days+. You all read that correctly. His vacation on the sunny french riviera paid by the taxes of the people.
In the case of 32 days of vacation with bridging & holidays it is very possible to get over 70 days of calendar absence
It's hard to detect sarcasm through the screen but in case you're being serious and just repeat what Trump says, he does this because Americans are not stupid and are asking, why Europeans can enjoy free healthcare, education and 4-week holidays and we cant? The answer "because we sponsored them" makes no sense but finds fertile ground in the hearts of some people.
So why does the US spend more per capita on healthcare than the EU?
Russia obviously bears the moral blame for starting this war, but Putin clearly was tempted by Western weakness. Had European states kept large and effective militaries and credibly threatened to employ them in Ukraine's defense, we probably wouldn't be where we are right now. So in some not insignificant measure, historical European underspending has contributed to the need right now for dramatically increased spending across the entire alliance.
2. I disagree with GP and agree with your cynicism there. US domestic policy failures are in no way caused by foreign intransigence of any kind. IIRC we spend more on health care per capita than (almost?) any other nation yet rank nowhere near the top in health outcomes. That's on us.
And I think it's important to correctly identify the root cause of our broken domestic policies, because I suspect fixing that issue will fix more governance failures than just healthcare.
I wrote "Western" rather than "European" specifically because I believe American weakness has played a role, too. But would it really make it better if Russia invaded Europe solely because of American weakness? That European states are so weak and helpless that they hardly even factor into Putin's calculus?
There was also a benefit to the US maintaining NATO - it could nudge/encourage/guide other countries into doing things it wanted done (such as Afganistan). This soft power is being discarded with NATO.
The US economy is only the largest if you don't adjust for purchasing power, at which point the US and EU are in joint second place way behind China, and separated from each other by a rounding error despite Brexit.
If the US wants to go alone, sure we'd miss you, but it's welcome to go in peace… so long as it doesn't steal Greenland on the way out.
There was some measure to ensure that Trump could not take the US out of NATO, he seems have been trying to find some alternative that has the same effect and he may well have found it.
The only "good" thing it did was breaking Sarajevo's siege in the mid 90s, but event then it isn't actually clear if the Serb wouldn't have backed off anyway at the end of the month because they couldn't progress due to the UN presence. Still saved a few hundred civilian lives, in exchange for a thousand of proto-nazi, so i can't say it was bad.
No one will attack any EU country anyway, as long as france doens't change its nuclear doctrine, which, i will state here once again, include a "warning shot".
Ultimately though, the Irak invasion shattered the trust and status quo, and i agree 100% with people saying NATO must die. Alliance that are more than a reactive defensive pact and force member into attacking unrelated countries should disappear. Just get nukes, and pray you won't have to use them.
The EU itself was viewed critically from Washington until it could be proven that it had no intention of becoming a military alliance. So while it could be true that the US does not need NATO in a strict sense, the idea that it has not been net beneficial to the US is absurd. No Danish soldiers would have died in middle eastern wars if it wasn't for NATO.
only 1 country invoked article 5 until today and it's not in Europe)
Only because Europe was intent on destroying each other.
The European allies have put their money and more importantly blood into these conflicts.
Yes, we can all look at a geographical map and state that the USA is blessed geographically by being split by two oceans from anything major in the world and thus conclude that the US does not need Europeans to defend its borders.
In essence you're completely ignoring how US allies in form of NATO allowed US to thrive as the global military power by providing a deep web of support, logistics, bases, ports, intelligence and allowing the US to have a huge influence it has consistently leveraged for decades to its own benefit or needs. And that includes financial reasons (like buying US weaponry).
If US wants to pull out of NATO it is what it is, but this whole nonsense of NATO benefitting only the European allies when it's always Washington asking for other's blood and bases and logistics is just it: nonsense.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Treaty
> Following the September 11 attacks, the Secretary General of NATO, George Robertson telephoned Colin Powell and said that declaring an Article 5 contingency would be a useful political statement for NATO to make. The United States indicated it had no interest in making such a request itself; however, it would not object to the council taking such action on its own.[55][56]
If we need Greenland so bad because Russia is that dangerous then isn't NATO important?
NATO is / was USAs way of controlling Europe to have something against Asia.
It's time for us / Europe to let the USA being whatever and kicking them out
We (Germany) are quite well equipped making guns and tanks.
And btw it was our strategy to try to win over countries by NOT being the big bully but sure Russia and USA made it clear that this no longer works.
I hope USA leaves NATO and we kick them out sooner than later
To be pedantic, Canada is a major non-European NATO member.
And then there are allies, some of them designated by Trump:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_non-NATO_ally
Or, they were, as there is no certainty under his rule.
If US pulls back from NATO, and Europe builds up military power to compensate, then the US loses this de facto leadership seat of an empire.
Today, the US appears in parallel to be doing two things:
1. Causing fragmentation in Europe, by promoting right-wing nationalist politics in the EU
2. Threatening to drastically reduce their role in NATO
At the very least we can both agree that these two efforts are completely in contradiction with each other, and it's very unlikely that Europeans will want to go for more fragmentation without the military power of the US on their side, right?
You forgot another one: literally threatening two NATO members (Canada and Denmark, in form of Greenland) of annexation.
If that bet is actually being made by Putin, hmm, I'm worried, but then again the implementation of the anti-NATO project is being run by Trump, so I think the EU just might come out on top. The whole Greenland thing for example, seems like an EU solidifying step, at the same time as it is NATO destroying.
Why would anyone listen?
Actions like these where US leadership is heavily distorting the facts make it much easier for the AfD to present themselves as a legitimate political movement allegedly being wrongfully suppressed by the “authoritarian” incumbents. The AfD currently scores 25% in representative nationwide polls, higher than any other political party in Germany. In some federate-state elections they scored over 30%, in one of them again higher than any other party. You can’t just ignore them as “crazy“.
Same kind of thing that got Trump elected.
- If EU gets some more vertebrate leaders (something that tends to happen in times like this even in the most spineless countries), the first thing they will do is probably go get some allies in the Pacific to make up for this - and Pacific is much more sensitive to US.
Of course, all of this is phenomenally stupid and everyone will be far worse off.
right, why would you want to hold US treasury bonds especially if the value of the US dollar is being destroyed? Even if I believed that the US wouldn't default on its debts, or come up with flimsy arguments why it shouldn't have to pay all of them
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/trump-says-us-might-have-...
it just doesn't seem like a super-smart investment at the moment.
The procedure in times of war, at least by the US treasury is to put the payments in a blocked account that is then given to the citizen of the opposing country post war.
This is also why russian assets in US/EU banks, e.g., are only frozen: doing any other thing with them would instantly trigger the entire world to liquidate their holdings. Would Saudis or Indians or Danes hold assets that can be confiscated for geopolitical reasons?
"Here are the dollars we owe you. They're worth half as much as the ones you paid us."
Yet here we are.
Demonstrably wrong as Trump announced tariffs on the countries sending troops to Greenland.
Ironically, that will make some projects harder, especially if US laws such as NEPA start being applied on the Greenland territory. Hello environmental lawsuits from all sides.
The exchange rate of the yen has dropped recently by a lot, but the inflation experience there has been the exact opposite of America's.
Trying to inflate away 40+ Trillion in debt would directly result in hyperinflation.
> they debased the Yen to garbage levels
Look at Yen to USD exchange rates and it’s clear they didn’t. “From 1991 to 2003, the Japanese economy, as measured by GDP, grew only 1.14% annually, while the average real growth rate between 2000 and 2010 was about 1%,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades Meanwhile the USD exchange rate in Jan 1988 was 127 vs 140 in 1998 vs 107 in 2008. It went up and down all through the 20 years of poor economic growth, but something else was clearly the issue.
I am not saying that the process will be pleasant for the US or its citizens. But it is not without precedent and is extremely unlikely to cause hyperinflation. My 2c.
The US is unlikely to find itself the only industrialized nation without massively damaged infrastructure again anytime soon.
Ergo, they increasingly do not want to hold that debt.
Why not? It has happened* before therefore it can/will happen again.
* (more or less). I would count significant debt restructure (1790) or replacing promised gold with paper (1860-1930, 1970) or even a significant delay (1979) as a default... even if it was temporary in 1979.
They would have to actively choose to default.
None of those are much of a stretch from all the laws already broken repeatedly
But I'm sure he would not do anything crazy. That's just inconceivable.
The finance world:
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
A year or two of NATO countries increased contribution doesn't make up for decades of underinvestment ripoffs.
Isn't that considered a "technical" default since you basically burned every debt holder by inflating your way out of debt? Almost like a TKO vs KO in boxing?
Until Trump says he's going to, then his boosters will declare its a genius maneuver and actually its Joe Biden's fault (Joe made him do it!)
I'm pretty sure they all answered the call when the US invoked Article 5 after the 9/11 attacks, no?
> The US has paid 65 to 70% of the total of $1.4 to 1.5T/year from 2018 to 2025.
Are you suggesting that the US has paid over $1 trillion into NATO each year? That would be difficult because the US military budget has never crossed $1 trillion. The DoD budget is going to be $900.6 billion in FY2026. [0]
[0] https://www.meritalk.com/articles/senate-passes-fy26-defense...
For instance, when the East-European countries have been admitted into NATO they were forced to pay dearly for this, with many billions of $ for various lucrative and overpriced contracts assigned to some well-connected US companies (e.g. Bechtel), either for various infrastructure projects or for military acquisitions.
Those billions of $ do not appear in the US budget, but they have enriched certain US businessmen.
It is normal for a regular US citizen to believe that NATO has not been beneficial for himself/herself, because this is true, but what regular citizens are not aware of is that NATO has been a great source of profits for some US citizens who are more equal than the others.
Did you forget that the one and only Article 5 call to date on NATO to members was for the USA following 9/11?
2. "I helped pass the bucket when you were putting out that brush fire, and now you tell me you won't run into my burning house to save my children?!"
3. Mutual support is more like "I'll help you with your main adversary and you'll help me with mine". What we have now is "Fuck no I won't help you with your main adversary, we oughta stay out of it--wait, how dare you suggest you won't fight my main adversary for me?!"
[1]https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/us-contributes-16-nato-an...
Now, Trump is an opportunist and in the psat his talk of default has been a way to throw rhetorical stones at his political opponents and keep himself in the news while he was out of office. Back in office, he has sought to project some kind of commitment to fiscal responsibility and financial stability.
But let's be real here, he's making threats against a fellow NATO member on the daily and openly saying he wants to annex territory. If he gets it into his head that the Danes or the EU are being mean to him and hurting his fee-fees, he's fully capable of responding in irrational fashion and has a toxic personality cult that will back him up. Be honest, if I took this month's headlines and took a time machine a year into the past, would 2025 you have believed my warnings about what would be happening 1 year into the second Trump admin?
The US defaulting on its debt seems to be the plan.
The Mar-a-Lago Accord, or the Plan to Crash the US Economy -- https://umairhaque.substack.com/p/the-mar-a-lago-accord-or-t...