Bitcoin Could Rise By 165% To $2,000 in 2017 Driven by Trump's 'Spending Binge' and Dollar Rally (cnbc.com) 255
The price of Bitcoin could hit more than $2,000 in 2017 driven by expectations that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump may introduce economic stimulus policies, which could send inflation soaring and propel the dollar to record highs, a report from Saxo Bank claims. An anonymous reader shares a CNBC report: Bitcoin is currently trading around $754.51, according to CoinDesk data. A handle of over $2,000 would represent 165 percent appreciation. During his election campaign Trump has talked about an increase in fiscal spending. Saxo Bank's note said that this could increase the roughly $20 trillion of U.S. national debt and triple the current budget deficit from approximately $600 billion to $1.2-1.8 trillion, or some 6-10 percent of the country's current $18.6 trillion economy. As a result, the economy will grow and inflation will "sky rocket," forcing the U.S. Federal Reserve to hike interest rates at a faster pace and causing the U.S. dollar "to hit the moon." When inflation rises the Federal Reserve may raise interest rates to bring it under control. This causes the dollar to appreciate because it would be seen as an attractive currency for foreign investors.
Trump will tax it (Score:2)
Trump will tax it
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Re:Trump will tax it (Score:5, Informative)
He already is. He's talking about increasing long term capital gains taxes, which taxes investments like bitcoin.
Don't worry, he will repeal the estate tax so that billionaires can pass on all their money to their children (instead of just most of it) so that the new generation of bosses are the same as the old generation of bosses. Meanwhile, the people who voted for him because they are getting screwed economically will still get screwed. What did you think would happen when you elected a billionaire?
Also, where do you get that he is planning on raising capital gains taxes? His site [donaldjtrump.com] says:
So his plan is to lower income taxes on the ultra-rich and increase spending. I hope all the Tea Party representatives that shut the government down during the Obama administration will stop his attempt to run up the debt but I doubt that will happen.
Wrong even if correct (Score:2)
This is not a statement against a deflationary currency, I honestly think the math works out about the same but the US dollar is not deflationary and fiat systems depend on inflation to function
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Actually, Deflation is neither good or bad. Inflation is neither good nor bad. Excessive amounts of either are generally bad. What people want is a stable currency. Unstable currencies are bad. Especially Fiat Currencies.
BitCoin is deflationary currency by default. There is no way to inflate BitCoin, short of massive amounts of CPU time.
If we are trading one FIAT currency for another, one that is immune to Government interference is probably the better one.
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Bitcoin, lacking government interference, seems to be a bit less stable than the government controlled currencies.
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Bitcoin needs two things to be perceived as more stable. The first and biggest is a floating unit of exchange call it
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I know that I collected 1 BTC in exchange for a product in 2010, at that time I could have re-exchanged it for half of a lunch. Three years later, I did exchange it for the equivalent of about 8 lunches. While that's a nice change, it's not stable. A year or so later, it would have exchanged for 40 lunches, then it came back down to 20 or so lunches.
Meanwhile, I can buy a lunch for $8-12 depending on where I go, same price in dollars for the last 5 years or so - give or take 10%, not 1000%.
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Fluctuation in BTC is due to perception, not reality. But since perception is reality, if you buy BTC whenever there is a huge problem with BTC and the exchange prices drop, you'll be correctly interpreting the value of BTC. Those people who buy High and Sell Low are those that have a desire to be popular, but never are.
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Perception is all there is. Reference: Wall Street.
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When Bitcoin starts to get "real market traction" and tries to serve a few million transactions per hour, it will collapse under its own computational weight.
It was a great experiment, especially on the social side. Any "security" that is built into Bitcoin by the blockchain is absolutely useless for many to many broad population small cash style transactions. Any band-aid that's spread on top of it to make it able to handle high volume transactions won't be Bitcoin anymore. Most of the security problems
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Bitcoin, lacking government interference, seems to be a bit less stable than the government controlled currencies.
Bitcoin is far more thinly traded. If the Bitcoin market expands, it will become less volatile.
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If the bitcoin market expands to anything like cash/credit card transaction volume in even a small European country, it will implode under its own computational requirements.
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You are correct. Real deflation is caused by money supply not increasing at an appropriate rate to counter increases in productivity and commerce (velocity). BTC is deflationary since most of the Inflation period has long since past. It was HIGHLY inflationary at the beginning, Long term, it was always designed to be deflationary.
Re:Wrong even if correct (Score:5, Insightful)
Currencies are stable when the money supply expands at about the same rate as the productivity of the country's citizens (basically GDP - a combination of population growth and increased productivity due to technological advances). That causes prices to remain stable when measured in the currency. Ideally, a government with a fiat currency moderates their money supply to slightly exceed this productivity growth rate, which causes a slight amount of inflation (prices slowly climb). Yes it's true that when a government screws things up (e.g. Venezuela right now), it can cause massive problems. But like regular oil changes for your car, there's a huge incentive for all governments to maintain their own economy.
The whole reason we abandoned the gold standard is that it's really stupid to base your economy's health on the gamble that the amount of gold miners dug out of the ground each year would match the rate of growth of your country's GDP. Historically, the amount of gold mined each year did not keep pace with economic growth, resulting in deflation, which led to higher economic instability. If you look at the history of recessions in the U.S. [wikipedia.org], in the 45 years since 1971 when we went off the gold standard, there have been 6 recessions, or 1 per 7.5 years. In the 45 years prior (1926-1971) there were 9 recessions, or 1 per 5 years. The 50 years before that (1875-1925) saw 13 recessions, or 1 per 3.8 years. And the 50 years before that (1825-1875) saw 13 recessions as well. The amount of economic contraction during recessions has also been smaller since we went off the gold standard.
Unfortunately, bitcoin perpetuates this stupidity. Its value is based on (1) the rate at which people are able to "mine" bitcoins by solving increasingly difficult math problems, and (2) its total supply is capped at about 21 million coins. The very fact that bitcoins are appreciating in value is evidence that it's a terrible choice of a currency. You want the prices of staple goods to remain relatively stable in a currency. Instead, bitcoins are so deflationary that early adopters are literally able to live off of bitcoins they've stuffed under the mattress, instead of actually doing any productive work. A currency which enables that behavior is fatal to an economy. I'm not saying all crypto-currencies are flawed, or that there's no benefit to taking a currency out of government control. Only that bitcoin is fatally flawed in that it accomplishes the latter in the worst possible way. The huge increase in the value of bitcoins since its inception is not an indicator of its strength, it's an indicator of its unsuitability as a currency. It proves that bitcoin is incapable of scaling properly with the number of people using it (productivity growth due to population increase). In that respect it's more like real estate - where people who were born earlier were able to buy up most of it cheaply, leaving the current generation unable to afford to buy a home.
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And Solandri just explained to you that's exactly why we're no longer using gold as a currency.
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Gold has all the negative qualities you cite about bitcoin, and was used as currency for a long time.
The inherent security with Gold lies within a specific composition of elements measured against a purity standard. Outside of conning (fools gold), it's rather impossible to "hack" Gold itself.
The inherent security with Bitcoin lies within a specific mathematical function. I wonder how long that will take to be hacked or destroyed? There's a reason we're not still perpetuating WEP for WiFi security, and we've already seen considerable attacks against Bitcoin exchanges.
Somehow I doubt that integrity will
Re:Wrong even if correct (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? So I just got a 'raise' at work from deflation, somehow that is demotivating? I am not going to bother with the rest of what you are saying.
Inflation is a hidden tax that is destructive to savings and the economy.
Re:Wrong even if correct (Score:5, Informative)
Really? So I just got a 'raise' at work from deflation, somehow that is demotivating?
Here's the fallacy -- how long do you think that "raise" will last in a persistent deflationary economy? Prices are going down, because monetary value is going up. That means corporate revenues go down. People with large amounts of money invest much less, because an investment would have to have a LARGE rate of return to actually be worthwhile... otherwise, you just hide your money under your mattress.
So, fewer investors, decreasing prices... corporate revenues go down. And somehow you think get to keep you "raise" at your current salary in deflated dollars?? Fat chance. Eventually, they need to start decreasing your salary -- probably even more than to keep "pace" with deflation, because of the decreased revenues. Or they just start laying people off.
But that's only the tip of the iceberg. Why would you buy property in a deflationary economy, when it is likely to be a depreciating asset? Loans become nearly impossible to justify -- banks would still have to charge interest on them to justify them, which means you're throwing money at a depreciating asset, while the principal of your loan and your payment sizes effectively grow due to deflation. And given the depreciating value of assets, banks are likely to require additional insurance fees in case of default (a lot more than they have on risky mortgages today).
People stop trying to get loans to open new businesses. Investors stop financing them, unless it's basically a "sure thing," since they can "make money" just stashing their cash away. People stop taking out loans for basic things like real estate and houses.
"But," you say, "Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe people should learn to save up more before buying a large purchase." Okay, except who do they rent from in the meantime if they don't take out a mortgage on a house? The people owning rental property face the same difficulties in maintaining a rationale for owning it. If it's decreasing in value, along with other goods, rents will eventually be driven down too (along with the decreasing salaries). Why invest in maintaining property? -- it's just throwing money at a continuously depreciating asset.
If you're a landlord in such an economy, the best strategy is probably to dump your property now and get more money out of it while you still can before its value decreases further.
And we can go on and on. People hoarding cash and dumping most other investments leads to economic stagnation, then worse. Eventually this results in a deflationary "spiral" and the economy tanks.
Oh sure, throughout all of this SOME people will still invest and spend money, but it becomes increasingly hard to justify.
People who support deflation generally never think through even the basic next steps in their logic. They just think they'll magically have "higher salaries" coming from somewhere to spend on cheaper goods. That doesn't happen in real economies. The only people steady deflation is good for are people who have giant money bins already. For everybody else, you'd be much better off with the 1-2% mild inflation and actually having a more active economy.
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The point is that targeting 0% inflation results in much more harm to employment than targeting 2% inflation as is done.
And given that people have the opportunit
So you say, Solandri.... (Score:2)
But by abandoning the gold standard and not coming up with anything concrete to replace gold, we effectively said our currency is no longer tied to anything tangible of any value, so only faith in our leaders managing everything keeps it afloat.
IMO, that's proven to be a terrible fiscal policy -- as we saw with the Federal Reserve running out of techniques or ideas to control things during the last economic crash. Interest rates were dropped to near 0% and none of the decreases were having the expected/desi
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| IMO, that's proven to be a terrible fiscal policy
Monetary policy, not fiscal policy.
| -- as we saw with the Federal Reserve running out of techniques or ideas to control things during the last economic crash.
To the contrary, the Fed employed a large variety of ne
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Deflation is bad. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader. I will feed you a couple of hints. What if you did nothing with your money and it increased in value? Would you buy anything?
Yes. Otherwise I'd starve to death.
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He doesn't understand the benefits of Deflationary currency. The benefits include less (or no) need for Government support programs (welfare, SS etc). It would require less in taxes, allowing people to keep their earnings (and wealth). It would increase a whole slew of things we really haven't seen in a very long time. Working hard as a youth (when it is easier to "work hard") would pay huge dividends long term for society.
The assumption is that rich people wouldn't spend their Coin, and horde it. This is l
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I believe the idea that people stop spending money because of deflation is a logical fallacy. People need food, housing & utilities, healthcare, vehicles & fuel, entertainment etc. These are ongoing needs that need to be serviced in the present. All consumers look at is the price NOW. As we can see from consumer debt levels, people don't consider the future regardless of inflation or deflation.
Technology is an inherently deflationary market (today's money would buy something better tomorrow), and it
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I agree that people tend to overestimate both the positives of inflation and the negatives of deflation. As long as money is highly predictable in value and the inflation or deflation quite small, it probably does not matter much either way.
That said, deflation during a financial/economic crisis can very bad and can lead to a self-reinforcing economic downward spiral as crisis encourages avoiding risk, avoiding risk encourages hoarding cash, hoarding cash lowers prices, and tumbling prices causes severe ri
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Inflation is a symptom of a healthy economy. The money supply should be increasing as the economy increases. The causation doesn't work the other way though - no one has ever spurred economy growth by trying to cause inflation (though Japan tried for 20+ years without success). You can't push on a rope.
Another nice feature of low inflation is that it avoids annoying negatives. Safe ways to park your money (e.g., savings account) pay a bit less than inflation, which gets very awkward if inflation is 0 or
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If both increase at the same rate, there is no inflation, you economically ignorant fuck
Ah, such reasoned discourse is what makes Slashdot special. In the simplest model, sure, we have 4% more money and 4% more stuff, so prices should be stable, right? But instead demand leads supply in a growing economy, so prices go up.
Plus, economic growth tends to be more in areas where people have a choice whether or not to buy (or purchases can at least be delayed), while measuring inflation is weighted towards basic staples where people buy more-or-less the same amount in good times and in bad. So we
It could... but probably not. (Score:2)
I've been hearing promises of $2,000 Bitcoin due to $BIGECONOMICNEWSEVENT for awhile now. It never seems to pan out.
Honestly, I'd be impressed if it gets back to $1,000 like it did during the 2013 bubble.
Re:It could... but probably not. (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO, this is nothing short of a slashvertisment for a Pump n Dump Scheme.
+1 Insightful (Score:3)
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Life is a 'pump and dump' scheme. Long-term, but still one and the same.
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It is called ads. Bitcoin is starting to acquire pyramid scheme like traits, though thankfully it is not pyramid shaped, holders doesn't like the fact air is going out of the baloon, and does anything to try to start a new buying craze to reinflate it.
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air is going out of the baloon
Really?
https://bitcoincharts.com/char... [bitcoincharts.com]
(Note: Log scale)
Pump 'n Dump (Score:5, Informative)
Here we go again.
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'n Trump
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You're not kidding... *Buy gold now!*
I think we can expect a lot more of these scams. Panic is a great motivator. And what better is there than the fear of Trump right now? Fun times ahead...
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Well, there's little evidence Trump is into austerity, he has a better Congressional chance of passing an infrastructure bill than Obama did, and both GOP and Trump like a really large military.
All investments are guesses, and even not investing is typically based on guesses of events or lack of. Therefore, it makes sense to see where the stars are aligned and aim your boat that way.
(I myself am investing in pussy guard
Now we have investment spam as news (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, the headline looks identical to the thousands of "this investment will go through the roof!" spam I've been receiving for decades.
How is this any different?
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How is this any different?
Because this time it's different!
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"With BITCOIN!!!!!" makes it different.
Kind of like patents that are "____________ on the INTERNET!!!!!" are different.
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Kind of like patents that are "____________ on the INTERNET!!!!!" are different.
That's obsolete. It's about apps now.
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appy app app guy post here
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Because it's Bitcoin, on Slashdot. People will react - and that's what makes the pump side of pump and dump work, getting people to think about it - for every million readers who think this is utter worthless trash, there's one who will go out and invest serious money in the market, helping pump it up - the millions who don't care are irrelevant.
As PT Barnum said: "there's a sucker born every minute." Current world birth rate is about 250 people per minute, a 0.4% sucker rate seems pretty accurate to me.
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Inflation or Rally? (Score:4, Informative)
The two offered reasons seem to be mutually exclusive... Either we see inflation — as Trump's government prints money to finance the feared "binge" (which is oh so different from the wise Government Spending of the Obama era [nytimes.com]). Such printing may cause an inflation with dollar falling against other currencies — including BitCoin. In this case, BitCoin may, indeed, rise in value.
Or we see dollar "rally" — rise in value against other currencies, including BitCoin.
So, which is it?
I don't think, a raising of rates ever reversed inflation in the history of Federal Reserve — it can only slow it down. They would not even seek to stop it, considering the value of 1-2% per year "normal" (that's a tax on wealth [marottaonmoney.com], BTW).
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Lots of otherwise "serious people" have been warning about soaring inflation as a result of fiscal proclivity for the whole of the Obama administration. This was a major argument against further stimulus spending, even during our lackluster recovery, and against investments in infrastructure. Guess what: rampant inflation hasn't h
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One way or the other, only one of the two reasons proposed for BitCoin surge can be valid — it is an equivalent of a Climate Scientist "predicting", it may become hotter or colder in 10 years.
TFA and/or the submission are a blatant attempt to make money on BitCoint speculation, while blaming Trump for whatever he ends up causing: a drop or a rise in dollar's value.
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They would not even seek to stop it, considering the value of 1-2% per year "normal" (that's a tax on wealth, BTW).
Inflation is not a tax on wealth. Wealth is the ownership of the means of production, which has it's own value. If dollars have less value, the number of dollars needed to buy the means of production increases. However, deflation, or over-high inflation, can hurt the economy and thereby reduce the value of the means of production, but that's a very indirect effect (and usually temporary).
Inflation hurts existing (fixed-rate) debt-holders. If you have bonds, or CDs, or some other fixed-rate instrument, y
Inflation is tax on savings (Score:2)
That's an interesting definition, could you cite, where you got it from? It seems wrong — as it totally ignores non-productive wealth, such as precious metals, Bitcoins, intellectual property, and currency. By your definition, an owner of, say, a shoe-repair shop is richer than a guy with a $10 mln bank-account...
Which means, that whoever earned those dolla
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That's an interesting definition, could you cite, where you got it from?
It's the old-school definition, the definition one uses to become or remain wealthy. The means of production are really the only thing that has value by something other than convention.
it totally ignores non-productive wealth, such as precious metals, Bitcoins, intellectual property, and currency. By your definition, an owner of, say, a shoe-repair shop is richer than a guy with a $10 mln bank-account...
Many things have value, but not all valuable things are wealth. Roughly speaking, you have:
* "bling" - stuff that costs significant money to maintain, like a fancy car
* parked money - non-productive land, gold, safe loans, etc
* speculative gambling
* wealth - ownership of the means of production
Wealth is the thing that (long
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They would not even seek to stop it, considering the value of 1-2% per year "normal" (that's a tax on wealth, BTW).
Small amounts of inflation are NOT a "tax on wealth." I suppose you might consider it a "tax on money you hide under your mattress."
But in the real world, mild inflation encourages people with wealth to get that money out from under their mattress and invest it somewhere or do something with it.
Deflation, on the other hand, encourages hoarding of money, which means investments have to have much larger returns to seem worthwhile, so most people prefer to just keep their money "under their mattress." An
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Wherever I keep it — under mattress, in a sock, or in a savings account — inflation (small or large) taxes it away.
And even then I am not gaining as much from my investment, as I should've. But, yeah, taxes are often used to discourage some behaviors wh
Re:Inflation or Rally? (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember the shovel ready jobs? Never happened. The monies went to cronies - whether it was Bank of America or the teacher's union. The monies did not go to infrastructure.
Trump and Republicans are going to capitalize on the Democrats foolish aversion to pipelines, fracking and drilling. (Yes it ought to be regulated and yes no eminent domain atrocities and yes monies need to be put into escrow for potential damages)
But the jobs; the hopes for even more jobs; the defunding of the Saudi religious nuts and the good will (in the US flyover states) may very well hurt the Democrats for quite a while. If labor joins the Republicans because the Democrats have deserted them then
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I remember the shovel-ready infrastructure jobs. I remember tons of road construction with signs saying it was being done with stimulus funds. Frankly it just annoyed me though because re-paving roads doesn't give you the kind of long term benefits that other investments could. Invest in technology, science/medical research or education and it'll keep paying off for decades... invest in repaving a road and you'll just have to do it again in a few years (and it's not like they did the worst roads, they did t
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I remember tons of road construction with signs saying it was being done with stimulus funds.
I remember hearing about how those signs were quite expensive and paid for by the stimulus [go.com].
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Joke of a Presidency (Score:2)
What was not? "Cash for clunkers" [brookings.edu], perhaps?..
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Remember the shovel ready jobs? Never happened.
This varied wildly by state, and even by county within a state. I too remember shovel-ready infrastructure jobs. I remember tons of road construction, which also had signs citing stimulus funds. In the case of my county, they used it to accelerate existing plans to convert a multi-access divided highway into a limited access highway. They built tons of new overpasses and new pavement in new places, with new ramps, ripping out a dozen stoplights in the process, plus putting in a whole new road where ther
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My mileage definitely varied
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But the jobs; the hopes for even more jobs; the defunding of the Saudi religious nuts and the good will (in the US flyover states) may very well hurt the Democrats for quite a while. If labor joins the Republicans because the Democrats have deserted them then ... the balance of power will have been changed.
Organized labor isn't going to join the Republican Party. The Republicans will treat them just like they do the minorities - if your personal political philosophy makes you align with the Republicans then they will welcome your vote, but they're not going to push for anything that most people in those groups want. Republicans are very much anti-union and probably always will be. Organized labor is stuck with the Democrats and the Democrats did not abandon them but do note that a rather large number of Am
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Well, he does not spend money either [house.gov], but TFA still blames him for the future "binge" anyway...
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The worst a trump presidency means for the US is another foreign war
That won't spike the deficit or anything, just like it didn't under Dubya.
Besides, how bad that worst-case scenario is depends entirely on whom the war is with. If Fuckface von Clownstick manages to inadvertently goad China into invading Taiwan, and Kim Jong Un decides to take advantage of the distraction by attacking South Korea, we're in some pretty deep kimchee.
Re:magic internet money (Score:5, Insightful)
I could think of other things to add to your list. A trade war that ignites a recession. Further delay, or even backward progress, in combating climate change and developing a cleaner economy. An unrestrained, reactionary judiciary that will last for a generation. Privatization of Medicare and Social Security that breaks a multi-generational social contract and leaves seniors in abject poverty. The loss of insurance for millions of Americans due to the repeal, but halfhearted or non-existent replacement, of the ACA.
Really, I could go on, but that seems plenty. If you think that these things won't make the situation on main street any worse in 4 or 8 years, you are in for a rude surprise.
And even if you think my list is farfetched or won't have much of an impact, the things you list certainly will. Another foreign war can do plenty of harm: who do you think fights those damn wars? certainly not the ones that start them. Market deregulation lead to the 2008 Financial Crisis, which resulted in plenty of pain for ordinary Americans.
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Your understanding is wrong. The president can't simply press a button and launch missiles. There are numerous steps that have to be done and cross-checked by a series of different people who all have to give their approval.
If any one of them give a reason not to launch everything grinds to a halt. And I'm not talking about someone who doesn't want to do it simply because. They will be replaced. I mean a legitimate,
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We can't do that when our stupid voters are electing "shitheads" like Hillary and Trump in the primaries.
Or...it could fall to $100 (Score:4, Interesting)
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A pump-and-dump [wikipedia.org], to be precise. Which is something Bitcoin has been subjected to a few different times now.
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That may all be true, but the fact is that if you've been buying Bitcoin over the past 2 years, you've been making some pretty good money.
If you got really lucky and bought when Bitcoin was down around $200, then you've almost quadrupled your investment.
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If you feel that way, go ahead and short the price of bitcoin.
That's missing the point: whether the price of Bitcoin is going to go up or down, the article is still spam. There are plenty of places you can go on the internet if you want to read [random person] says [random thing] is over|under valued articles.
Second Verse Same as the First (Score:2)
Am I in some parallel universe? (Score:2)
I love this kind of story (Score:2)
Net worth is over $86 trillion!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop it with the debt crap! And stop comparing the spending of money against the GDP instead of our overall total value!
Let's say you own property worth $1,000,000, you have $200,000 in total debt, and you make $180,000 a year. Would you worry about spending an extra $20,000 this year?
Those numbers are the US economic numbers translated to personal terms.
The NET worth of the US was over $86 trillion at the end of last year. That's value minus debt folks. Get real.
With value like that, the government could spend nearly $5 trillion per year over taxes (enough for a $15K / year universal basic income for every American rich or poor) and only be creating about a 6% inflationary load against our overall worth. The resultant increase in consumer spending (people with less money spend a large portion of what they get instead of banking it) would be like attaching solid rocket boosters to the economy. With proper management, deflationary pressures could be created using the greater economies of scale to counteract the inflation. A win for all!
Stop the fear mongering!
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Stop it with the debt crap! And stop comparing the spending of money against the GDP instead of our overall total value!
Let's say you own property worth $1,000,000, you have $200,000 in total debt, and you make $180,000 a year. Would you worry about spending an extra $20,000 this year?
Uh, absolutely! Especially if I had $200,000k in debt. That's a huge amount of debt to repay already. Spending an extra $20k a year would be an outlandishly stupid thing to do.
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Wow. Then you need to do some more digging into the reality of the normal American.
A trivial search on "us debt to income ratio" yields an answer 370% for the the average U.S. household. Even assuming 300%, that individual above will normally be running a $540,000 debt. He's doing great to only be at $200K. If he reduces his spending to $100K per year (an unbelievable amount for someone who is only paying $24K per year on their mortgage), he'll be debt free within five years even giving 30% to taxes. With a
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Stop it with the debt crap! And stop comparing the spending of money against the GDP instead of our overall total value!
Let's say you own property worth $1,000,000, you have $200,000 in total debt, and you make $180,000 a year. Would you worry about spending an extra $20,000 this year?
Yes, if I cared about keeping my $1,000,000 property.
Or, just maybe, country-wide debt finances do not scale to personal debt at all.
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The NET worth of the US was over $86 trillion at the end of last year. That's value minus debt folks. Get real.
Speaking of getting real, I'd love to see you show up on Shark Tank with that valuation, and see who bites first...
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Huh? Why would you argue about our nation's "net worth" as having any relevance here?
In an example of personal debt and ownership, a person can get WAY over their head in debt, while still possessing quite a few things of value. If it gets out of control and they can't manage it any longer - they have the legal options to file for bankruptcy, including a Chapter 7 where most of the debts are simply washed away. Technically, they're *supposed* to itemize all of their possessions to determine their net worth
Meanwhile, gem cutters... (Score:2)
...enjoy a historically reasonably-stable or rising price of goods, and don't have to rely upon this speculative bullshit.
I type this as I hold roughly fifteen thousand dollars of opal in my hands. [imgur.com]
What I particularly enjoy (Score:4, Insightful)
When Trump talks about spending, it's a "binge".
But a Democrat president can spend like there's no tomorrow and it gets names like "stimulus spending" or "quantitative easing".
No double standard, certainly.
Haven't the Democrats told us since 2008 that the ONLY way out of a recession is to spend money the government doesn't have?
Trump's spending binge?? (Score:2)
As I recall, Congress is the one who spends money, not the President. All the President can do is ask Congress to spend money like a drunken sailor.
And with the general dislike of Trump on both sides of the aisle, I'm not seeing much inclination for Congress to let The Donald go on a spending binge....
Pumping on Trump (Score:2)
Still Pumping bitcoin, still no credibility.
Oh Good (Score:2)
We can look forward to another six months of BUY BUY BUY BUY B1TC0INS NOW!!!1! spam posts on slashdot every day.
So Trump is devaluing the dollar? (Score:2)
I'm sure Trump will be the first to say "Suck on that, China!".
Uh... FUD much? (Score:2)
TFTFY. Don't you just love the new post-truth economy?
Seriously? (Score:2)
What kindergarden did this journalist fail out of. There is so much factually wrong in TFA that it's hard to know where to start. Just off the top of my head:
- Massive spending binge = inflation = a decrease in the value of the dollar, not a "surge"
- "triple the current budget deficit from approximately $600 billion"...um, the current deficit is $1.4 trillion [zerohedge.com]. The other figure comes from accounting tricks that would be illegal for anyone other than the government
- If the federal reserve dramatically raises
Another tech journalist, riiiiight... (Score:3)
Ok, I just answered my own question. This guy's article is so ignorant that I looked up his qualifications as a "technology correspondent". Here they are:
- News assistant at CNBC for 2 years
- Reporter for CNBC for 1 year
- Has a BA in English Literature, and as MA in Journalism
Yep, he's qualified to write about technology issues. Well, as well qualified as most journalists who do so, anyway... He clearly has deep qualification to prognosticate about financial issues as well. /sarc
Ridiculous (Score:2)
There's no way that Trump's policies will substantially increase inflation, for a number of reasons.
The biggest reason is that it's very easy for the Fed to reign in inflation by increasing interest rates, and by all accounts a Trump presidency is likely to try to push the Fed to be more aggressive about doing this than the current Federal Reserve Board.
The next biggest reason is that Trump won't really be doing much of anything to increase spending. Trump and the Republicans will very likely blow the fede
Re: (Score:2)
Looks like you'll be the one of the people who get cashed in on.
Re: (Score:2)
I count no less than five blah blah
Three government shutdown hysteria stories, some Rand Paul "war on science" crap and a tangential NASA story from 2007, none of which have any mention of the scale of the deficit or debt. If that's the best you can come up with then I stand affirmed. Thanks.