Yes, but global reserves are the domestic total foreign debit, and the government does not control that one. (I mean, it can weight in how it grows, but it's not the one that makes it.)
I think what you are saying is the sum total of global economic activity from the US point of view is foreign debt. The US has no direct control over this debt other than control of printing treasuries.
Okay, only 4 surplus years. 10% uptake of GLP1s, okay, they'd be in surplus. 100% uptake, it would be a deficit.
Any number of things could have happened. This was just one thing that definitely was completely in control of people - it was in the control of Pfizer's commercialization team - it wasn't some unforeseeable crisis.
My point is, the little HN takes here and there like yours, better to not make them, because frankly you don't know anything about the budgeting process or governance, so why say anything at all?
I don't doubt he was lucky which is why I parenthetical referred to the dot com boom. I don't quite understand the relevancy of GLP1s to his luck. I think obesity wasn't what it is today back in the 90's.
I mean, luck is always a part of it, but you need responsible policy too. The US was lucky from 2010 to 2020, with the the economy growing basically that whole stretch, and we still ran a massively growing deficit the entire time because we decided to try and reform the middle east while lowering taxes.
A really important detail that I don't think gets enough mention is that the second gulf war was paid for off the books. The war was not part of the federal budget.
would his policy have been to pay for GLP1s? Yes. And is that a little more than a hypothetical? yes. People who don't know US budgets don't know what drives faster-than-GDP growth in expenses (it's real estate, biotech and college).
I'm unable to follow the point of the significance of GLP1s. I also wouldn't describe the expense as biotech I think healthcare is a better description.
Finally the US's current healthcare system is truly broken. Our elected officials choose to ignore the issue and act as if we are fortunate to have this system. Which must be the least efficent way to deliver healthcare.
> People who don't know US budgets don't know what drives faster-than-GDP growth in expenses (it's real estate, biotech and college).
That's just wrong. Social Security, Medicare, debt interest, and the military eclipse everything else. Discretionary spending outside the military is only like 15% of the budget.
Also, why are you even connecting GLP1 drugs and the 90s federal budget surplus? The drugs didn't exist back then, and the government isn't paying for everyone to take them now, so I have no idea why you'd even draw a connection there.
Because new drugs are what make the federal spending pie larger. Slower growth also does. Wars can also make budgets balloon, but then you’d be like “well Clinton wouldn’t want wars.” Okay, so would he want faster medical progress? Of course, and that turns out to be budget busting!
The drugs could have existed back then. You’d have to read the link. And today they do, and under Clinton, would he pay? All great things to talk about.
I am trying to have an interesting conversation and instead it’s just, downvote this downvote that.
You made a claim (budgeting wasn't good, they were just lucky) and backed it up with a strange hypothetical (if GLP1 drugs were released it would have driven the deficit higher).
Your connection between the two is that new drugs are a primary driver of the federal deficit, which just isn't supported by the the reality of where the US government spends money.
I don't know what interesting conversation you expect from any of that. If you can show why you think drugs are driving the deficit, that'd be interesting.
It was written contemporaneous to Clinton. You are welcome to read about the budgetary process of the Clinton years, healthcare was THE primary issue. Like why am I talking about this stuff, and why was everyone talking about it under Clinton? Because we’re all stupid? Military spending is PERCEIVED to be something about the budget, but it is ALL ABOUT HEALTHCARE, it has been since 1965 in this country, and it is all about healthcare everyone else in the developed world, acutely so in Europe and Japan.
You're glossing over the leap between "is a driver of spending increases" and "is a primary driver of spending increases". IIRC healthcare costs rising has far more to do with an aging population than new drugs, so, again, I'm not seeing a strong link between new drugs and the government deficit.
My understanding is that it has happened. The oil market was tied to the USD. The BRICS have now implemented a payment system as robust as SWIFT system. Oil is now being paid for using that system.
I wish you would elaborate how being a net exporter relates to it being a myth. I don't see the connection. My point is that global trade of which oil is a major component needs to settle the books nightly. If the books aren't reconciled in an efficient manner trade has to slow down.
> how being a net exporter relates to it being a myth. I don't see the connection
Petrodollar a U.S. policy comes from the 1970s, when the U.S. guaranteed the House of Saud’s security in exchange for them selling their oil in dollars. The reason wasn’t to do some currency scheme, but to ensure the U.S. could always buy Saudi oil in a currency we controlled. Saudi Arabia then invested its profits in Treasuries, which closed the loop on Wall Street [1].
When America imported oil, keeping oil exporters close was strategically vital. Petrodollar recycling helped with that. Now that we don’t, it doesn’t.
I see that as a side show to the overall banking system. I trying to express that this was a reactionary response to an immediate problem rather than a key part of banking.
> see that as a side show to the overall banking system
See what? The geopolitics? The petrodollar was entirely a geopolitical affair. If anything, one could argue petrodollar recycling—together with the fall of the USSR-created the modern American banking system. (The timeline is compelling for e.g. LBO debt.)
The reaction to 70's era oil embargo as opposed to the overall global monetary system. The oil embargo was a use of the monetary system not an intrinsic part of it's development.
Oil embargo was about America not having oil. We didn’t react with a financial tool to that, but with security guarantees via our military. Putting the financial piece first reverses causation on the order of a decade.
I don't think so I think the US had many levers one might have been security guarantees. To try to separate the US influence into specific categories is the same as trying to dissect a joke or a frog.
> forcing oil to be bought with dollars, the USD was pegged to oil demand, especially from developing nations whose consumption was growing
If you give me one source, I'll break down why this is wrong.
(In case there isn't one, the U.S. dollar was never pegged to oil demand [whatever that means]. And nothing about petrodollar recycling thought about developing nations for one second.)
Hasn’t all recent oil purchases been settled using USD. My understanding is that most countries buy US treasuries to maintain US credit ratings and to settle global trade debts.
> Hasn’t all recent oil purchases been settled using USD
No. I’ve traded and settled oil in British pounds from a desk at a bank in New York.
> most countries buy US treasuries to maintain US credit ratings and to settle global trade debts
No to the first, partly to the second. Holding Treasuries doesn’t affect creditworthiness. That said, Treasuries are a universal collateral, so some lenders may require Treasuries be held in reserve for their safety (usually in a third-country bank).
The main reason countries buy Treasuries is for reserves. These are maintained so they can defend their currency. They need dollars to do this if their country trades in and/or finances with dollars. (If they trade in or finance with yuan, they should hold yuan bonds, which they can quickly turn into yuan to sell into the market to buy back their currency, thereby stabilizing it.)
Panics about how oil is being traded in non-USD terms are as old as the internet and, in all likelihood, even older than that. You can find usenet slop from 20-30 years ago about the petro-euro and the "tehran oil bourse". Here's an old site that is/was daily panics about the fall of the dollar, from 15-25 years ago. http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/
Nobody is panicking. BRICS has gotten steadily larger and is gaining as an alternative banking system. This is competition. This just requires more thoughtful strategies.
I would say it's a mystery. The US has corporations that are better funded than many nations. These corporations are also rationally managed and operate globally. As a patriot I hope that the US starts to utilize rational thought.
The steady building up of alternatives will happen until one day the reserve currency status will change hands all of a sudden.
I think the Fed could stem the whole thing by just issuing a stable coin itself pegged to the dollar and re-assert itself as the dominant currency/arbiter... but who knows. Maybe then it'd have insight into every transaction and be able to stem things with even more power than it can now.
Nobody stays king forever. Maybe it's time the US is forced to balance its books and stop riding on cheap credit. Losing the power of the reserve currency and the power that that gives to SWIFT and things will take a lot of soft power away from the US. Without allies the US couldn't stop a united China, Russia, insert-other-would-be-ally-of-theirs in a world conflict.
As another commenter said there's no leadership at teh top just chaos. People, countries, banks don't invest in chaos.
> steady building up of alternatives will happen until one day the reserve currency status will change hands all of a sudden
This is not how it has ever happened. Instead, we’ll see a gradual erosion as the world switches to multi-polarity and spheres of influence. (And, with decreasing international trade, every country’s reserve mix will vary.)
I agree that the next wave may not be dominated by a single currency. I also think that is a superior system. I think the BRICS system is based on honoring multiple currencies rather than using a single currency for settlement.
It’s more robust and less efficient. Transaction costs—and opportunities for middlemen—will increase. But the chances that your country’s economy is entirely shut down on the whim of one man in Washington is reduced.
> the BRICS system is based on honoring multiple currencies
The BRICS system is nonsense, as evidenced by basically nobody using it beyond a totem amount. Both the PBoC and RBI have superior settlement systems they could open up if they wanted to. Neither does because neither wants an unrestricted capital account.
I agree that it has been unused but disagree that it will always go unused. I think that China is using the US current global antagonism to encourage others to participate.
> disagree that it will always go unused. I think that China is using the US current global antagonism to encourage others to participate
China is in a border dispute with another founding member of the BRICS. Another is in the Western Hemisphere and will become a proxy-financial frontline.
There will be yuan, Euro and dollar payment rails. (If the EU had failed to unify, they’d be getting divided up between Washington and Moscow again.)
I think the Fed is under powered without consistent planning from our executive office. Erratic behavior does not instill confidence for people trying to rationally plan.
I also think the US used the banking system to punish enough nations that an alternative became viable.
I think Vonnegut really had his pulse on the human condition. Writers such Aldous Huxley could capture parts of it but Vonnegut seemed to capture it in just about every book.
I had shingles across my back in 7th grade. I remember at the time being told since I didn’t have chickenpox as a kid that led to my shingles. I was also told that once you have shingles you are immune. I have since learned both are not true. I also will get pain in the same location that my shingles started when under great stress.
57 now. I have had such an abrupt life style change that I no longer experience stress like I did. I don’t know if the vaccine helped it’a been less then a year.
I never had the chickenpox as a kid, either. The doc shrugged and noted that I obviously had the virus in my system, so I must have had a sub-clinical case. I recall that when we were young, my sister had a very mild case of chickenpox, so I assume that I got some exposure from her even though at the time assumed I managed to avoid it.
If they are fused on their faces, i.e. with the connection pins on their opposite sides, it may be a combination of a viewing storage tube with a TV camera tube, which could have been used for conversion between different TV standards, e.g. American <=> European.
I believe it's fused on the pin side >=<. I will double check and thanks for the idea. I'm about to start documenting all of the artifacts I have purchased over the past (gulp) 25+ years.
I thought the whole point of LLC was to limit liability so you wouldn't be liable for debt beyond your paid up capital? Why would you ever sign a personal guarantee?
Why would the CEO have the personal liability here and not the board? Does Sundar Pichai have to personally guarantee loans for Google? That would be weird since the CEO could be fired.
“If you are meta” in this case means “if you have a billion dollars already, and a credit rating that you don’t want to destroy.
Nobody is trying to pull one over on a bank here. Pricing the risk of the loan is a bank’s whole business, they’re happy to loan to meta because meta is meta, and they’re a good candidate for a loan.
Meta has $44.4 billion in cash-on-hand as of September 2025.
I'm correcting you because people can't really fathom just how wealthy these companies are. They could buy startups for billions of dollars with literally the cash they have in their bank accounts, let alone debt or stocks.
Do you think any CEOs of gigantic corporations are personally liable for any loans made by the companies they work for? I would be incredibly, incredibly surprised to hear if that's the case.
Then why don't they do it? It's the easiest money they can ever make. Even I can litigate the hell out of it if I get $27B, take the money and close the LLC.
reply