US everything has become unappetizing for everyone outside the US.

▲ rpdillon 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And many of us inside the US as well, tbf.

We're basically in some rendition of planet serenity, where 20% of the population absolutely is eating this shit up.

	▲	fhdkweig 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'm not getting the reference. Is "planet serenity" a reference to the 12-step program for addiction or the planet Miranda from the film Serenity, or something else entirely?

▲ jopsen 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes, but if you happen to have a few million spare dollars laying around that have become unappetizing to you, it won't be hard to find someone who thinks they are appetizing :)

▲ qwerpy 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

On the bright side, if enough people agree with this, I could finally buy a house in my neighborhood for <$3M. Prices remain stubbornly high and no amount of "America sucks" on HN and reddit are convincing these (mostly foreign, wealthy) people to sell their houses :(

▲ toomuchtodo 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Exorbitant privilege is a gift that lasts only as long as the trust does.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47635834 covers this succinctly:

> America was in practice running an empire that collected tribute from the rest of planet earth in exchange for entries in a database denominated in a currency they controlled and that was accepted everywhere. Really the only way it could go wrong is putting it under the control of someone who doesn't understand the kayfabe...

from

Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47635056 - April 2026 (250 comments)

▲ rayiner 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This argument fundamentally does not make sense. Look at a chart of U.S. GDP per capita growth: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zSCw!,f_auto,q_auto:...

The U.S. was growing at the same rate or faster as the UK from 1830 to 1930, when the UK had an empire and the U.S. didn’t. Then, in the second half of the 20th century when the U.S. had an empire and the UK didn’t, the growth rates were more or less the same in both places in the long run trend (ignoring the UK’s step change hit from WWII).

▲ dixie_land 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The £ was backed by UK's (perceived) military might just as $ is by the States'.

The the war on Iran (and many years of war on terror) showed we have anything but

▲ rtkwe 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There are other backers to that as well. The main ones being oil trades being settled largely in USD and the need to acquire USD to pay for US goods/services. It's not all military might there's a lot of economic might in there too.

▲ toomuchtodo 11 hours ago | parent [-]

This is the important point. Oil was/is settled in dollars. The world is rapidly moving away from oil. China has already hit peak oil. China is 1/3rd of global manufacturing capacity. If you're leaving oil behind, and buying solar, batteries, and EVs from China, your need for dollars declines, and need for yuan goes up. Also, stocks vs flows. You have to keep buying oil every day from petrostates, while the clean tech you buy is yours for its entire service life (a decade or more for EVs, decades for solar and stationary battery storage).

The US did well when the Saudis required dollars for oil as part of the US-Saudi security and military arrangement, and that arrangement is declining in value over time as the value of oil to the global economy declines. The US loses investors in US treasuries when folks who sold oil for dollars do not have dollars from oil sales. Shades of theta decay.

China Adds Currencies to Central Clearing in Yuan's Global Push - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49736124 - September 2026

The Iran War Just Broke the Petrodollar - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-04-06/the-pe... | https://archive.today/RyJA8 - April 6th, 2026

> "The petrodollar loop requires two moving parts: dollars earned and dollars invested. Both have stopped."

> The standard reassurance is that there is no alternative to Treasuries — no other market offers the depth, liquidity and legal infrastructure that central banks require. This remains true. Foreign central banks will not abandon Treasuries wholesale. But “no realistic alternative” and “unquestioned safe haven” are not the same thing, and the Iran war is clarifying the difference.

https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e...

> As the world’s largest manufacturer of clean technologies, data on China’s cleantech exports provide an important early insight into the pace and scale of the energy transition. In 2024, China produced around 80% of the world’s solar PV modules and battery cells, and 70% of electric vehicles.

(as of this comment, China is exporting EVs at a 12M unit/year annualized run rate, with the capacity to build 50M EVs/year; they are only constrained by not enough marine vessels to keep up with export demand; every 24 months of EV production destroys ~1M barrels/day of oil demand at current run rates, which continue to increase)

China growth straining global auto shipping capacity - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49553327 - September 2026 (0 comments)

China's Manufacturing Advantage, Explained [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49451076 | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgYKVpOsMJs - August 2026

(think in systems)

▲ carefree-bob 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Oil being settled in dollars is completely unimportant.

It makes no difference in what currency a trade is conducted.

What matters is the jurisdiction in which you store the proceeds.

That selection of jurisdiction drives everything else.

I can declare that all oil must be settled in blue seashells. Who cares? What matters is that I do not keep my profits from selling oil as a pile of blue seashells, I invest those profits in some country. As long as that country remains the US, disproportionately, then oil can be marked in British pounds, seashells, hollywood B-list handjobs, it really makes no difference at all.

But, you object, "Doesn't oil being priced in dollars mean that nations need to have dollars to buy oil?". Nope, there are forex markets. So let's look at a situation in which oil is priced in Euros but Saudi Arabia stores its surpluses in dollars.

Which currency sees an increase in demand?

Japan goes to buy oil, so it sells the Yen and buys Euros. Those Euros are handed over to Saudi Arabia, which immediately sells them to buy dollars.

So the net result is that the euro transactions cancel out and all that matters is the selling of Yen and the buying of dollars. The yen falls against the dollar and the euro goes nowhere. It's a literal null op, in terms of net demand for the currency. It means nothing. The jurisdiction in which the proceeds are stored - that is everything.

Now I would ask you, in which jurisdictions do you think Saudi Arabia can efficiently store the ten billion or so it earns each day from selling oil? Nepal? Where does it store a couple trillion dollars worth of financial assets each year? Argentina? Which nation allows such vast unrestricted capital inflows and outflows? Go ahead, make a list.

So you see, whereas one can literally invent anything in which oil is priced in, to find a jurisdiction that can accept those capital inflows, that limits you to basically a single choice. Now, given that Saudi Arabia needs (not wants, but needs) to store its proceeds in dollars, it makes sense that it would price the oil in dollars to save on transaction fees. But really it can price the oil in anything it wants, no one cares except people caught in dank youtube caverns where the ominous phrase "petrodollar" is scrawled on the walls by torchlight.

▲ rtkwe 9 hours ago | parent [-]

No France still needs X USD to send to Saudi Arabia for Y barrels of oil. The only way the USD becomes funny money is if SA buys X from France also denominated in USD so that the cycle is closed, otherwise France needs a continuous source of USD to send over to SA. [0]

[0] Simplifying to national here; yes it's not just one unit in France and one in SA but on net there's X trade between the major money movers in each country.

▲ carefree-bob 8 hours ago | parent [-]

I am asking you to imagine a situation in which oil is priced in currency A but the proceeds are stored in currency B in order to determine whether it is A or B that matters, or both.

In your example, A and B are the same (dollars) and you demonstrate that there is a need for the common currency of A and B, but you are unable to distinguish between the demand caused by A and the demand caused by B, so I don't think you are groking the example. Suppose A and B were different. Oil is priced in dollars but the proceeds are stored in yen. So

   1. France sells euros to buy dollars
   2. France gives the dollars to KSA for oil
   3. KSA sells the exact same number of dollars for Yen.

So now we see that 1 and 3 cancel the net demand for dollars to zero, and what remains is a transaction in which euros were sold for Yen, so the Yen rises against the euro and nothing at all happens to the dollar. No demand for the dollar due to oil being priced in dollars. All that matters is the currency in which you store the proceeds.

By the way, this used to be an adage of currency traders - it doesn't matter what currency a thing is priced in, what matters is the currency where you store the proceeds of the sale. This was shorthand for "the seller determines which currency gains from a trade, and the buyer determines which currency loses". So France, in selling euros for dollars, determines that euros will lose value, but does not determine that dollars will increase. It is Saudi Arabia, the seller, in choosing where to store the proceeds that determines which currency, in this case, the yen, will increase.

	▲	rtkwe 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There's still a net flow of USD across those countries unless KSA buys the Yen from France...

▲ rayiner 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

But what does “backed” actually buy you in economic terms?

▲ stbede 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Wouldn't the more relevant point of comparison be the difference between long-term government bonds. The exorbitant privilege is that it's easier to fund US government debt because trade in USD means that large institutions around the world need USD and store those dollars in the form of US treasuries, which in turn lead to lower bond rates and cheaper debt.

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rayiner 9 hours ago | parent [-]

What we care about at the end of the day is bottom line economic growth, specifically GDP per capita growth. Whether government debt is more or less expensive is a collateral matter. It just means you need to make different choices in taxation versus borrowing—as long as the end result is the same how does it matter?

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stbede 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

What we care about and what the exorbitant privilege is referring to can be different things.

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toomuchtodo 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Cost of capital is a direct input to growth (from both investment and consumption). The more expensive it is to borrow, the lower future growth is, and the cost to borrow is increasing. This means taxation must go up if you want higher potential future growth through reduced cost of capital.

Bond yields go up (ie government debt)->consumer debt costs and cost of capital for business investment goes up (all consumer debt is priced off of "risk free" gov debt)->consumption slows->growth is reduced

	▲	rayiner 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Cost of capital is a direct input to growth (from both investment and consumption). The more expensive it is to borrow, the lower future growth is, and the cost to borrow is increasing Right, which gets back to my point that US GDP per capita growth has been incredibly stable from 1830 to present, both before it had an empire and cheap borrowing and since it’s had an empire and cheap borrowing.

▲ ProjectArcturis 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

▲ carefree-bob 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is nonsense. The rest of the world holds 9.7 Trillion in Treasuries and this amount increased by $500 billion over the last year.

So the opposite of this article is true. You can get all the data from the Z.1 release.

Please don't take these types of flame bait articles seriously or try to spin up an entire world view based on them as you will end up not only directionally wrong, but believe in the exact opposite of reality.

FYI, that $500B increase in treasury holdings is not the whole picture, there are also the agencies (housing mortage backed securities guaranteed by the govt) and foreign holdings of those also increased by $70 billion over the last year, and are about 1.5 Trillion.

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slg 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Sure, the engines may have died, but not only is the plane still airborne, it's even accelerating!

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tialaramex 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

To be fair, while accelerating isn't necessarily what you want per se, you must maintain airspeed in an aeroplane if it loses engines. The instinct is to preserve altitude since hitting the ground is the key thing you don't want to happen - but if you preserve that altitude at the cost of losing airspeed (and now that you don't have engines you can't keep both) you will experience aerodynamic stall and fall out of the sky anyway.

	▲	cmurf 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There are two best glide airspeeds for this scenario: lowest descent rate (typically not published) and greatest range. Simplistically, the published airspeed number will get you pretty close to the best lift/drag ratio for make/model. This should be a memory number. As for the landing, perhaps the best advise I read was from Bob Hoover (aerobatics in a twin Aero Commander): If you’re faced with a forced landing, fly the thing as far into the crash as possible. The key word: fly. You are not flying if you are stalling. And you only have positive control if you're flying. Or also: don't stop too abruptly.

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jackb4040 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I could kiss you!

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verdverm 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

gravity... is working against me... dream of ways... to throw it all away...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VBex8zbDRs

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samudrijan 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

View looks great from up here. Any peanuts?

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bryanlarsen 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You are using the wrong metric. The supply of t-bills is increasing rapidly because of the massive deficit. That is sufficient to explain the increased number of holdings.

The correct metric is price. If there is decreased demand, it will show up in the yield. And it does.

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gpt5 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Foreign holding of US treasuries has also increased last year. That is not explained by increased deficit, but by net increase in demand.

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hvb2 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> That is not explained by increased deficit, but by net increase in demand.

A yield going up means you pay more for the same thing. So if the US wants to issue more debt, they can. The fact that more debt was bought but the yield went to means the supply grew faster than the demand. So an absolute increase in demand, but a net decrease, thus a higher price as shown by the yield

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gpt5 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That is not true. Yield is going up globally, so you need to adjust for the difference in yield.

For example, the US and Euro (average) yield have gone up by almost the same amount in that period, and other currencies like Japan and Australia have experienced an even larger increase.

I’m not sure why the level of discussion in this post is so poor.

	▲	hunterpayne 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		"I’m not sure why the level of discussion in this post is so poor." Its because bond yields and fixed income in general isn't well understood by the public. Even in finance, its often not correctly understood except by those working in fixed income or the IT teams that support them. Funny thing is, often the devs in those departments understand global finance better than the CEOs running those firms because of how fixed incomes is seen by other departments. Basically, its the lowest department because it doesn't get great yield while ironically requiring the best math and economics knowledge to do.

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hunterpayne 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You are misunderstanding some basic things about bonds. Bonds are weird. Higher yield means the bond gives out more coupons (yield, money, etc). But the bond itself costs exactly the same no matter the yield when first bought.

The actual thing being bid on in the bond market is the yield itself. Higher yield is sort of like a higher price in that it means you have to offer more to the lenders. However, what they are actually betting on isn't the ability of the US government to repay. What they are actually betting on is the future inflation rate. So a higher yield doesn't mean what it means for corp debt (ie we don't think you will be able to pay this back). A higher yield for t-bills actually means lenders think inflation will increase in the future. Hence the FED raising rates to fight inflation.

PS But seriously, the bond market is very weird and most people mess up what changes in yield mean for different kinds of bonds because they don't mean the same things (unlike securities ie stocks).

PPS This is all because of the reduction in the amount of oil available worldwide, which triggers increases in global rates, which triggers increases in US rates.

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danmaz74 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

T-bills are offering higher yields, that helps with demand.

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boricj 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's not just about treasure bonds. The mood is shifting in Europe that, maybe, putting all the eggs in the USA basket is perhaps not that great of an idea.

It's the vindication of Gaullism half a century after De Gaulle's death, the concept of strategic autonomy is getting traction in the rest of Europe. It's not that we can't be friends, but that we shouldn't let our future be gambled in the hands of Wisconsin voters every two years.

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rdm_blackhole 10 hours ago | parent [-]

> the concept of strategic autonomy is getting traction in the rest of Europe.

I think you may have missed the part where Sweden just joined NATO recently. As long as the EU countries are in NATO which is de facto under American leadership, then there will be no strategic autonomy.

Secondly, even if the mood is sour between the US and the EU currently, Germany, Poland and other small eastern states very much still like to have the US as backers if only just for the fact that there is no EU army.

If the EU countries were leaving NATO to form their own military alliance, then I would agree with you but that hasn't happened and maybe never will.

	▲	bryanlarsen 9 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> but that hasn't happened and maybe never will. Countries aren't leaving NATO yet, but they are setting up and strengthening alternatives which will make such an option easier. For an example, Canada just joined SAFE.
	▲	thijson 10 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOdabtEUoyY
	▲	hvb2 10 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		> If the EU countries were leaving NATO to form their own military alliance, then I would agree with you but that hasn't happened and maybe never will. The whole point is that, in general, global cooperation has worked well in the last 80 years. Europe doesn't want that to change but the US didn't vote for this guy once, but twice. Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, shame on you. So Europe won't leave NATO, but it is pivoting to being more self sufficient. It's another area where the US is quickly spending the political capital it accumulated for decades.
	▲	danmaz74 10 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		A US-led NATO may very well not survive two more years of Trump presidency.

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bflesch 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Institutional investors are very slow to adapt, so I wouldn't take their continued investment as a positive signal. The sentiment shift is real, and a lot of goodwill has been spent.

It's basically divide and conquer on a national scale tearing down the democratic world police and the democratic systems it supported.

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carefree-bob 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The point is that the entire article is wrong, factually.

In terms of institutional investors and sentiment, I think you are fundamentally not understanding why the rest of the world holds US debt, it is to support running trade surpluses. That is a core economic need of much of the world, and as long as there is that need, you will see foreign government accumulation of dollar denominated assets.

For some reason people either refuse to understand simple balance of payment accounting constraints or they are deeply offended by them, and want to live in a world in which moral outrage determines things like global capital flows.

But we do not live in that world. The reason why the rest of the world accumulated a trillion of dollar denominated assets last year, split roughly 50/50 between private and public, is solely because China needed to run a trillion dollar trade surplus. And next year it will also need to run an even bigger surplus. That forces everything else.

	▲	lokar 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yep. The flow has to balance out somehow. If the US buys more then it sells (all in, including services, which trump ignores for no clear reason) the sellers have to end up owning USD denominated assets.

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quickthrowman 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There are an excess of dollars floating around internationally and only so many ‘risk free’ dollar-denominated assets. US Treasuries will continue to be purchased. There are plenty of buyers who are obligated to buy risk-free assets and US Treasuries are the vehicle of choice.

▲ glimshe 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

	▲	rconti 10 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		No single alternative has to be better in all cases. Any diversification will end up reducing demand for treasuries. It's not a black and white issue.
	▲	josefritzishere 11 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[dead]

▲ isodev 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Imagine, even Apple is moving itself to the shitlist.

▲ gradus_ad 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There must always be a hegemon. Will it be Europe? No, too weak and divided..will it be China? No, too authoritarian..

The US remains the best option among a mixed field of weak, corrupt, divided and authoritarian alternatives.

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Zigurd 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You're not totally wrong but you do underestimate the power of an organized Europe with freedom of movement and commerce. I'm not saying you're getting this wrong but many people reading these comments take seriously that nominal US per capita GDP is an unequivocal signal that we've got it right. A lot of that signal goes away on the basis of a PPP comparison, and then even more goes away when you compare things like healthcare costs. And on top of all of that Europe can point to superior quality of life outcomes. If that GDP number doesn't translate into quality of life, what good is all of that money?

	▲	MrDresden 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		European, living within the EU, who loves the idea of the conmon market. But it is badly implemented and in need of drastic improvements. Just see recent comments made by EU President Von der Leyen and head of the ECB Christine Lagarde on how the biggest obstacles to the EU isn't US tarrifs but internal tarrifs. Counted up they effectively make goods twice as costly as they should be. A true common goods and finance market in the EU would be a force to reckon with.

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JumpCrisscross 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We’re seeing a return to multilateral regional hegemony. Russia, China, India, a new Persia, Israel and Turkey duking it out in Asia. The edges of those conflicts trying to bring war back to Europe. And America getting potentially balanced by China and Europe in the Americas, with the Pacific theatre figuring out its own balancing game plan.

The wild card being this will be the first time the world has entered this sort of unstable state since the invention of nuclear weapons. I expect to see a total failure of non-proliferation and the first nuclear civil war in my lifetime, if not the first nuclear war of territorial conquest. (I do not expect to see the first nuclear extermination.)

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rurp 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This seems right to me. Nuclear proliferation could very well end up being the most consequential legacy of this administration. Their malicious incompetence in this area has dimmed the outlook for humanity to a material degree.

The amount of countries with nukes is going to increase dramatically in the medium term. That will mean exponentially more opportunities for a nuclear conflict to break out. I think there is a very good chance we see a nuclear war in the next couple decades, and the odds are dramatically higher than they were pre-trump.

The only spot I sort of disagree is that I think it's an uncomfortably short hop from a moderately sized nuclear war to a global nuclear war, and I think the chances of the latter are uncomfortably high now as well.

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daymanstep 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> America getting potentially balanced by China and Europe in the Americas

I can't figure out a way to parse this sentence that makes sense. Are you saying that "Europe" will "balance" the USA in the Americas? As in, European influence will counteract US influence in the Americas?

	▲	nostrademons 10 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Would assume it's in reference to things like the EU offering associate membership to Canada, or China's trade deals with Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, etc.
	▲	JumpCrisscross 10 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> European influence will counteract US influence in the Americas? Yes. If you’re Canada or Mexico or frankly anyone else in the Americas, you probably don’t want all your weapons systems to be dependant on American supply chains. And then if you think about it, you probably don’t want all your energy imports dependent on Washington’s noblesse. Et cetera. American exceptionalism was built on the trust the world put in us getting so unilaterally powerful without being balanced.

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throw0101a 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> […] of weak, corrupt, divided and authoritarian alternatives.

Is the US included in the set of alternatives/possibilities with these attributes?