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Showing posts from October, 2022
MEGATHREATS? MAYBE, BUT NOT INEVITABLE I recently read "Megathreats: The Ten Trends That Imperil Our Future, and How to Survive Them" by Nouriel Roubini (made famous as the predictor of the 2008-9 housing crisis). It is purposefully, "alarming. Roubini lists 10 "Megathreats:" The mother of all debt crises -- he points out that public and private debt is 350% of Gross World Product. He forecasts that defaults like Argentina (9 times since 1816 independence) will be commonplace. The bailout trap -- when banks go bad, government bails them out; when autos go bad, government bails them out; when utilities fail...you get the point. The demographic time bomb -- western civilization (and Japan) are rapidly aging. Old people don't produce, and young people don't save. The easy money trap leading to cycles of booms and busts. Stagflation Currency meltdowns Border closings and deglobalization -- immigration into the north from the south has kept labor