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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   12595 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026

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Does anyone else feel like we're heading for a good old-fashioned, 2008-tier, financial crash? I recall people bringing up the possibility ever since Covid bucks started rolling out, but even though we were due for one, and even though the money printer was going brrrrr, the crash has so far failed to materialize.

At the time, I was of two minds about this. On one hand, all the libertarian theory I used to subscribe to said money-printing => boom, boom => bust. On the other hand, the problem for me was it never felt like a boom, and I think this is changing now. A key feature of the pre-crash boom is "malinvestment"; capital going into often downright deranged projects, that are later abandoned half-finished. Well, I feel like the datacenter craze qualifies, and with the wave of AI IPOs that are coming just as major indices are changing their rules, to allow for these companies' near-instantaneous inclusion (an investment so good, you can't pass up on it. Literally, if you're American), it seems like we're solidly in the "irrational exuberance" phase.

Add this to the list of things I hope I'm wrong about, because if we get a proper crash, the political fallout is going to be massive. The script writes itself: Trump / tech bros / capitalism bad, even more gay race communism now.

To whitepillers: is there an argument for why I'm wrong that doesn't boil down to "you don't get it, chud, it's the New Economy! The Singularity is just around the corner! All the rules are obsolete!"? This argument is verboten, because this is pretty much what people say with every bubble.

To fellow blackpillers: any ideas on how to brace for impact? Any IT guys here old enough to make it through the dotcom bubble? How did you do it? Any advice you would have given your past self?

I don't know if it'll be 2008-tier, but I'm expecting an ugly correction by the summer of 2027.

I've been expecting a correction since 2021 or so, but I keep being wrong. It feels like we go from one hype to the next without any response from the market when the hype doesn't pan out. Cryptocurrency was going to change everything. NFTs were going to change everything. The metaverse was going to change everything. 3d printing was going to change everything. Hyperloop was going to change everything. Full self driving was going to change everything by 2017!

Sitting here in 2026, I'm about to get in my car that I drive myself. I'm going to buy a new spatula with cash instead of 3d printing a replacement using feedstock that I bought with Bitcoin. The Hyperloop is an expensive joke, metaverse has been wound down amid record-setting layoffs, and NFTs are basically dead.

It seems like the market is fully decoupled from the economy at this point. Everything moves up and down on vibes, and the idea of "uncorrelated assets" shit the bed and died in 2022.

At this point the only solid indicators I have left are interest rates and debt, and both of them are looking increasingly dicey. A lot of very important loans (eg: SoftBank) will by due by the Summer of 2027, and debt collectors are not known for their understanding and gentle forebearance.

I have lived through both the dot com boom and global financial crisis. The claims of AI boosters are not identical to the people caught up in those manias, but it sure rhymes. I'm told that this time it's different. I'm told not to worry about troubling financial signals, because Line Goes Up, and it goes up more than enough to cover the risk. I'm sold an increasingly rosy picture of a hypothetical future mixed into a cocktail with a stark fear of being priced out forever... sorry, a stark fear of "becoming part of the permanent underclass". I was back in 2008 for a minute.

In both cases, I just kept my head down, kept saving, kept investing, and held a death grip on my job. It probably set me back in terms of total lifetime career prospects, but I was also never homeless or counting individual beans to see how long I could go before malnutrition kicked in either. I didn't buy a house until 2012, when I had saved enough to put down a full 20%.

Right now, I'm still contributing to my 401(k), Roth IRA, and HSA investments for the tax advantage, but I'm being more conservative in my taxable brokerage. I like Dimensional and Avantis a lot. The expense ratios are higher than pure passive choices like VTI, but they have a few additional filters that seem to help against the absolute worse of the current debt bonanza. I'm also increasing my bond and securitized debt exposure. It has its own risks, but debt is senior to equity when shit hits the fan. I'd get into metals, but I don't understand those markets well enough for it to be anything other than a gamble.

Beyond that, I'm trying to keep my spending down, and trying to make myself Highly Visible to management. It's pretty clear at this point that almost all layoffs are done on vibes, so if I can make myself part of the c-suite's emotional in-group, I think I have better odds. Hopefully I can speed run a fully funded retirement, then just keep working until I can't anymore.

I'm told that this time it's different. I'm told not to worry about troubling financial signals, because Line Goes Up, and it goes up more than enough to cover the risk.

Oh, yeah. Same old song. I lived through the Celtic Tiger era in Ireland and that time too it was going to be different. This wasn't like the last times we had economic boosts following after slumps and then petering out and being followed by the next slump. This time the good times would last forever, this time we would keep on getting richer and richer, this time we were finally a modern economy with permanent high-skilled, high-paying jobs and we'd all be middle to upper-middle class and eating avocado toast as we commuted to our office jobs in the Big City forever.

That it was undergirded by the construction boom, and that the subsequent property bubble inevitably burst, was handwaved away as pessimism. And then it all came tumbling down, triggered by the 2008 US crisis with its own property bubble and mortgage lending, but the house of cards at home was exposed as built on sand. Enter the austerity years, begging for bailouts, and the return of the emigrant ship as the solution to "too many people at home, not enough jobs". This time had not been different, after all.

The US economy is generally robust and may not suffer as much during a downturn or even a crash, but the ripple effects will be felt globally.

Is the Irish economy that bad? I thought they were still doing pretty decently in the context of EU countries, albeit with an American leash and collar.

We're much too over-dependent on the tax take from the multinationals, and for the employment in Big Tech. When the likes of Meta do global layoffs, that hits us too, and there isn't really the slack for "okay all the laid-off software engineers can instead go work for the other IT companies" because they're laying off or not hiring, too.

The government is also looking to borrow to keep programmes going, instead of socking away the surplus for a rainy day as had originally been the plan, as well as the usual budget over-runs (the health service is a constant black hole of sucking up money and running out and needing more):

IFAC chair Seamus Coffey said: "The key concern is that corporation tax that was planned to be put in these funds is actually being spent."

He added €5 out of every €6 which is collected by the State in corporation tax is now being spent.

The warnings come as concerns rise that Ireland is becoming increasingly dependent on volatile corporation tax payments.

The top taxpayers have been pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and technology giants Microsoft and Apple.

The three groups have been responsible for half of Ireland’s corporation tax payments.

...He noted that the Irish economy is performing very, very well at the current time.

"Unemployment is low, wages are at least at the moment above inflation," he said.

"So the Government is stimulating the economy now when it doesn't need it. The risk is that we won't have the resources available in a downturn we might need," he cautioned.

"We have a bad history with this over 40, 50 years of spending the money when it comes in during the good times and then leaving ourselves exposed when the downturn hits," he said.

He said that when we talk about declining surpluses, we are in a very different position to other EU member states.

"The issue is that we're maybe not leaving ourselves sufficiently insulated against what might be coming down the track," he said.

"So, we must understand the Irish economy is in a strong position. When we talk about the public finances, we're talking about declining surpluses," he said.

"We're not borrowing money to run the government on a day-to-day basis. We are talking about borrowing money to save, which is maybe an unusual position to be in," he added.

We're not in crisis yet, but a bad day for the USA and/or the global economy is going to hit us hard, and the one lesson we should have learned is that the rainy day always comes:

A Government analysis on the impact of Donald Trump's proposed tariffs warned of a decline in GDP of up to 4% and a decline in employment by more than 3%.

The research modelled multiple possibilities including unilateral tariffs, a trade war with the European Union, or a wider trade war.

It said every single scenario would have "significant negative implications" for the Irish economy.

The unpublished analysis said GDP could be expected to fall by between 2.75% and 4% over the medium term.

The employment decline would be between 2.5% and 3.25% while domestic demand would drop between 1.75% and 2.5%.

It also warned of price level increases of between 2-3% and said the modelling may underestimate the actual impact.

The government is also looking to borrow to keep programmes going, instead of socking away the surplus for a rainy day as had originally been the plan, as well as the usual budget over-runs (the health service is a constant black hole of sucking up money and running out and needing more):

In other news, Captain Renault is shocked-shocked!-to find that gambling is going on in here!

Almost all US states manage to keep "rainy day funda", although the sizes and average balances (per capita) range quite a bit. IIRC it's not quite a typical partisan divide on which are which.

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