If someone is wondering why the FX between CHF and USD has changed direction, it’s because I changed my USD back to CHF.
If/when they sack Powell, what will happen? Türkiye style USD?
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Just stack CHF, next few months will reveal the fallout: Trade war fallout: Cancellations of Chinese freight ships begin as bookings plummet
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More drama coming
US is realising that ceasefire in Ukraine is not going to happen soon. So now the narrative is that US might move on if the deal doesn’t happen in short term.
This is not good. When real goods stop coming , it would definitely lead to chaos because it’s not easy to replace all this capacity in such a short notice
It’s gonna be juicy. Need to burn a field or dig a hole to build a house, we say 
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I can only take this as a very bearish post, is there any other way?
Edit to your reply in the other post
I don’t quite understand his Minecraft reference, maybe because I’ve spent tens if not hundreds of hours playing Minecraft 
Edit 2: he may mean that global trade and economics are simple, that’d make some sense as Minecraft is seemingly simple to someone who doesn’t know it.
Which post are you referring to? (Sorry, I couldn’t resist … )
I think I actually agree with parts of the analogy Mr Ferguson draws, but there’s alternative facts angles:
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Niall Ferguson is probably smart, but he is almost certainly attention seeking. Posting things the way he posts certainly generates more clicks or gathers more attention to his brand than saying something less bearish? How does mentioning Minecraft shortly after the movie named so has opened in theatres really fit into this narrative or paragraph, apart from dropping en vogue terms like shock, mind virus, etc etc.
Answer: Mr Ferguson’s equity is probably mostly his brand; he works on increasing his brand value?
(filed under: show me the incentives, I’ll show you the outcome) -
As mentioned in this and other threads, I believe the Orange Swan – despite his much asserted unpredictability – is much more predictable than a pandemic. Doing or stating the “unspeakable thing” is perhaps* part of an early stage of negotiating, with the intention of up-front tilting the terms in your favor by saying the unspeakable thing, but it only goes as far as the other party believes you will go through with your unspeakable thing.
The (bond) market exerts power, and – if only via proxies – calls the bluff, and this seems to induce brain activity and reconsiderations even in that Orange Swan brain …
Further, even or maybe especially narcist Orange Swans, especially of the Trump kind, have survival instincts, and they will in their populist and instinct sense when they’ve gone too far, and reverse course (while declaring victory) if necessary.
(filed under: primordial self preservation; flavor: crowd-loving populists)
Famous last words, but I cling to my original thought that even if one Orange Swan has lots of power, if most** of the rest of Western world thinks otherwise, the corresponding market power will sway things accordingly. Some pain and hiccups in between, but many many trillions of money put to work with some intention will trump (pun intended) even a couple hundred billions of money of self-interest (or ignorance inherited, in my dark scenario).
* In a less favorable reading, the erratic statements aren't part of a "strategy" or "tactic", but ... well, I won't endulge in my personal interpretation of how someone born with a silver spoon can make dumb decisions for a really long time.
** Hungary. Any other country?
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I totally agree on the point about self-preservation, the only counter is that damage could have well been done already and beyond the Orange’s hands.
I’m curious myself about the damage done (and the market’s further reaction).
If we take the tally of voiced opinions on this forum (including my mostly unvoiced one, IIRC), the US is essentially never to be trusted again, or something like that.
I am not well versed in the history of distressed markets, but I am guessing that most deveoped markets will recover per their economic prowess, and the US markets are IMO determined to recover towards (can be downwards) some fair value.
But not zero.
Famous last words.
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There are levels of opinions about this (both here and elsewhere) going from “The US is the devil” to “It’ll all be fine once the Orange leaves”.
Historically as you alluded to in another post, countries look to take care of themselves, and are rarely if ever selfless, the US is no different. Countries have found themselves on both the US’s good sides and the bad but the underlying thread was realpolitik in my opinion, even in the beginning of the Cold War, where the USSR was a very credible and very scary threat both politically, militarily and culturally. The US helped rebuild Germany and Japan after WW2 because they needed them as allies AND trading partners AND strong counterbalances vs USSR and China - and it makes perfect sense. Other country, a French friend of mine likes to say that his dad said “When you see the American flag, it’s a good thing” - that’s generational soft power - maybe he wasn’t a Gaullist though 
Similarly, the Marshall Plan was incredibly good for the US itself both economically and geopolitically, even though they were the ones paying. USAid was the one thing killed by DOGE which seems the stupidest possible move, generational soft power in emerging markets (and that’s secondary to the good they were doing!) thrown to the bin.
I believe that in the end, while whatever damage is already done and may well be done in the future won’t be fixed in an instant, the US will not become North Korea either. I think “the US is never to be trusted again” is a massive overreaction, amplified by the toxic cesspool media we have. That said, Europe sacking up and coughing up can only be a good thing.
Oh well, TINA 
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I think US can be trusted again but not like Finland trusts Sweden or Denmark. It would be more like how China & US trust each other enough to do business with.
Relationships take a long time to mend and the way US is treating their allies is very disrespectful to say the least
To be clear -: my comment is only for allies.
Others in global south never really saw US as a „good“ cop anyways.
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Like Mirager and Abs Max, I think “never to be trusted again” is a very hard position to take.
I’m confident the US can regain the trust of other countries but it would be a gradual process that takes time. It is not as easy as “Trump’s out of office, everything is fine now.”
Some things would be immediate: there’s not much reason to not travel to the US if due process is back, controls at the border become reasonable again (checking the inside of the phone of people at random to check if there are things not acclamatory of Dear Leader inside and turning them back if so is not ok), ICE is reined in and the tariffs are taken away.
I would say reestablishing trade routes, foreign investments inside the US, trust in the USD and US Treasuries would take more time and may never reach the level it was at again. Governments and companies have to plan on more than 4 years for their investments/trade dependencies and the US will have to prove that someone like Trump isn’t coming back to power every 4 years or so.
That being said, they remain a big single language market. They’ll be attractive to companies if companies can trust that they know the framework in which they operate and it will not dramatically change on the whims of whomever.
When it comes to US stocks, I don’t believe in a full spike recovery and then 20%+ returns years one after another, but I may be wrong. There may be some spike at first but there are real effects to the tariffs and loss of international trust that will affect the US economy moving forward. They’ll start to show up and investors may or may not reconsider their stance toward which companies they invest in (I don’t pretend to understand what investors invest in, though, I’ve been caught blindfolded with the market over-reacting on some news or investors piling in something I wouldn’t touch with a 10 foot pole before).
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We should consider Trump may be more a symptom than the root cause. While Trump’s approval rates overall have started to decline recently, 90% of Republicans continue to give him the thumbs up. The fan base will be around long after he left office (although that might be a while - he‘s already publicly toying with a „3rd term“). Future presidents will have to deal with those realities.
Given this, the rest of the world would be foolish to merely bide its time - shifts will happen, slowly but surely, away from overdependence on a nation that can no longer be relied on blindly.
Imho a complete reversal to the ‚pre-Trump world‘ we all got used to is unlikely. We shall live in interesting times…
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It might happen if the Trump vision is tried and fails badly and leads people to want something different. e.g. if trade tariffs go wrong, and economy ends in a deep recession and stock markets crash and people lose their jobs.
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Let’s take a moment and ponder if this isn’t among the unthinkables. I’ve been to the US a few times, loved it, and had absolutely zero fear while going there, being there, or leaving. I had more nerves going and leaving from Turkey and Israel or even my wife’s Serbia (though I am Greek and we get preferential treatment because we…assisted them in doing some bad stuff). Now I just wouldn’t travel to the US and it shows that thousands around the world share the sentiment. Isn’t this unthinkable?
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I also stopped travelling to the US (since first Trump term). However, I think I’m probably in the minority. Assuming a lot of the changes are rolled back, I think most people will quickly forget.
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Funnily enough my last trip was on Trump’s first term, no issue. Before that it was with Obama and GW Bush. Gosh it’s been a while.
The bottom line should be that if you have no reason to fear travelling (all papers kosher, no sketchiness, no funny stuff in the luggage) you shouldn’t fear travelling.
That’s the thing , actions of current US administration has caused doubts in minds of lot of people across the spectrum
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people are concerned about travelling to US because who knows if they get detained. Even if 5 people out of million travelling get detained randomly , it’s still enough to cause a doubt
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until last year, people used US services as if they are home grown (Google, YouTube, Amazon, Apple etc) and always looked Chinese services with a doubt (TikTok, Temu etc). Now it’s not the case. There is a shadow of doubt about these services and how our data can be weaponised against us
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Trade partners have understood while it’s great to have US as a trade partners, it’s not sustainable to be completely dependent on them (Canada, Mexico had a rude awakening). This would force countries to rethink their behaviour towards other countries. We need to remember that US only have 4% of world‘s population with huge inequality and a lot of debt, so in order for foreign companies to thrive, there is still plenty of fish outside the USA.
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Weaponisation of USD already started with Ukraine war but it became even starker when US threatened to apply 100% tariffs if BRICS thought of creating their own currency. Why should countries not diversify away from USD slowly? If they don’t they will be stupid to do so.
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Investments in US by foreigners are also under doubts because it seems every new govt can make their own rules. It’s okay to build in US to serve US market but I don’t think foreign companies will try to build in US to export their goods.
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Talent in US universities is also under doubt with constant pressure from administration on what they should work on and what is science and what is non sense. In past all theories were up for debate but nowadays if Trump thinks coal energy is beautiful then it’s beautiful
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I think there is not much to say about defence partnerships. We can clearly see the shift from being the allies based on shared values to being paid mercenaries. Who in their right mind can count on US to come to their rescue unless they are rich to pay US to do so.
Of course everything can be forgotten, forgiven and ignored because let’s face it „US is a big market“. But the era of blind trust is over. Starting a military war or starting an economic war which can destroy economy of other country are more or less the same thing because they impact lives and this gets etched in memories
And in addition, let’s not be naive. US has very high GDP but it’s all build with debt. Most US folks are indebted and it’s a matter of time when they need to stop spending and start paying off the debt. This [article](Complete Measures of U.S. National Debt — Penn Wharton Budget Model also shows other US obligations which normally doesn’t get discussed. When that happens, would 4% of the world population continue to be world‘s largest consumption market ? Time will tell.
P.S -: everyone is saying Europe has had their wake up call when it comes to their reliance on USA. What about the wake up call for global investors ?
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Agree and I’d go even further.
Trust level regarding countries depends mostly on current and estimated future trustworthiness - opposed to a person, where we use past behaviour to determine trust level.
Case in point: Germany was trusted pretty quickly after WW2 in proportion to what happend.