The US economy depends on the country's position of world hegemon - the US dollar is the world's main reserve currency, the US enforces international order and trade rules via its military strength, it dominates technology and culture through 'US defaultism'.

I dont think AI even factors in to this.

The US economy is priced for global reach - if it manages to lose that through a combination of credible competitors, and loss of goodwill - it's going to be in heaps of trouble.

The looming US debt is also a great question - a lot of economists have argued that since most US debt is good. It's mostly in forms of treasuries purchased in USD that pay in USD - this means the indebtedness creates a huge amount of dollars abroad that foreigners have to then spend on US services, driving demand.

Should the US become an unfriendly power to the rest of the western world, it will find the demand for its currency plummeting, which I don't want to outline is a big issue.

All said, I think if the US continues down the political path it currently seems to be pursuing, 'this time it's different' actually will be.

Not shown on the chart (and which couldn't have been predicted at the time of writing) is today's crash of almost 30% in that price.

Speculative bubbles happen. The narrative of people losing faith in currency made no sense, because that should pump the prices of durable commodities as well, if not instead of precious metals.

Yes, in a five year span we've had three 20% drawdowns in the stock market that have all recovered which is unprecedented. IMO, anyone who thinks we're going to crash and have a lost decade is not looking at the bigger picture. The Federal Reserve exists to allow the government to spend as much as possible by:

- Making sure that as many people are employed as possible for as long as possible (tax base)

- Making sure that prices keep going up and that the government can borrow below the rate of inflation (so they can spend even more and manage the debt)

What this means is that people need to work to keep up, and that asset prices will continue to go up as people try to protect their wealth from inflation. The government also takes a cut from that via capital gains tax. Regardless, there is simply too much "free money" going around for the outlook to be bearish, IMO. I'm investing across my 401(k), Roth IRA, and brokerage accounts as usual with a little more focus on exposure to international funds this year in my retirement accounts.

You should always take bearish outlooks with a grain of salt especially if they don't put their money where their mouth is and show their positions. Bears don't tend to make a lot of money over the long term: https://www.schwab.com/learn/story/does-market-timing-work

I’m not sure what the effects of a highly anticipated crash are, but I’d love to discuss what they might be.

It’s priced into gold, which I think reflects negative dollar sentiment. It’s not priced into the VIX, which is implied volatility across the S&P. Suggesting a crash in equities is not priced in.

1 Online shopping market in the range of 5 trillions 2 Electricity and energy price raise 3 Impossibility to lower interest rates 4 Tech market also in the range of multi Trillions 5 Global education and power expansion ...

Meaning that a % of all this money flow goes private pockets destroying medium class, which gets poorer.

It is like a memory leak that keeps sucking resources while growing exponentially until the system crashes. The real question for an economist is how much ram has the system and how much the memory has leaked?

This Legendary site is interesting: https://usdebtclock.org/index.html Especially when combined it´s data with AI.

I happen to agree just because of golden silver prices that it’s going to happen sooner than later, regardless if war breaks out with Iran.

Next report is end of february. So it's minimum 4 months away at earliest.

Stock markets are at 10 year peaks.

Unemployment is a little bit high at 4.5%.

Inflation is a little bit high at 2.7%

US government debt is very high at 125%

PMIs are strong across the board.

Also in context, trillions in declared new investments in the usa. Probably trillions more in undeclared new investment trying to avoid tariffs.

No competitor possible on reserve currency status, Euro in about 2013 was looking like hot stuff but they regulated themselves out of it.

So I consider, the crash probability of the US economy is certainly not going to be happening.

Sure, Mark Carney gave his little speech in Davos. The same Mark Carney, that led Brookfield while its finance arms operating out of US.

But realistically, how is opening up to China more even considered as the alternative? When has any deal with China worked at a strategic advantage for the other side? Is not the whole reason the so called globalization project failed was because players like China did not play by the same rule or did not even have to play by the same rule? What gives they will when you open up the market more to them? All it takes is for them to take your product, copy it and sell it 20x cheaper and flood the market everywhere else.

Whoever comes into power next better start thinking about universal income fast. We are gonna get there sooner than expected.

USD Currency futures have already collapsed.

World trade will move to (not a good idea) RMB or (mistakenly) crypto.

Euro is the only real option left and it’s beautifully positioned in the center. Great leadership too.

a) massive GDP growth with real consumption rising 22% between 1944 and 1947.

b) fiscal discipline where the U.S. actually ran primary budget surpluses in the late 1940s

c) financial repression with the Federal Reserve capping interest rates at around 2.5% while inflation averaged 6.5%. This meant the government was paying back debt with "cheaper" dollars, effectively "inflating away" the debt at the expense of bondholders.

Fast forward to today, there is an often stated belief that the US will grow the economy again, this time with a dramatic expansion into a space economy including orbiting data centers, solar power plants, asteroid mining, space manufacture - all leveraged with robotics and AI. Let's be generous and assume this actual happens and that it happens soon - what mandate is there that this massive space economy will be denominated in US dollars or even be part of the US economy? SpaceX has already launched numerous satellites for foreign countries. What is to stop them launching a space economy that will be owned under a "Flag of Convenience" from an offshore tax-free zone, perhaps even denominated in crypto? Will we then confront this massive off-planet economy with "space-tariffs" in order to import the value-added component back into the US? The U.S. debt can only be "grown away" if the value-added activities (mining, manufacturing, computing) remain registered in the U.S..

Swiss Franc is generally very stable so a good yard stick for other currencies over the long term

People are moving out of Bitcoin and into Gold currently. I see this trend continuing (Bitcoin falling).

The markets today are indestructible at the moment as you have witnessed over the last 3-4 years. This year will be similar to 2025 according to many different and smart people. I tend to agree with them and we are still in a bull market.

-not an expert, not investment advice, your mileage may vary.

Or we burn the oil -> heat into the atmosphere via silicon doing things like routing “wyd” texts around dozens of network devices across the country when the message doesn’t have that value.

The economics of how we allocate energy makes no sense and we debate how to fix this via policy.

It will suck even for us in europe due to shortsighted pension funds having invested in AI as well. But we'll just have to deal with it. I'm sure it will happen sooner rather than later.

PS: I'm not an AI hater as such. It definitely has its usecases where it shines. The problem is like with all hypes; it's not good at everything and it won't be all golden mountains tomorrow like the investors expect. This overhyped investor circlejerk is what screws up technology. It happened to blockchain, it happened to metaverse. All things that have their merits but somehow investors thought it would change the world overnight and make them insta-rich. Obviously didn't happen and it won't happen now.

The economy is still growing from the quarantine lockdown. It's why we didn't see a collapse, it would have to be worse than what happened during the lockdown for the economy to be in a recession. That's not the case, and I don't see a collapse or recession for at least 3 years.

For most of us, we work remotely and some people might be out of touch. Don't take this the wrong way, but people are just recently recovering from cottage syndrome. We're still in the transition period with the layoffs and AI doomerism being growing pains.

If every idiot (I'm including myself in this) on HN/Reddit/Youtube/Tiktok/mainstream news/etc. thinks we're in a bubble and is crazy pessimistic and thinks economic collapse is near...it means we're not actually in a bubble.

When the bitter, frustrated pessimists on HN shift their tone to being neutral or even mildly optimistic, then I will start worrying. Because that will mean the general public must be reaching 1999 levels of euphoria for a hint of optimism to show up here.

With all these charlatans predicting imminent collapse it is always imperative to consider how strongly they believe in their revealed preferences, based on how much they have invested in their position. That said, how much money does OP have invested e.g. in shorting the S&P 500? Or any equivalent. Let me guess, zero dollars.

Of course the market will go down at some point.

The slope in 2024 and 2025 (the data that we already have) is much lower than the orange line drawn.

Following the real visual trend, the next peak would be maybe another 5-10 years in the future. (Not that this is a good way to predict the future, as also stated in the article, "not very scientific").

It’s not just people. Central banks are buying precious metals due to the dollar and new Basel rules. Gold needs to be allocated if you want it to be considered a tier 1 asset.

Uh, that's not accurate. Hathaway is sitting all cash because of it and so far they have been the one losing. Even if you assume (and correctly I think) that the market is overvalued, their stock pile of cash is eroding: https://newzsquare.com/warren-buffett-warns-of-fiat-currency...

> A year ago there were a few signs. Right now, it feels like everything is primed to blow. Is that new?

The market is unhealthy. Too unhealthy that I think it can no longer self-heal the usual ways (recession/crash/etc.) and we'll instead move to more advanced stage of hyperinflation, global war, etc.

There’s the looming threat of geopolitical world war that has been overhanging the world since the combination of the pandemic isolating different countries and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

It’s really a mixed bag, but it’s not clear to me that we are headed into a total economic crash as the government is definitely focused on doing a lot of good things for the economy, but also is creating lots of different headwinds.

I’m optimistic on the US. We could realistically print a 5 handle GDP, oil at rock bottom prices, lower federal income taxes this year. As far as Gold and Silver I just see it being propped up by speculators. Silver spot is down 15% this mornings and gold down 8%.

I predict double digit gains in the S&P by end of year and strong financial conditions with mag 7 continuing their lead. Tesla also will be a big winner.

1929 silent generation decade or depression after.

1967 post war Baby boom from The Greatest Generation, followed by decade plus of stagflation and recessions.

1999, after a two decade run of the stock market going from 1000 on the Dow Jones in 1980 to 10,000 on the Dow Jones in 2000, the baby boomers born to the greatest generation, peak, earning ears, leading to the lost decade afterwards.

Two decades of stock market returns from 6000 on the Dow to 60,000 on the Dow, followed by post peak millennial earnings…

One does not speak unless One knows.

You know nothing Jon Snow.

The tech bubble is another story and to be study on it's own, but it was summarized well that is < its a cycle of delusional capital invested over and over. Along with the numerous indicators of "what ifs"> The housing market is simply stupid, im sorry i don't have another word for it that better describes the current take on this matter. Home prices are outrageous because of market driven assumptions. A house is technically worth $150 is now on the market for $350 and why is that. from 2 years ago. People truly think that home prices are expected to keep rising and to what extent and why? They couldn't tell you<< " my zip code is the place to live at the moment, the person living in the next zip code is saying the same thing about hiss home, Homes in silicon valley were above and beyond the national average and it was the only thing on the headlines during 2021 - 2022 but for good reasons that cant be argued too much/ Today it is the rest of US in the same mindset.

All of the US economy seems to be in protection mode right now. As to say it's the mother that doesn't want you to go out again after falling of your bike and scuffing your knee on the pavement.

tariffs were used the wrong way this time around, inevitably the very purpose of them was not so effective, it backfired, Damage is done and reputation is broken in a lot of ways. Britain is renegotiation relationships with china, Canada is renegotiation relationship with China, EU is renegotiation relationships with India and China. All with successful results.

There is a lot of stake here the US has a lot to offer to the world and to use that as weapon is tends to not have a good outcome. The market is large, yes it is resilient to some factors but not all/ When collapse takes place there will be tremendous momentum and its going to be hard to stop.

Who is "we" in that sentence?

[1] https://www.longtermtrends.com/home-price-median-annual-inco...

There are tariffs everywhere, all the time. Canada just dramatically cut its 90% (or something) tariff on Chinese cars. Tariffs haven't just started happening because someone you don't like did them.

1. Market crash

2. AI bubble bursting

3. Year of the linux desktop

Have I missed something?

- I'm genuinely a lot more pessimistic than is accurate around what is and isn't a bubble - Bubbles are just slower to burst than I expect

Possibly some combination of both. But even ignoring AI which is relatively new, it seems "obvious" to me, that whatever value Bitcoin has, investment in the asset is detached completely from that value. I'd have expected to see Bitcoin crash a long, long time ago, and have been thinking it's "just around the corner" for years and year.

And yet, the bitcoin price as a whole, although it's dipped recently, and is clearly volatile, still remains something like 10x what it's value was 5 years ago[0].

[0] https://charts.bitbo.io/price/

That’s how the news does it.

We can’t know when it’s going to happen, but there is a good chance that one is going to be super bad.

We basically borrowed our way out of the 2008 crash and through covid, but we havent repaid the debt. It is so high I doubt we can do the same next time.

1. All the tarriff reactions cause US companies to import a huge amount of stuff for 2025. From what I understand, we're about to exhaust all of those imports.

2. The unemployment reports (especially the U3 numbers) hide quite a bit of turmoil going on under the hood of the job market.

- If you lost your job and switched to Uber/Doordash, you're not unemployed.

- If you are riding on severance pay instead of filikg for unemployment, you're not unemployed.

- If you got tired of throwing out hundreds of apps only to get automated rejections and take a break a month, you're not unemployed.

- If you just graduated into this hellscape and can't qualify for any unemployment, you're not unemployed (you're technically not part of the workforce yet).

There's a lot of these small shifts in how jobs work that make U3 less reliable in reflecting reality. And I only touched the surface of these issues.

3. Continuing on the U3 with a point worthy of its own bullet: the unemployment appears flat, but the makeup of what's happening per industry really lays down the reality. The only industries growing are hospitality (aka food service and similar sorts of duties) and health care. And to top it off these "growing" industries shift more and more to fractional work. Pretty much every other industry is down. So people are getting laid off/fired and moving to part time work to get by. "Stable" by unemployment numbers, but very unstable on the day-to-day. Add in the recent congressional bills for healthcare subsidies and we're throwing more gas on rhe fire.

4. I'm sure it's been said so much by now, but AI in the US is the only thing holding up the GDP. Without that massive investment, the GDP would be at best, dead flat. The US isn't growing in a way that reflects actual yields to anyone outside of a select few shareholders. We're not building more houses, mining more materials (on the contrary, we've resumed ransacking others'), manufacturing more machinery, nor even producing more service value for customers and businesses. We're putting all hedges on one thing with an uncertain outcome. If that industry declines, so does the rest of the US.

5. The K shaped economy. I have to check these numbers again, but I believe that spending is indeed up, but the makeup of spending per income band is more stark than ever. The too 10% income households makes up half of US's spending. But there are signs that even many high income houses add also starting to hunker down on spending.

----

That was a lot and it still only scratches the surface. But the TLDR version is that there's a lot of statistics massaging over the real struggles of life and many industries reaching a breaking point they did a good job putting off. But by this point it will only take a needle to break this camel.

Why did you feel the need to post this article? It totally lacks substance. The above quote says it all.

Key Answer

As of early 2026, there is no consensus forecast for an imminent crash of the U.S. economy. The prevailing view among major institutions is a period of moderated growth or a "soft landing," not a severe contraction. However, this outlook is balanced against significant and rising risks, including labor market fragility, unsustainable fiscal debt, and persistent inflationary pressures that could trigger a more pronounced downturn. Key Findings

    Consensus Points to Slowdown, Not a Crash. Major institutional bodies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and large investment banks project modest U.S. real GDP growth for 2026, generally in the 1.8% to 2.5% range. This baseline scenario is supported by expectations of resilient consumer spending, continued investment in technology like AI, and an anticipated easing of monetary policy by the Federal Reserve as inflation moderates. Optimistic forecasts from firms like RSM US and ARK Invest even anticipate a growth rebound to 2.2%, viewing the economy as a "coiled spring" fueled by technology spending.

    Labor Market Fragility is the Primary Downside Risk. Despite a low headline unemployment rate, the labor market shows significant signs of weakness. Analysts describe the current environment as a "low-hire, low-fire" equilibrium, characterized by slowing job growth and concerns over employment quality. A critical warning sign is the growing divergence between strong reported GDP figures and weakening labor market data. Historically, such contradictions are often resolved by downward revisions to economic growth, suggesting the economy may be weaker than headline numbers indicate. Capital Economics highlights that a cooling labor market, if not offset by productivity gains, could initiate a self-reinforcing cycle of lower employment and reduced consumer spending.

    Unsustainable Fiscal Debt Poses a Systemic Threat. The U.S. federal debt has surpassed $38 trillion, exceeding 100% of GDP. Net interest costs are projected to consume nearly 14% of all federal spending in 2026. The Brookings Institution projects this trajectory is unsustainable, with debt potentially reaching $170 trillion over three decades and interest payments consuming over a quarter of tax revenues within a decade. This creates near-term risks, as FTI Consulting warns that "bond vigilantes" could push back against perceived fiscal profligacy, driving up government bond yields and, consequently, borrowing costs for the entire private sector, independent of Federal Reserve actions.

    Stagflationary Pressures Complicate Monetary Policy. The economic environment is characterized by a difficult mix of slowing growth and persistent, albeit moderating, inflation. This presents a stagflationary challenge for the Federal Reserve. Policy measures such as new tariffs are expected to add to inflationary pressures while simultaneously acting as a drag on consumption and investment. This dynamic severely constrains the Fed's ability to stimulate the economy; cutting interest rates aggressively to support growth could risk re-igniting inflation, while keeping rates high to fight inflation could accelerate a downturn.

    Negative Public Sentiment Contrasts with Macro Resilience. While macroeconomic indicators like GDP have shown resilience, public sentiment remains overwhelmingly negative. Polls from Pew Research and YouGov show that a majority of Americans rate the economy poorly, driven by persistent affordability challenges related to housing, food, and healthcare. This sentiment is exacerbated by 2026 policy changes, such as cuts to social programs, which directly impact household budgets. This disconnect between headline data and public experience is a vulnerability, as deteriorating consumer confidence can lead to pullbacks in spending that are not yet reflected in aggregate data.

As a US citizen, I will vote to bring him back once again just to fix this mess.

> 1. Markets are just slower moving than ever before, big players just like to sit on their big piles of money

> 2. There are one or more bubbles in the stock market. Almost everyone agrees that AI is a bubble. It funds itself in a circular fashion, and capex cannot be recovered with profits any time soon, even with optimistic outlooks.

It’s a bit of both. The impact of political instability in the US (read: Trump pissing off as many people as possible) may not be felt in the markets quickly, if even within his term. He has severely dented confidence in the US as a trading partner and as an arbiter of the global rules-based order. That will have decades-long implications, the result being a pivot away from dollar-denominated commodities trading, and export markets for US goods being increasingly unfriendly. The value of the dollar will probably decline, and in fact that is a goal of many in his administration. That could actually be good for US equities if it’s in moderation.

The biggest risk I see is flight of capital away from US treasuries, which would drive up interest rates, leading to a sovereign debt crisis in the US. The likely solution to that would be money printing and resultant inflation. The high treasuries rate would drag capital away from equities.

So yeah. I am not getting a job at a financial firm anytime soon.

That said, the societal gestalt seems primed for something to go horribly wrong. AI boosters are positing their models as solving all of society's ills, which first requires acknowledgement that these are in fact problems facing society requiring solutions. Everyone is broadly on the same side - wealth inequality is a problem, climate change is a problem, energy dependence is a problem, job security is a problem, housing is a problem, etc - but we're all varied on the approach to solving these problems based on personal biases and perspectives. YouTube is infested with AI slop, social media is filled with doomers and preppers, and subcultures are simultaneously splitting off from larger groups (like those leaving Twitter/X for BlueSky or Mastodon) while also forming newer alliances and communities around shared goals or ideologies. Even those in positions of power acknowledge the polycrisis before us, while exacerbating it further by firing swaths of workers to fund their own bunkers, yachts, and contingency plans via share price bumps.

It's in the air, this horrid pit in the stomach that doom lingers just around the corner. It's been there for a decade, long before COVID, festering beneath the surface. Hell, for many of us pre-9/11 Americans, it's been a gradual decline since the heydays of the maximum-employment 1990s. So many of us feel it that it just cannot be ignored, and thus it becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy: enough of us believe something bad is coming, therefore something bad must happen to quell those feelings.

There's two things that give me (and my OCD) solace of a sort:

* We'll all find out together, regardless of status or strata

* Most of us - statistically, generally, based on prior events and barring any explosive escalation - will likely be relatively fine

Yeah, the shifting of geopolitics is likely to result in more violent conflicts with the potential to kill billions if things go NBC. If we don't address climate change, millions will die from wholly preventable causes and tens of trillions of dollars of property will be destroyed over the next century. Misuse of AI could result in doomsday scenarios that Sci-Fi has warned us about for decades. Wealth inequality appears poised to create a modern version of the Coal Wars, if current events are any indication.

Technology alone won't save our asses. Neither will some mythical billionaire genius, or AGI deity. It'll have to be us, regular humans, rejecting the present and choosing to build a better future together.

And I think we can do that.