Comment on Europe’s $24 Trillion Breakup With Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

• ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Let’s say the pre-Trump economy is worth $100 trillion, and a particular billionaire’s share is $2 billion. Let’s say Trump catastrophically decreases the economy’s value to $50 trillion, while increasing corruption such that that Trump is getting more power, and the billionaire’s share is $10 billion.

  This is followed by a collapsing market that creates a dip in share prices or private valuation, the assets of which can be bought for pennies on the dollar, eventually leading to that billionaire having $30 billion.

  Win/win for Trump and the billionaire, at the cost of everyone else.

  That’s basically what’s happening.

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  • kn0wmad1c@programming.dev ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I’m not an economist, so here’s my ass talking, but I don’t think your example scales out.

    Not everyone wins in a failing economy.

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    • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I just want to inject here my experience in Britain during the 2008 Crash and its aftermath:

      In Britain, the Finance Industry was 17% of GDP, so when the Crash happened the country was disproportionally hit.

      After the crash the autorities chose to protect Asset Owner above all:

      • Interest rates were lowered to 0%, thus protecting lenders (i.e. those with the money to lend or ownership of Banks which in the modern system can de facto create money: if you don’t believe me, read the paper “Money Creation In The Modern Economy” from the Bank Of England) from debt defaults, indirectly protecting Asset owners by avoiding asset firesales from collateral confiscated after a default thus avoiding the associate asset price falls, most notably for Land and Housing (in the UK the housing bubble never really stopped being inflated and Land Ownership is the core of Old Wealth)
      • Banks were unconditionally saved by the state taking a share in them. That Public share was then put under management of a group made up of bankers “so that the government doesn’t interfere in the market”.De facto pressure for changing from the very practices that had cause the Crash was removed and most of the people having the blame for the failures of the Crash kept their positions of privilege.
      • All this was paid by most people through Austerity. Public services were cut, Social Security (aka "Benefits) were reduced, salaries stagnated.

      By 2015 the incomes of the top wealthier 10% of the population were growing in real terms 23% per year whilst the bottom 90% were seeing their incomes fall 1% per year in real terms.

      This was roughly how thing were going for about a decade after the Crash. UK inequality is nowadays huge, social mobility near non-existent, average incomes when measured in a currency other than the pound - which went down following Brexit - have stagneted, overall economic growth anemic and concentrated in highest wealth layers since the official “growth” is mostly asset prices going up.

      This is the process by which the billionaires make sure they win: everybody gets hit more or less in a Crash, but in during the subsequent period when the state is supposedly trying to fix it, you get also sorts of “extreme measures required by extreme times” that, “curiously”, help the billionaires the most, so some years later everybody but the wealthiest slices of society are worst of whilst the wealthiest are much richer even than before the Crash.

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      • mirshafie@europe.pub ⁨29⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

        This is spot on, and pretty much how it went down everywhere, not just the UK. Just to clarify: it’s workers, not capital, who create wealth. The staggering rise in inequality, pricing people out of cities and the housing market is having a significant negative effect on productivity which is why Europe is falling behind.

        This means lost time where we have not been producing anywhere near our potential, and by consequence also not honing our skills to produce anything in the future. We can’t just win this time back by political change now, it’s lost forever, and young people who should have been at the forefront of developing the economy and making families will never win this back.

        We need to be way more angry than we are, and every day that we don’t fix this we’re letting it get worse.

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      • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        I’m pretty sure this is same exact thing that happened in USA.

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    • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Not everyone wins in a failing economy. If one billionaire makes out, three more lose money.

      No, yeah, that’s true. But the billionaires are also competing with each other in a (perceived) zero-sum game and they believe the ones who are cozying closest to Trump will be the best ones positioned to make money - either in a corrupt or a failing economy. But every recession has been a golden opportunity for billionaires.

      Heck, in post-collapse Russia, this is how oligarchs first appeared - the “shock therapy” of the 1990s transition to a market economy dropped the value of resources to nothing, and the rich at the time bought them and became the ultra-rich. Some didn’t make it. ( Like a super-bacteria forming from the ones not killed by antibiotics, the ones that survived were even more resistant to control.)

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      • kn0wmad1c@programming.dev ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Good example, especially given that it looks like a Russian oligarchy is where we’ve been headed since 2016

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    • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      If one billionaire makes out, three more lose money.

      That’s just what you say. And who cares about billionaires losing money anyway?

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      • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        The billionaires will be buying up what the millionaires sell off to stay afloat.

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  • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    This is followed by a collapsing market that creates a dip in share prices or private valuation

    I am not a billionaire, just an average joe lucky to be able to borrow a few thousand from my Roth 401k in order to buy oil stocks in March 2020 at 90% off.

    I earned between 15x and 20x what I invested and paid off my student loans.

    It’s not just for the billionaires, but you’re right, all of this is intentional and the wealthiest will profit the most.

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    • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I guess it’s for anybody who’s willing to profit off exploitation and planetary destruction.

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      • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Yeah. Keep finger wagging. Worked wonders for you in electoral politics.

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• kescusay@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re working on it. He’s destroying their bottom lines.

  That said, if you go after the king, you’d best not miss.

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• technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I wonder how many trillions of dollars the Trump dumpster fire will end up costing American business.

  USAian business does great under fascism. Just look at the MIC. Both “parties” just voted on a massive handout for genocide, etc.

  Business will be fine!

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  • GreenBeanMachine@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Only the mega corporations are doing fine. Small businesses are going bust left and right.

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• h54@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  The parasites are still making money. Rocking the boat would temporarily interrupt the party, they’ll continue to party until they’re forced to change.

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• other_cat@piefed.zip ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Apparently collapse is profitable

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  • obviouspornalt@lemmynsfw.com ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Chaos is a ladder

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• Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  The corporate overlords area fucking idiots. They always have been.

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• hector@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  The question is incomplete. They will cost trillions, but the presidency, the party fixing elections right now, will cost the country the dollar itself. They will max out borrowing, then print money to pay off the debt and de facto default. They will turn all of those dollars into very much less valuable things.

  Presuming no one stops them.

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  • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    They will max out borrowing, then print money to pay off the debt and de facto default.

    I think you wanted to use past tense here.

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    • hector@lemmy.today ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Oh they will squeeze tens of trillions more out of the federal government before it fails. Every excuse they will borrow.

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• CosmoNova@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Most of those overlords don‘t care about their business anymore. They want to get the bag now. It‘s how Oligarchies operate. They burn billions to make millions. Or in this case delete trillions to make millions. The point is that they have much more money than us pathetic peasants.

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• Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  24 trillion.

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• CobblerScholar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  True risk is also anathema to them, probably hedging bets on how the midterms go before they make big moves

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  • spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I think it’s simpler than that and just is down to the impact on the next quarter’s profits.

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• ilinamorato@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  It’s kind of a weird game theory thing, because the industries affected aren’t consistently losing. A decision he makes on Wednesday can help the finance industry but hurt the tech industry, and then he can reverse it on Thursday and now the finance industry is tanking but the insurance industry is up. It’s tough to know who would work together to pull him out of office, because between any two given days, the people who have the money have different opinions on how he’s doing.

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• DarkSideOfTheMoon@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I don’t get it, sometimes you wonder if it’s true and he might be acting to help Russia

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  • spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Sometimes?

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• standarduser@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  American big business? Not a dime. It’ll be a bailout on the American tax dollar I bet. 

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• BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  They’ll make sure it hurts us, long before it ever touches them.

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