Lyn Alden

I could see alternative currencies becoming and increasingly available option. Something like SDRs used by the IMF could emerge for example, made up of multiple international currencies. Not necessarily a replacement, but a decreasing reliance.

Russia, the EU and China are fairly aggressively de-dollarizing, and encouraging trading partners to do the same.[1][2] See CMIM for example in the Asia region, INSTEX in the EU to get around Iran sanctions and the creation of the "Petroyuan". Lyn Alden has a great overview.[4]

[1]https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/2021-07-23_IF11885_09a6986fb2de221b83de761f118062ca2def8737.pdf

[2]https://www.csis.org/blogs/new-perspectives-asia/chiang-mai-initiative-multilateralization-cmim-if-not-now-then-when

[3]https://infobrics.org/post/32689/

[4]https://www.lynalden.com/fraying-petrodollar-system/#fraying

> by making real estate cheap again among other things

If this happens at scale, the system collapses. There's a reason The US Federal Reserve's target is positive 2% inflation. Why not 0? Why not negative 2%?

The reason is the financial system is dependent on "appreciation". Imagine a bank approving a loan and the collateral falls in value? And asset the loan acquired falls in value. Boom! The whole system is under water.

The USA has a housing supply problem for similar reasons. Property owners want the value of their assets to appreciate. Increase supply and that slows or stops.

Like it or not it's a Ponzi Scheme, and this is why the population crunch is a concern.

I went to a book tour stop of for this author + book and Princeton Univ a few months ago. Definitively recommended.

https://www.lynalden.com/broken-money/

As a very general high-level view: the Treasury cannot print money. This is handled by the Federal Reserve (FED)

The FED creates money by Quantitative Easing (QE). However, this money goes to bank balance sheets and is not part of the "real" economy. Here is how it works: BigBank has a balance sheet with $100B of securities (such as treasury bills, mortgages, etc). What the FED does during QE is take these securities from BigBank in exchange for cash. So, just like that BigBank has $100B in new cash that has been "created" out of thin air.

Congress can also create new money by deficit spending.

For a much better and thorough breakdown on how this all works, here is a great reference: https://www.lynalden.com/money-printing/

About 3% of 60 to 64 year olds had $1M saved. Taking 4% out per year is $40k... that's not a great income.

And the demographic changes mean that future results will differ from past results.

As a middle-aged New Zealander I worry about:

(1) overinvestment in the US stock market especially as withdrawals hit in synchonicity,

(2) why bother saving? All indications here in New Zealand is that the combination of wealth taxes, capital gains taxes and means testing will take most of one's savings over time.

We can't fight demographics.

Great article on long term investing: "Most investments are actually bad" https://www.lynalden.com/most-investments-are-bad/

For all those who think that a high debt-to-GDP ratio is fine (put the meme picture here) and that the US will simply follow the Japan scenario for several decades at least (nothing great, but nothing catastrophic), I highly recommend to read this Lyn Alden's article: https://www.lynalden.com/economic-japanification/

To summarize it: Japan and US are in two very different situations, the former is one of the largest world's creditor nations, while the latter is THE largest world debitor nation. The reserve currency status, while quite useful for kicking the can down the road, makes situation exponentially more dangerous when the can will hit a wall.

I'm assuming you mean that want to understand monetary policy, what makes money trustworthy/valuable, inflation, etc. Here are a few books that I thought were good, but I also wish I knew about a single better resource:

- The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson (This also has a documentary)

- Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed or Fail by Ray Dalio (not directly about money but does a good job at explaining reserve currencies, types of currencies, debt cycles, inflation, all of which are related)

- What is Money, anyway? [0]

[0] https://www.lynalden.com/what-is-money/