• Greenleaf [he/him]
    ·
    6 months ago

    Yes and no. In the most recent US financial crisis, there were developed countries who didn’t have very much exposure to the kinds of toxic assets the US did; and they were basically fine.

    Now, there are more material ways other nations could suffer from a US collapse. The worst would be countries that are heavily invested in the US market. If all my biggest corporations make their profit in the US, that could seriously hurt. Countries that export to the US would be hurt, too.

    But ultimately, I think enough countries in the world have enough economic distance from the US that they’d be fine. The ones that are tied to the US financial system could get cooked, but that’s really just the US vassals and frankly they deserve it.

    But let’s think though what happens to China. The worst that would happen is their Treasuries would be worthless and their exports to the US dry up. That’s a massive hit, no doubt. But I also think it would be transient. All it does is, after a period of painful readjustment, shift a lot of production to domestic consumption. Hell, it might actually cause them to push the socialism button a lot faster because you can’t really have an overcapacity problem in centrally-planned socialism like you can under capitalism.