alt Hacker NewsDanish pension fund divesting US Treasuries
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So much of the way the United States works is having a nearly limitless source of borrowing at low rates in the form of selling treasury bonds.
The further we get away from that being true, the more precarious things become.
A sensible response, indeed. Investing is about finding the right balance of risk vs reward. When a country becomes less reliable, it becomes a less attractive investment, until the interest they pay rises enough to compensate for the additional risk.
Edit: Yes, I am being sarcastic.
> $100 million
Is that a lot? Seems relatively inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but perhaps a warning of larger moves to come.
What happens when USD stops becoming the the reserve currency for the world? And who takes its place?
Keep in mind that there are many such 10 to 100 billion funds and they can move very fast if they have to. If the feeling is that the value of the USD is going to be lower in the near future they will divest and before you know it the threat becomes reality simply because it is predicated on a belief. Kill the belief and the actions will follow automatically. This could be the first and it could be the only or it could be the first of many.
So much American exceptionalism is just the Dollar exceptionalism.
Without the G7 piling up dollars, there is no American exceptionalism.
I personally have dumped every single US security I held in the last 2 years, US bonds have been the latest to go in the last week.
Mind you I'm a small investor (my portfolio is 100k-ish euros). I'm still exposed to US securities through ETFs though, as I have 3 different ones holding US companies, but that I ain't gonna sell them.
But for new capital I may as well provide it to others.
My local coin store was busier today than I've ever seen it (visit about once a quarter, for about a decade). Lots of people transacting silver — so much so that the buyback fees were about 50% more than usual — and yet people were primarily turning silver/USD into gold (myself included).
When you consider that historically our US fiat has been 65:1 (Au:Ag), it's scary to see the ratio back around the levels when Bretton Woods was implemented (50:1, 1930s-1960s). It's even scarier to see the rapid rate we are approaching to-when USD was gold-backed (22:1), considering that less than two years ago it was over 100:1 .
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What else is a fiat-based country supposed to do after creating all these unfunded pensions/liabilities ?— ¡¿..then to inflate away the guaranteed difference..?!
For context foreign total holdings are around 9T and domestic around 30T. Uk and japan are the largest foreign holders at around 1.7T between them. This is a 100M divestment.
It's a pretty respectable fund and will make other pension funds rethink their strategies.
Feels like the right direction, pull all European money from the US, hope that financial and economical consequences convince US citizens to deal with their president as he deserves. It will decrease profits short term but certainly will have less negative impact than letting that guy in power.
This quote from Trump is very revelatory:
“I’m a real estate developer, I look at a corner, I say, ‘I’ve got to get that store for the building that I’m building,’ etc. It’s not that different. I love maps. And I always said: ‘Look at the size of this. It’s massive. That should be part of the United States.’”
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/20/us/politics/trump-greenla...
I currently hold some Vanguard ETFs. Any tips on similar broad “world economy” type funds that don't use dollars?
The US keeps voting to raise its debt cieling. Theres not end in sight to endless taxation by both parties.
Nobody is reducing spending and delivery continues to go down.
https://www.pensiondanmark.com/en/investments/equity-list/?A...
Hopefully they'll sell off their Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, and other US equity holdings too. Part of the reason US equities are so expensive is massive foreign inflows. Foreign divestment of US equities would mean more Americans could buy them up cheap.
> "The decision is rooted in the poor U.S. government finances, which make us think that we need to make an effort to find an alternative way of conducting our liquidity and risk management," Investment Director Anders Schelde said in a written statement.
Not a political decision. Still a bad sign for the US, but not really unexpected.
Wait until the Norwegians do the same.
Regularly claimed to be the worlds largest stock market investor.
"The fund is the largest single owner in the world’s stock markets, owning almost 1.5 percent of all shares in the world’s listed companies."
https://www.nbim.no/en/about-us/norges-bank-investment-manag...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...
This sundering of US-European relationship feels like watching a trainwreck in slowmotion. It's all so stupid and avoidable. Is there really nothing that can be done?
If they are doing it, I'm doing it also.
Trump will be a lame duck soon, and it's likely that the next president will be far less extreme. Some sense of American normalcy will likely return relatively soon.
Side topic: I absolutely hate these large “Allow Ads” screen - you can’t even go back on iPhone Safari , which hides the interface unless the user pulls down the whole page - which you can’t because you can only pull down the Allow Ads page.
Canada quietly did the same move a few months ago
The Monroe Doctrine stated, under Polk, that the Euros should not interfere with territorial expansionism of the US in the Western hemisphere, even if it came at their expense.
The Roosevelt Corollary stated likewise the US would police any Latin American country's mismanagement.
Yet, all these people are proclaiming a certain person a warmonger instead of completely in line with historical US policy.
This really should be EU-wide or even globally. We can not afford the TechBros anymore - they act not only like evil but also as parasites.
I keep repeating myself: Back up your iCloud pictures via privacy.apple.com and move your mails away from M365. Worst case these things get blocked/deleted.
I moved my mails from M365 to a 2€ Hetzner cloud server in one day, it's quite easy with docker-compose apps like mailcow. Plus you have encryption and less errors when using thunderbird.
Someone should tell the orange guy that we can also stop respecting our obligations. It’s a two way street. It would be a shame if something happened to your ITAR-protected secrets, for example. The US would lose a lot of leverage if they cannot use European military bases. Let’s see how fast Trump goes to bed with Putin…
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This divestment is so little and with so little aim.
The whole situation is been caused by a single guy and 400 enablers, whereas the US is a 400 million people country.
The correct form of reaction is a punch in the face during a bilateral meeting, Zelensky came close to doing it but unfortunately he resisted his impulse , that's where the epicenter of all newly generated global problems in the last 10 years lies, in that octogenarian brian of his.
OK you asked for it Denmark. I'm selling all my legos.
When I actually look at the data, a lot of US deficit growth came from several specific shocks, with inconsistent years of recovery.
- 9/11
- Iraq War
- Covid
The US did recover a bit deficit-wise in Obama years, but have not reset the fiscal picture from Covid.
It's not like the EU can go to China for the $64 to $94bn in mineral fuels and oils (LNG, crude oil) they import from the U.S. Or the aerospace products and parts $35-46bn they import. Or the $45-$52bn in pharmaceuticals and medicines and advanced biologics (unless they go all in on generics, but this is only part of that sum). The list goes on and on. Germany trying to reboot their nuclear energy infrastructure, but it's a bit too late to help this winter, and they're the third largest consumer in the world after the US and and China. India is 8th.
The US imports a lot from Mexico, 15.5% of the total $3.36 trillion of US import, right here in the Americas. The EU about imports are about 18.5%.
Merz's mother-of-all-deals needs to have India lower its imposed tariffs on Germany of 100-150% on autos, which would cut against India if the new FTA goes through by Q2 2026.
May you live in interesting times is a wish or curse coming to fruition...
It's symbolism. But it's important symbolism. Far more notable, I think, is Macron saying this morning that Europe needs more investment from China. Canada signing a deal with China to allow their cars to be sold in the country.
It's all a sliding slope until it reaches a breaking point and falls off like a cliff.
EDIT: to quote the Canadian PN earlier today:
“American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, a stable financial system... this bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition... recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as a weapon. Tariffs as leverage ..."