Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by charlesdm 3200 days ago
A lot of (the initial, e.g. Belgium / France / etc) EU countries haven't even figured out how to deal with a potential increase of interest rates, let alone pensions. And even with declining interest expenses, they're running (ever increasing) structural deficits.

The only advantage that the US has over the rest of the world is that generally the dollar is still seen as the global reserve currency, meaning demand will at least be there for various reasons.

I've generally not been a big believer in cryptocurrencies, but perhaps Bitcoin could be a decent store of value if the world stays hooked on things like QE and the likes.

2 comments

The French pension system is based on redistribution. It is not impacted by interest rate but merely by the proportion of workers vs retired people and the wages of current workers. If anything higher interest rate would indicate higher inflation, which would help a loy the pension system. On the other side more unemployment would hurt the pensions badly.
On the plus side interest rates going up will actually resolve the pensions crisis...
Only in the sense that a nuclear weapon going off solves any fears of nuclear weapons in about a 10km radius ...