12 Comments
User's avatar
Attila Rebak's avatar

The most remarkable aspect of today's fiscal situation is not the size of the deficit but its timing. Historically, governments ran massive deficits during wars, depressions, or major crises. Today, the U.S. is running crisis-level deficits during a period of low unemployment, record equity markets, and no obvious national emergency. As investors, the uncomfortable question is: if these are the numbers during relatively good times, what will the fiscal picture look like during the next recession?

MCL's avatar

High inflatiion contributed to Trumps win and rejection of the Democrats. High inflation was a catalyst for Milei's win in Argentina. Will we see America's version of Milei arise in the next inflation cycle?

MCL's avatar

My hypothesis is that a poltical turnover happens before hyper inflation.

Andy Fately's avatar

Alas, Argentina was a basket case for generations before Milei was elected. it will take much longer than we want to have someone come with that mandate

MCL's avatar

America and Argentina are not the same. Overall only probabilities can be assigned to the future not certainities.

Matt McDonagh's avatar

Government will continue to expand, in order to capture more surface area.

They will create problems, and never fully solve them, to guarantee continued expansion.

"The bureaucracy expands to meet the expanding needs of the bureaucracy."

TriTorch's avatar

That treasury ain't gonna loot itself.

Thomas Alan White's avatar

Hi: I need help from people who love science! Can data center cooling loops recycle electricity from condensation as MIT's groundbreaking 2013 experiments suggest?

As data centers face an unprecedented energy and cooling crisis driven by AI infrastructure, billions are being spent on managing thermal phase changes—specifically evaporation and condensation.

In my latest work at Decoding Science, I’ve outlined a simple backyard citizen-scientist experiment that suggests we fundamentally misunderstand electron behavior during these phase changes. Standard solid-state models predict a neutral net current during condensation on these surfaces, but geometric manipulation reveals a measurable electrical anomaly.

If this anomaly scales, it means the massive humidity and condensation loops already running inside data center cooling infrastructure could be harnessed to harvest electricity directly from waste heat. Perhaps equally significant is how understanding evaporation will facilitate the cooling process.

I’ve laid out the simple, reproducible experiment to prove this effect. Would you be interested in a brief look at how rethinking electron kinetics during condensation could impact the future of data center efficiency?

Best regards,

Thomas Alan White

Jim's avatar

This is how empires die, debt. The cancer that kills them all!

Brandon Wilborn's avatar

But the debt is just the symptom of underlying cultural soul rot.

Eugine Nier's avatar

> We had the perfect storm with DOGE and unified Republican control including a GOP Congress who spent 50 years promising lower spending.

> Instead, they hiked spending. True, they hiked a tenth Biden’s proposed spending.

That's because most of the spending is now entitlements and the lesson politicians learned from the reaction to Romney's 47% remark was that even mentioning the problem is carrier suicide.