Comments by "MarcosElMalo2" (@MarcosElMalo2) on "Econ Lessons" channel.

Mark is an old war gaming nerd! You love to see it. I’m not nearly as optimistic about the “Great Reforming” as Mark. But he’s spot on about the usefulness of the framework he’s demonstrating.
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And the Euro and the Yen have remained secondary reserve currencies. They’re just traded at volumes of magnitude lower than the dollar. If either currency ever became the main reserve currency, it really wouldn’t much matter because the central banks of both currencies are transparent when they act, just like the Fed.
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A weak currency is not a corollary of a weak economy. Currency weakness is good for exporting your manufactured goods to countries with a stronger currency. A weaker currency can spur economic growth.
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@Surfer-727 You’re welcome! I should have also noted that the principle of “too much of a good thing can be bad” also applies here. Ideally the weak dollar eventually gives way to a stronger dollar for a while, and then back to a weaker dollar. Monetary policy (again, ideally) has the goal of nudging it in one direction or another before it gets too weak or too strong, while maintaining stability. And world conditions have a way of interfering with a healthy economy.
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Interesting fact is that the Soviet and now Russian “professional” officer corps are probably more focused than any other military on breaking down all the factors into numbers to determine best strategies. The problem that they have been encountering is that they don’t have accurate numbers or anything close to an accurate picture, and they’re being tasked by leaders that are even less in possession of the facts.
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But he’s not suggesting or recommending it. That’s just your interpretation of what he’s saying because you are intellectually capable of adding 2 and 2 and reading between the lines. Don’t blame Mark if someone implements this thought experiment and brings down the Russian economy.
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@ladavis1959 Why even bring that peanut into this?
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The dollar losing primacy as a reserve currency is so far off as to be meaningless in terms of economic policy formulation and planning.
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@jarcadipane2849 You are uniformed. There is no new BRICS currency and there won’t be. (Also, South Africa would be upset that you are relegating it to an apostrophe S. 🤨) Your argument is like arguing that unicorns or dragons will become the dominant species on the planet earth. Neither dragons nor unicorns exist. They are as mythical as your BRICS currency.
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@EconLessons SPI was for nerds too nerdy for Avalon Hill. 😅
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@sirrodneyffing1 Right? This is why the Yuan is risky as a trade currency. The Chinese Central Bank is opaque and totally dependent on the whims of a dictator. Trading partners are willing to assume the risk, but they get in and out quickly, converting their gains (if any) to less risky currencies.
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Yeah, when? It’s been a potential currency for decades now. How do you expect to be the primary reserve currency when you don’t even exist and probably never will.
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You’re making category and abstraction errors.
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@thapelotatedi-qk9ko How about “free-er” economy? Or “free-est so far”? How are you defining a free economy, and if you are using an absolutist definition, why is that desirable?
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The reality is it’s some of both. The difference between the quasi-communist command economies and Western capitalism is in the transparency and in the framework of democracy. We elect those who make economic policies, and those policies get debated in public. So there is some “top down” tweaks, but those are ultimately determined by those of us who vote. One of the unfortunate aspects of our open markets is asymmetry of information. It’s not entirely avoidable. But we have regulations aimed at preventing abuses, and the information eventually does make it to the little guy. In the case of the PRC, the Party holds all the cards.
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@landontesar3070 That’s more due to tax policy, spending policy, and regulatory capture than due to monetary policy.
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YOUR COMMENT BEARS THE STENCH OF LATE STAGE CAPITALIZATION
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@jarcadipane2849 To pull a quote from the movie Caddyshack, “WELL?? WE’RE WAITING!!” BRICS currency can’t be a reserve currency if it doesn’t exist. There’s lot of reasons why it won’t be a significant reserve currency if it did exist (although it’s possible that someday the rupee will be a reserve currency like the Euro or Yen), not the least of which is that none of the members want a Yuan backed currency.
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Is this why both the extreme left and extreme right love Putin?
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@ivanbacic6771 I know it sucks right now, but remember that it’s the voters that shape economic policies over time. You’re up against the Boomers even more than the super rich. As they leave the voting pool ( 💀), you’ll have greater power to elect representatives and leaders that will enact policies to give workers more opportunities—in terms of buying a house this means changes to zoning laws, changes to redevelopment policies, and incentives to build cheaper housing. Here is the thing about capitalism you need to think about (and I think even Bernie Sanders would agree). It can be tweaked to suit the goals of society. In a democratic society (i.e., what we call the Western World), citizens get to decide those goals (by whom they elect) and they get to determine the economic tweaks (by the same democratic mechanism). The biggest obstacles to this are apathy and ignorance. I’m actually a conservative, but I think conservative policy has had its ride over the past 30-40 years. Conservatives have gotten everything they’ve wanted policy-wise, and there’s nowhere left for them to go. Which is why you see the phenomena of “culture war”, “Christian Nationalism”, authoritarianism, and populism based on a cult of personality. The conservative movement is dead, replaced by something both dreadful and stupid. (I’m not saying conservatism is dead; conservative principles are still valid and can still play a role if the fascists can be defeated.)
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Modern games have the goal of psychologically drawing you in and keeping you playing (and where applicable, manipulating you into buying). The old war games, the strategic simulation games Mark is talking about (from SSI) aren’t designed for player enjoyment. They’re designed for historical accuracy and accuracy of the model. This is why such games weren’t popular. They attracted a specific audience: people with plastic organizer boxes for organizing little square cardboard pieces that represented military units. I’m not disagreeing with you, just elaborating on what you said.
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Sure, and why not return to the horse and buggy days?
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@Danster82 You’re correct on your last few points, but I don’t think you understand what the Federal Reserve System is or how it works. Its independence (or semi-independence) is a good thing. It is not subject to the expedient short term whims of politicians. It is the most transparent of any central banking system, making its decisions and the reasoning behind those decisions public. It regularly publishes the data it uses to reach those decisions. It has specific goals, the overall goal being the stability of the system. The two target benchmarks (or sub goals) it uses are low unemployment and stable pricing (i.e., moderating inflation and deflation). It also is a lot less powerful than you think. It can only nudge the economy one way or another with a handful of interventionist tools. The Fed doesn’t really control the economy, it affects it to the degree that it can. Maybe someday the Fed can be replaced with a computer program, but we are not there yet. I like to see capitalism as a social technology, and I agree with you that we, as a democratic society, get to decide what social goals capitalism should serve and how it can be adjusted to serve those goals. This is currently the case, but through apathy and ignorance we have set goals that serve the few and we have adjusted the engine of our economy to serve the few. The problem is that we have been too apathetic and ignorant to set better societal goals. We haven’t really answered the question, who is society for? Instead, we’ve defaulted to serving the wealthy no matter what. I’m a conservative and I say conservatism has had its run and we’ve gone too far in that direction. The fiscal policies promoted by conservatism are tools that were useful for a period, but its past time that we used other tools to tweak the motor of out economy (which is capitalism, if you’ve been following my analogy). As a democracy, we get to decide the purpose of our society and we get to decide how to modify the engine to suit that purpose. We get to decide if society should be a race car, a luxury sedan, a form of public transportation, or some mix. Where do we go, how do we get there, what safety features are part of the system are among the important questions we should be answering. We should be addressing those questions instead of engaging in this authoritarian culture war crap and maga populism.
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Not really Mark’s fault. You probably want to talk with Vladimir Putin about the loss of human life.
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@ftboomer1 So you say. But can you offer any evidence? Where are the serious candidates? The Euro? The Yen? The Rupee? The Euro and Yen have taken their places as trading currencies, but are they traded enough to realistically be the main reserve currency? Here’s the thing if either the Euro or Yen were to overtake the Dollar: it wouldn’t really matter. It would probably be the same with the Rupee, which one day might be a serious exchange currency, if you’re looking at much longer timeframes. It wouldn’t matter because the central banks that control the currencies act as the Federal Reserve does. They act transparently and telegraph their moves month a head. The closest we have to a viable replacement currency is the Euro followed by the Yen. Their volumes are orders of magnitude less than the dollar. So what about the Yuan? The Yuan is a non starter for two reasons. One, it is actually a double currency that holds wildly different values depending on if you are inside or outside the PRC. YOU CANNOT use a two-tier currency as a reserve currency. Second, no one can really trust the Yuan because of the lack of transparency. If you adopt the Yuan as your reserve currency, you giving up the transparent valuation of your own currency. You could hold a billion yuan and you don’t know what it’s really worth because you don’t know what the Chinese government or central banks is doing. The Yuan is not a serious candidate for a reserve currency. Now please talk about BRICS so I can laugh hard enough to piss my pants.
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Conspiracy theories or false marketing from people trying to sell you gold or virtual coins?
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@SwissSicilian It won’t be easy nor fast, but it’s already beginning. More broadly, we are seeing diversification of imports and imported inputs after the pandemic. Trade agreements can solidify this diversification.
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@EconLessons More like Chainmail than D&D, really.
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I wouldn’t give 2 bits for the Ruble’s prospects.
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You might get more mileage out of some type of “Adam Smith for Dummies” book. But it you want to read it, I think it’s on Project Gutenberg.
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@fedorbutochnikow5312 Nobody with an understanding of monetary policy and global exchange is talking about “BRICS replacing the dollar”, other than to debunk the idea. There is not even a BRICS currency that could replace the dollar and very little prospect that there will be, due to mistrust among the members. The BRICS “central bank” that was established is at best a mid sized investment bank that has issued some yuan-based bonds. The simple truth is that most members (the B, I, and S) do not trust the C, and the R has no choice due to its own bad geopolitical decisions (*coughcoughUkraine*). The Chinese Central bank is totally opaque and at the beck and call of the CCP. It’s not independent, it doesn’t announce what it is doing, it operates a double currency (domestic and international trading), and whatever it is doing in secret is subject to the Chinese government’s expediency of the moment. Trading in Yuan is high risk, and that’s not the basis for a major reserve currency or a reserve currency backed by the Yuan. Contrast this with the transparency and independence of the Federal Reserve System and similar central banks.
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