So far, this is a minor stock correction coupled with unprecedented political uncertainty.
In my lifetime, there have been multiple -10+% single day drops, one -22%, and a bunch of -10% months. In that time though, no one has questioned the full faith and credit of the US government.
However now -- The Supreme Court had to take a case to rule that the government had to pay contracts that had already been delivered on. The Treasury has yoinked money from NY State over ACH because DOGE disagreed with the program. Musk and DOGE are trying to break departments so hard that there's no putting them back even with a court order. He's threatening Social Security, which has always been the third rail.
The trouble is that some form of stability and law is required for the sort of financial business that powers the US. There are other ways of being rich -- patronage, extractive, but that's not an engine that drives financialization and the ability to start business, get investments, and generally get some return back out of things. You lose the stability and the trustworthiness, the goose goes away, and there are no more golden eggs.
Yes, the market reaction so far has been very tame, considering that the stock market is supposed to be forward-looking, and there's another 4 (or at least 2) years of the same behavior, policies and politics we've had for just 7 weeks.
Extrapolate that 30 times out in the future, even leaving out feedback loops and nonlinear systems.
Not yet mentioned is that this is the first time the US is actively working against their allies, and it's not just the Europeans.
If - or when? - the US leaves NATO, the EU will finally have a big incentive to buy local. Right now the EU buys most of their arms from the US. Germany's 100 billion Euro special fund created at the beginning of the war in Ukraine mostly went to US purchases.
Here in Europe the sudden change with regards to Russia, and how they treated an ally that the US spent at least the last two decades actively building up (Ukraine military would have been quickly overrun in 2022 without all the work and support the US provided), there now is fear that when we really need it the US may do what they did with the Ukrainians.
It may not even be political, but it's no longer far-fetched to imagine that the US will demand major concessions and payback in order to resume support, ignoring any previous agreements, just because they can.
What still works in favor of the US is, at least here in Germany, our politicians. Just now, what did the new government - consisting of the two same old major parties that have ruled all the time since this country was created - concentrate on? Major fundamental changes? No! Immediately they went for useless spending for some of their clientele, and they only went for "borrowing a lot of money" instead of institutional changes. They may be concerned, but in the end they still refuse to move. Even the new trillion is again just a new special fund kind of setup instead of fundamental changes, and you can bet most of it will disappear in the major inefficiencies of our systems.
They have also always had a lot of problems creating a true alliance of European arms manufacturers, each country pushes their own interests with little regard for the rest.
However, should they finally wake up at least a little bit from their long fat slumber, many billions of reliable purchases from the US could disappear - plus the European arms makers will become much more competitive internationally too. Especially if more countries have doubts about the reliability of relying on the US for ongoing long-term support. That could be bad for the US arms industry from two fronts.
BY the way, I am much more mad at the Europeans, my own German government(s) especially, than at Trump. We did nothing for two decades, watching Russia prepare for war. To me it also makes perfect sense for the much more populous EU to deal with its own problems without having to ask a far away country. It's kind of like "regression towards the mean", no? The US only came to Europe because of some truly special events, but at least since the fall of the East Bloc there really is no reason. We were lucky because of all the momentum, it took the US a while to realize this (and some really bad wars). I consider the developments good for Europe in the end. We are forced to confront reality.
I just wish the Ukrainians would not have to pay such an enormous price for all those fuck-ups. Which includes a lot of actions to get Ukraine into NATO at some point (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations) - and now when they really need it, and also because of all of that, the rug is pulled from under them.
With the world watching, that too may be a factor for future US arms deals.
In addition, the world and Europe especially also depend on the US when it comes to software. The OS and Office 365 are ubiquitous. For the cloud we have alternatives and one could use those, it is much much harder for a business not to use US software.
If Europe becomes more self-reliant, we may see some movement here. It would not work bottom-up, but all the EU has to do is demand things at least for the public sector, piece by piece. This could create some certainty and cash-flow to create European software, and create a wide basis on which businesses could later build upon.
For the US, leaving Europe has a few risks. What is never mentioned are all those secondary effects of their NATO support and dominance: This way the US keeps a lid on too much European independence, and goes far beyond defense. If Trump and Musk think it's a no-brainer to give that up, well, as a European I support them. If we can't do anything with such a chance it's our own fault. This could be really good for Europe.
> What still works in favor of the US is, at least here in Germany, our politicians.
> BY the way, I am much more mad at the Europeans, my own German government(s) especially, than at Trump.
I would go even as far as saying that a significant part of German elites indirectly work for Russians or more generally they are part of the world corruption elite (and I don't mean AfD and BSW, I mean businesspeople and parts of CDU and SPD). Since the end of nuclear plants was announced around 2000, it was quite clear they will have to be replaced, and at least since 2009 (the first Russian gas stop) it was very clear Russia can't be trusted with the one thing (or anything else). But at every turn they managed to delay or destroy effective solutions and instead pushed for Nordstream 2 and so on. And the public let them do that.
Of course it can be much worse (I'm from Slovakia) but the past doesn't give me high hopes for the future.
In my lifetime, there have been multiple -10+% single day drops, one -22%, and a bunch of -10% months. In that time though, no one has questioned the full faith and credit of the US government.
However now -- The Supreme Court had to take a case to rule that the government had to pay contracts that had already been delivered on. The Treasury has yoinked money from NY State over ACH because DOGE disagreed with the program. Musk and DOGE are trying to break departments so hard that there's no putting them back even with a court order. He's threatening Social Security, which has always been the third rail.
The trouble is that some form of stability and law is required for the sort of financial business that powers the US. There are other ways of being rich -- patronage, extractive, but that's not an engine that drives financialization and the ability to start business, get investments, and generally get some return back out of things. You lose the stability and the trustworthiness, the goose goes away, and there are no more golden eggs.