The author is a major voice in bitcoin circles (search their name with the word "bitcoin" or "crypto" on youtube). And I find it notable that they don't mention bitcoin or crypto anywhere in this post.
https://www.lynalden.com/fiscal-and-monetary-policy/
Along with a recent article (which I can't find - I think she takes them premium once they've been out for a while) where she said that the Fed is probably structurally unable to raise rates above inflation, but that won't prevent them from trying, and we can expect major stock market crashes each time they do. That's pretty much all you need to know: long term, the stock market is going to infinity because the dollar is going to zero (or at least, a value much less than today), but in the short term the stock market could easily see drops of > 50% because it is so heavily levered on zero interest rates right now.
I'd say that the the biggest hole is that her writing ignores coupling of political risk and financial risk. (Probably out of necessity, given her audience. Investing is pointless when you can't enforce property rights.) Historically, when you get hyperinflation, you get disrespect for rule of law, civil disorder, collapse of infrastructure, and revolution in very short order. Commerce can't survive in these conditions, let alone finance. (This is one of the factors that accelerates inflation into hyperinflation - as predictability disappears, so does production, leading to even more scarcity.)
Lyn's predictions exist in the uncanny valley where the petrodollar system collapses and the dollar loses its reserve currency status, but we still retain Internet access, orderly financial markets, bank accounts, property rights, and physical security. I'm not sure this is a given. Historically, transitions to a major new economic system inevitably require a war or at least a revolution, because the winners of the previous economic system will not give up without a fight. There's no guarantee that the new government will honor property rights guaranteed by the old one. (In fact, in most cases the new government explicitly strips property from the previous wealthy elite, and that's a major part of its appeal to the common people.)
Here, in the Lyn Alden universe, we have for sure one event, Bretton Woods, linked to WW2. To me this is not much to go on, that link could be partly a coincidence and an acceleration of trends like the old colonial powers waning. Another thing that comes to mind is the changes in precious metals market, related first to late-Middle Ages scarcity and then the initial conquest of Americas. Here the parallels to be drawn are even less clear.
I think that our beliefs on how (and how much) linked these things are (reserve currency, petrodollar system, property as such etc.) are hard to base on actually strong historical reasoning. There could be strong non-historical arguments either way. My speculation is whatever bad things could happen to the USA's system, the rest of the world could go on with lower living standards and less (even less?) international predictability. But many societies are spoiled with those nowadays, 1890s didn't have them and it was still a modern era in the grand scheme of things.
> There's no guarantee that the new government will honor property rights guaranteed by the old one. (In fact, in most cases the new government explicitly strips property from the previous wealthy elite, and that's a major part of its appeal to the common people.)
I'm guessing this is based on the cases of internal revolutions mentioned earlier. Places like Italy and Japan have a really long chain of property with no major expropriations, despite wars and regime changes along the way. We can treat this as somewhat random.
[0] People could jump to say that modern states are also "unreformable" because of the political situation. But our modern regimes are based (officially) on popular will to begin with, so they, in principle, could be reformed based on the same source of legitimacy. This couldn't be said about regimes purporting to be based on divine right of rulers.
Specific examples:
Crisis of the 14th century paving the transition from the feudal era to the renaissance (and the development of market economies and mercantilism). Europe was depopulated by Black Death, the Hundred Years War, and the Wars of the Roses. This gave peasants bargaining power for their labor, and also meant that many younger sons of nobles stood to inherit property. As a result, an economy sprung up around trade and specialization, distinct from the feudal relations between lord and peasant. The catalyst for this was simply death; many of the old power players died off from the plague and subsequent wars, leaving those who didn't die off to rebuild the world based on current economics.
American Civil War. This is usually framed as being about slavery, which it was. But it's often glossed over how much of this debate was actually a clash between two economic systems, the plantation South and the industrial North. When both sides were primarily agrarian, the balance of power favored the more fertile, slaveowning South. But as the Industrial Revolution progressed, its higher productivity a.) gave the North more economic power and b.) also raised wages there, so that it became increasingly attractive for slaves and poor whites in the South to migrate North and take advantage of the jobs in the factories. The 1850s was the crux of that, where U.S. politics still favored the South, but economics favored the North, and this disconnect led up to the Civil War. (Think of how the Supreme Court felt that the Dred Scott decision would settle the question of slavery once and for all, but it was nullified 6 years later under force of arms.) And of course, once the war started, Northern industrial might proved critical in winning it, in the form of factories and railroads.
Italian & German wars of nationalism in 1871. (The American Civil War can also be lumped in with these, and to some extent the Napoleonic wars.) These are cases where an individual city-state within a broader ethno-nation (Prussia for Germany, Rome for Italy) managed to either conquer or convince enough of its neighbors to build a larger nation-state. This was driven by economics, along with changing military tactics. Rifles, railroads, gatling guns, and artillery gave benefits to large standing armies that required the resources of a larger political entity to maintain; meanwhile, industrialization and mass production gives larger economies of scale to larger markets. Those leaders who recognized this pushed for larger states, and it also gave them the means to conquer leaders who did not.
(You could look at most wars from 1865-1917 as transitioning from colonial imperialism to industrial nationalism. The American Civil War, Italian Independence Wars, Austro-Prussian War, Franco-Prussian War, Meiji Restoration, Russo-Japanese War, WW1, and dissolution of the Ottoman and Hapsburg Empires all resulted in a well-organized, mostly ethnically homogenous, and industrialized states taking over former imperial colonies, largely on the strength of the military technology & tactics that such an industrialized nation-state could bring to bear. Contrast with earlier wars like the Mexican-American war or Napoleonic Wars, which involved a larger imperial power conquering a smaller one by virtue of superior numbers rather than superior technology.)
We also have events like the Russian Revolution (1917) and Chinese Civil War (1912-1949), where the old imperial regime collapsed under its inability to provide for the populace's needs, but was replaced by Communism rather than Nationalism. The fall of the Soviet Union (1991) is another such event, replacing communism with (somewhat corrupt) market capitalism.
I'd say that the biggest counterexample is the end of the Pax Brittanica and Britain's fall as a hegemonic power. You could argue that WW1 was the war at the end of that economic system, though, and many scholars say that WW1 was a direct result of Britain's declining industrial & military advantage as other Great Powers industrialized. That they were succeeded by their former colony is largely an accident of geography and shrewd U.S. actions in the first part of 1800s. Had Jefferson not made the Louisiana purchase, or the U.S. not prevailed in the Mexican-American war, the outcome of WW1 might have been very different.
A more serious issue is that the US markets really represent much more than just the US economy. All the biggest corporations listed in the US have huge busnesses outside the US that count toward other countries GDP. I would guess WallMart is the most US based, but even they have stores in other countries.
Apple is a US company that manufactures in China, buys important components in Asia and has employees and sells products all over the world.
She makes assumptions that are wrong. like:
The danger comes, however, if interest rates start going sideways, or even start going up, structurally.
except that stocks rose in 2016-2017 even as interest rates were rising. Same for the 90s.
The closest you can do is shorting BTC-adjacent regular stocks like MSTR, MARA, etc.
https://www.lynalden.com/cryptocurrencies/
TL;DR stance as of July 2020: I like it as a small position within a diversified portfolio, without much concern for periodic corrections, using capital I’m willing to risk.
I'm not sure if that's doable, but I don't see another option.