
Why Investors Can’t Get Enough of Tajikistan’s Debt - s17n
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/17/business/emerging-markets-bonds.html
======
Top19
This is Terrifying with a capital T. For one it’s the 90’s all over again.
Tech bubble, white supremacy groups, Hillary Clinton, cryptoanarchists (saw
that term online yesterday after having not heard it for 10+ years), and now
super sexy debt being issued by the developing world.

I know someone always says there’s a terrifying bubble. To be honest this one
won’t be too bad, but what concerns me is political instability. Steve Bannon
has I think said a nation is its politics, not its economy (I think that is
correct at least). Since Steve Bannon is intent on bringing about “the Fourth
Turning”, there might be no Keynesian bailout to save the world this time (FYI
there was a cover of Time magazine in 1999 literally titled “the committee to
save the world” with a picture of the IMF and Greenspan).

All of this nonsense about companies in the stock market having plenty of cash
on hand really upsets me. There is essentially a black-box stock market in
private valuations where very very bad things are hiding. The stock market of
the 1920’s was essentially private too due to lack of regulation. For
background AirBnb has raised $4 billion in cash over its ENTIRE LIFETIME.
Oracle and Amazon have on-hand cash of something like $40 billion each
AVAILABLE RIGHT NOW. The unicorns are built on a pile of equally magic pixie
dust. Can’t wait for the jokes about “unicorns, we should have known they
aren’t real”.

There are powder kegs in the article linked, Bitcoin (worth more than
AirBnB!!!), tech, and China (although people have been saying that since
2001). Which one will go off first?

------
Bucephalus355
This, along with Bitcoin, which is now basically worth as much as a Fortune
100 company, is not good. It’s worth more than Goldman Sachs.

That being said, the market can be irrational a long time. This could go on
for many years.

