Sharks have flooded Shark Infested Waters with shark asshole stink but this time the asshole stink is AI generated and Taylor Swift has a billion dollars for lawyers.

Oh so sorry we misplaced your paperwork very badly for you Mr Navalny, I cannot say that we have a death certificate for you but I’m sure we could find one if necessary.

Uh oh how was I to know that Thor High Heels was a minority opinion he said ironically

Ooh, yeah, good call, I always forget them when things get dweeby.

I swear, nothing is commie enough for Lemmy. “Linux? Pshhhsshs! Cuck!” Mentions no alternative

Weird thumbnail vs headline. She looks like I just asked her if she wants to hit this joint and she does, which doesn’t go at the top of a story about atrocity.

Yep. Some of us remember when it was Fuck Ellen Pao, they seem to like their sacrificial CEOs over there, though I’m sure they get paid too much to be the scapegoat.

That just makes me stop and think about how bad Musk loves being That Guy. The other ones will take the heat and then float away on their golden parachutes, you never really hear from them again. Not him. He keeps making new companies so he can be That Guy at them.

Oh lets all land on the fuckin moon at once

Honestly, I would expect spike traps, those might be deadly indefinitely

He saw them coming from a thousand years away.

It’s a good little week for the sciences, isn’t it?

Transport Fever 2, because I can ride da choo choos

It’s super chill and relaxing, you just have to ignore the rest of your empire falling into ruin

Fuck sake.

The move by Fitch makes sense.

No, it does not help that the US has a very high level of national debt, but here comes somebody to scold me about how debt is different when you’re the government and yadda yadda, so never mind that angle.

No, this is a direct reaction to yet another game of fucking chicken with the debt ceiling. The finance world moves both fast and slow, second by second but also quarter by quarter; for every day trade where microseconds count, there is another action where it takes, oh, 3 months for the relevant body to react to what just happened. This is one of those actions. They’ve spent the last couple of months running their numbers, and now here we are. They have delivered their verdict for the current fiscal quarter, after much deliberation.

It does not make any sense at all to go around talking about US Fed bonds as if they are “zero risk”, or even “effectively zero risk”, if every 8 years there will come a game of chicken slash pissing contest where the hostages are everyone who has been foolish enough to buy US Federal debt under the expectation that the interest rate will be paid on time. If somebody in the US government does not blink in this game of chicken, then fuck you, the US will default on its “zero risk” debt.

And so here is Fitch quite reasonably questioning that status quo, that US debt is “zero risk”.

Keep in mind that the entire damn globe is holding US Treasury Bonds, the debt in question. Just as importantly, the biggest holder of US debt is US citizens. You, somehow. That’s where the yields on a CD come from, and your money market account. US Bonds.

Typically, 10 year US Treasury Bonds provide the highest guaranteed interest rate -ignoring recent rate inversions because COVID black swan shitshow- because obviously if you are going to lock up your money for a decade, you would expect the best return at maturity.

But this debt ceiling BS happens every 8 years. This means that every truly serious investor who holds a 10-year T-Bill, from Wall Street funds to the Chinese government, is heavily exposed to the threat of complete default on this debt thanks to that entire debt ceiling thing, to say absolutely nothing about the solvency of the US government, in general.

That’s not fucking zero risk. And Fitch is tired of pretending that it is.

Fuck sake, they aren’t even trying to have a debate upon whether the US can sustain its frankly obscene debt level. No, it’s just that AAA rating means “zero effective risk, barring nuclear war or alien invasion or some unforeseeable shit” and all that clownfuckery with the debt ceiling is NOT “zero risk”, nor is it unforeseeable.

Is that zero risk? When the person who owes you money can watch the due date tick down from 5 years out and wait until the last fucking minute of the last damn day to decide they’re going to pass the law that will allow them to pay you? No, the fuck it ain’t.

Did they appear to care about the creditors? The bondholders who they owed interest to? No, that whole song and dance was about, I don’t know, probably abortion. The Republicans have been using the debt ceiling as a hostage for a decade or more, so if you’re the French government, for example, and hold a bunch of US Treasury bills, you can’t call that shit zero risk with a straight face, come on. It doesn’t even matter if the US can pay the debt, the question is, will they?

I need you to understand that literally everyone in the world is investing in US Federal debt, it’s not just you, US person. It’s kind of frightening how US Federal debt is the cinder blocks that many other nations are building their economic foundation on. That’s what being the reserve currency is about.

Fitch knows that, and they know it back to front, so when they issue a rating, the weight of it is upon them. Can we call it zero risk? Like zero, zero??

If you have any money in your brokerage money market account, or a CD, anywhere, you’re in this boat, wondering if US Bonds are zero risk. The whole world is in this boat, wondering if US Treasury Bonds, especially the 10-year ones, are really zero risk guaranteed money on maturity. Like, really really, tho? Maybe there’s a smidge of risk? Even the 30 year bonds??? 30 fuckin years on the bond, my dude, zero risk on that?

We’ve all been on American social media, they all talk like they’re going to have another Civil War; probably not, but still. Zero risk on the 30-year US Treasury Bond? That’s a long time. Shit can go nuclear. Zero risk?

Could you look your best fucking friend in the face and say, “oh, yeah, buy a US 30 year Treasury Bond, there is absolutely no risk of any sort on that, you will get your interest even if Florida slips under the sea, taking Disney World with it.” Could you? No.

So pretend that there you are, some team of analysts at Fitch, knowing all of this, knowing more than I do because it’s your job, and looking at each other like, “Can we call this zero risk? Because that’s what AAA means. We all know that. So can we?” And nobody wants to, because it isn’t, and we’re all tired of pretending like it is.

And Fitch looks at the obvious, it downgrades US Treasury debt from AAA - perfect, the best possible - to AA+ - still near perfect, but room for improvement.

Fitch is right. Fitch is right to shoot up the warning flare. We’re lucky that China’s situation is still a bit of a mess, and the United States Federal Reserve needed the wakeup call, not that they want it. We’re lucky that buying a bond from the Chinese Federal Government doesn’t quite make sense, because if the state owns all things, then what is a bond? It doesn’t matter what the answer is, it only matters that we have to discuss it. We all know what a US Treasury Bond is, that’s beyond debate. That certainty elevates it.

It’s not like Fitch are acting up to get attention, fuck that. Every other respectable bond rating house should have done this first. It’s not fair that Fitch has to be the odd ones to call the obvious. Fitch is right. The US needs to get its shit together.

That’s a bummer, hang in there Mastodon, keep bloomscrollin

Hopefully a massive influx of Twitter jerks doesn’t kill what makes Mastodon a nice place in the first place.

Somebody once remarked that it’s funny how everyone acts like Italians all walk around being Mario Brothers but the Italians just roll with it.

It’s because some Italians were the people who invented Fascism as a formal political movement, and you know damn well how that ended up, so if going “It’s-a me, Giancarlo!” every once in a while gets the world to forget, they’ll take it.

But then this happens, and you have to start talking about spaghetti as much as possible.

I think the thing that’s really stopping me from using that is that every time I get curious and go poking around to see what the fuss is, I run into some sort of paywall situation, or maybe it’s just a long queue that you need to join to get access, something like that. All I know is that you can’t just casually fire it up and take it for a spin.

Either I’m finding the wrong thing, or the people who already swear by it paid some fee or got an early access code ages ago. It also doesn’t know when it’s lying, and already got a lawyer in trouble for trying to let ChatGPT do his job, apparently it slapped together a brief, an argument before the court, that referenced a bunch of case law that didn’t actually exist.

No matter what, it’s not so casually accessible as people make it out to be, I don’t know what’s up with that.