Relatives of ours bought a house back at historically low interest rates. They also got an adjustable rate mortgage because they were sure interest rates would never rise.
Stay humble.
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Honestly found this insane. People were getting 1-2% mortgages and not getting fixes because they thought it would go lower. Just completely dumb. The upside was so little but the downside was huge.
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The Yen carry trade.
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101 sats \ 1 reply \ @gmd 27 Oct 2023
Softbank LOL
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Softbank and Tiger are famous for revolutionizing VC by using an index-fund-like strategy and investing in everything. I don't think this is a ZIRP phenomena - it's a bold but not unreasonable idea. What is a ZIRP phenomena is how absurdly huge they got in the last years.
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Has anyone ever used BNPL? I never understood how this got so huge... it must be only poor people that use it?
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It's scray how many people use it.
  1. Scary how many people have such an low financial literacy
  2. What's even more shocking to me: how people feel entitled to stuff they can't afford. It doesn't even cross their mind to stay humble and save up for what they really want.
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It basically serves the layaway crowd. My dad would use it for electronics stuff.
Like most forms of credit, it's probably addictive once you start using it.
As a credit-phobe one of the most chilling takes on credit was one I heard from a friend that carries a significant credit card balance:
I feel more wealthy using credit.
He has a good job and income! He pays no housing costs! It blew my mind.
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After loan pause ended last month finally paid off $360k student loans (post tax 😢). Loathe to take on any debt...
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Wait are you saying you did it?!? No more student loan debt?
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yeah haha. was a bit anticlimactic tbh...
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1001 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 29 Oct 2023
DUDE! That’s so crazy awesome. You’re free!
When I paid off my debt (10x less than yours), it didn’t feel like much at first, but eventually it felt like a storm had cleared. That low grade chronic stress was gone.
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haha thanks. maybe it was anticlimactic because i had the money set aside waiting for the federal loan pause to end... just hurts to think of the total in pre-tax dollars haha
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I know 2 people that 'retired early' ( im talking like...30 yrs old ) and now shamefully having to try and get back into working again.
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Possibly the AirBNB daisy-chain. Buy a property, rent it out, use profits to buy the next property, rinse and repeat.
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Oh please god I hope so
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When I think on this, it's hard to imagine anything that's emerged in the last 10-15 that isn't ZIRP-based in some fashion.
Same-day, next-day, two-day shipping might be a surprising one. For businesses at scale, debt is definitely being used to subsidize customer acquisition costs to later be redeemed over the customer lifetime. With interest rates rising, many of these kind of things will implode.
Venture capital, once a niche investment class, in general exploded through ZIRP. How much debt is financing that I wonder?

I've been calling BNPL ZIRP cancer for years now. Its so unoriginal that it has an initialism I guess.
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Good call. In general, any business activity that used to generate between 3 and 8% percent returns will likely disappear.
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That's so many businesses. That's likely all of retail that Amazon didn't already kill. Automakers and airlines are probably going to need to be bailed out again.
I'd guess a lot of our economy, and what manufacturing base we have, depend on ZIRP.
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I hadn't thought about much of this until now. All the supply chain disruptions, labor force problems, and so much more, are rooted in the rate hikes to some degree.
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Chilling!
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San Francisco.
Peak ZIRP and now look what's happening
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I used to love walking through union square. Sad what they did to such a beautiful city.
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99% of Silicon Valley 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️
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HYLYM?
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long time ago
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I think hustle culture gets me all the time because I feel for it so hard, its such a band aid approach like oh okay you can't save, go find ways of generating more cash flow with your time, as if everyone can sell to everyone all the time, its like some MLM kinda shit
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deleted by author
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Even better: "Zero Interest Rate Phenomenon"
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