Top all-time · #228
Lyn Alden
Personal blog · lynalden.comeconomicsbusiness
Lyn Alden is a personal blog at lynalden.com about economics and business. Since 2019, 208 different Hacker News readers have linked it 410 times, most often “The fraying of the U.S. global currency reserve system”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-07-15, and you can follow it by feed.
Often recommended · 18 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
Linked for explanations of money, inflation, the petrodollar system, Bitcoin's energy use and security, and Japanification. Commenters call her work amazing and often recommend it as reading.
- Recommended for · 18 comments
- Called amazing, a favourite, a good explainer and good analysis; 'thorough and clinical'; often suggested as reading
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- The fraying of the U.S. global currency reserve system32 people · 42 mentions · first linked 2020-12-03
- Bitcoin’s Energy Usage Isn’t a Problem19 people · 23 mentions · first linked 2021-08-23
- The Ultimate Guide to Inflation13 people · 16 mentions · first linked 2021-05-09
- What is money, anyway?12 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2022-03-07
- The Global Dollar Short Squeeze10 people · 19 mentions · first linked 2020-04-07
- Bitcoin: Addressing the Ponzi Scheme Characterization10 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2021-02-01
- Banks, QE, and Money-Printing9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2020-11-03
- Book: "Broken Money" by Lyn Alden7 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2023-08-23
- Economic Japanification: Not What You Think7 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2021-02-15
- Quantitative Easing, MMT, and Inflation/Deflation: A Primer7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2020-05-04
What Hacker News says?
Yeah, us peons don't pay any taxes and corporations don't evade them... All those taxes are collected from companies, look at the nice graph that proves it: https://www.lynalden.com/wp-content/uploads/corporate-tax-ra... I'm being ironic, the average corporate tax rate went from 40% in 1960 to 10% today.
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/corporate-tax-rate.png
on “EU Signs €145B Declaration to Develop Next Gen Processors and 2nm Technology”Submitted The Ultimate Guide to Inflation as a story · 712 points
HN discussionI really liked her article on understanding Japanification, which I probably found linked from HN too. I'd never heard of her before but I immediately added her to my favourites. https://www.lynalden.com/economic-japanification/
Comment linking /economic-japanification/
on “The Ultimate Guide to Inflation”Submitted What is money, anyway? as a story · 480 points
HN discussionAs usual, an amazing article by Lyn Alden. I love her work. One of my favorite articles of last year was this: https://www.lynalden.com/fraying-petrodollar-system/
Comment linking /fraying-petrodollar-system/
on “The Ultimate Guide to Inflation”Submitted The Global Dollar Short Squeeze as a story · 391 points
HN discussionI can't do this topic justice from memory, but you seem to be genuinely interested, so I'll say what I can. It seems related to the petrodollar system. This is where the world uses USD for energy (OPEC only sells oil for dollars). This forces countries who need oil to acquire dollars. However, there's a problem with that: a limited supply of dollars. How do we fix that problem? Use a fiat currency (not backed by som…
Comment linking /fraying-petrodollar-system/
on “El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender”Submitted The fraying of the U.S. global currency reserve system as a story · 348 points
HN discussionLyn covers this topic fairly well in her article on Japan[0]. In short, private debt in Japan has shrunk by 300 trillion yen over the past 25 years. The growth of the money supply is all coming from public debt. It matters who gets the new money and what they spend it on. [0]: https://www.lynalden.com/economic-japanification/
Comment linking /economic-japanification/
on “Home Price to Income Ratio”Submitted Does QE Cause Wealth Inequality? as a story · 212 points
HN discussion> In my view this is symptomatic of a more fundamental issue - global asset price inflation driven by a broken financial system (i.e. a system being artificially pumped up with cheap credit). Spot on. You're not alone. For a more thorough and clinical review of how we're f'ed and why see Lyn Alden's "Broken Money". To your point, ppl are fond to talk about the economy. That's a distraction. It's a false god. Fact: t…
Comment linking /broken-money/
on “Priced out of home ownership”Submitted Banks, QE, and Money-Printing as a story · 212 points
HN discussionIt opens a can of worms. If you start telling people how they should or should not use any form of energy, then you have to ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° at yourself first. https://www.lynalden.com/wp-content/uploads/bitcoin-energy-c... https://www.lynalden.com/bitcoin-energy/
Comment linking /bitcoin-energy/
on “GPU mining no longer profitable after Ethereum merge”Submitted The Importance of Price Signals as a story · 183 points
HN discussionLyn Alden had a good, terse analysis of why DOGE was unlikely to be effective in this newsletter[0]. The math was simple, the folks behind DOGE must have themselves known that their stated mission was impossible. It starts with these paragraphs, if you want to seek to it: "This is the goal of the newly proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. This is an advisory commi…
Comment linking /full-steam-ahead-all-aboard-fiscal-dominance/
on “The story of DOGE, as told by federal workers”Submitted An Economic Analysis of Ethereum as a story · 137 points
HN discussionhttps://www.lynalden.com/november-2020-newsletter/
Comment linking /november-2020-newsletter/
on “Food Prices Are Soaring Faster Than Inflation and Incomes”Submitted Energy vs. Sovereign Bond Markets as a story · 116 points
HN discussion> Measures by the Fed and U.S. government have underpinned the recent rally across markets. The Fed made it clear it was willing to step in to buoy the economy. Why bet against the market when the central bank is willing to do that? The Fed has gone far further than just this. The Fed is going to buy as many assets as it takes. Treasuries. Corporate bonds. Junk bonds. Munis. It'll buy the assets directly. It'll buy…
Comment linking /global-dollar-short-squeeze/
on “Why is the stock market rallying when the economy is so bad?”Submitted The Fraying of the US Global Currency Reserve System as a story · 113 points
HN discussionrare Earths have a pretty big downside of having huge swings in the supply when there happens to be a discovery. you want a pretty stable supply for a reserve currency / backing commodity. oil is fairly difficult / expensive to transport and store, certainly at volume. more at https://www.lynalden.com/what-is-money/
Comment linking /what-is-money/
on “The Demoralization is just Beginning”Submitted The Capital Sponge as a story · 112 points
HN discussionFrom Bloomberg: > Bondholders of $19.2 billion in Evergrande dollar notes face deep haircuts as the company overhauls its mammoth balance sheet without a government bailout -- a process that promises to be long, contentious and potentially risky for Asia’s largest economy. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-09/evergrand... It might seem odd that a Chinese company would have taken out dollar loans, but t…
Comment linking /global-dollar-short-squeeze/
on “Evergrande has defaulted on its debt, Fitch Ratings says”Submitted Why gold and Bitcoin are popular as a story · 93 points
HN discussionAs for '4', you have an implicit assumption that I see a lot on HN. No, BTC doesn't have a massive environmental cost. Please re-examine that premise. https://www.lynalden.com/bitcoin-energy/
Comment linking /bitcoin-energy/
on “10 years of whatever this has been”Submitted How to Win a Currency War as a story · 83 points
HN discussionThere are significant political and economic tradeoffs between POW and POS... I highly recommend this article for an analysis of these. https://www.lynalden.com/proof-of-stake/ I suggest this analysis because folks tend to state their preference for POS while only mentioning the energy costs as the only factor in their calculation. I do think it worth considering these other tradeoffs as well.
Comment linking /proof-of-stake/
on “Mozilla Foundation pausing cryptocurrency donations”Submitted Proof-of-Stake and Stablecoins: A Blockchain Centralization Dilemma as a story · 74 points
HN discussion> If bittorent was invented today you'd have to buy into some pyramid scheme to use it. Bitcoin was effectively invented 'today', yet you don't have to buy into a pyramid scheme to use it.[1] For example, you could simply use it for cross-border remittance to avoid paying Western Union's high fees, without ever holding bitcoin, by using an app like Strike to send dollars from the US to El Salvador (using bitcoin's i…
Comment linking /bitcoin-ponzi-scheme/
on “Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)”Submitted Fiscal-Driven Inflation as a story · 73 points
HN discussion
