Is this bigger than a "don't try and time the market" event?

[Tasse]

The red line was already crossed with the Jan 6 insurrection.

I disagree. It was scary and horrible, but the response was appropriate, at least for four years. The blanket pardon of Jan 6 rioters is a much more defensible red line, IMO.

ETA: And to be clear, I'm not treating it as one in this context; I'm still fully invested in the stock market.

[GuitarStv]

RED LINES:
*The US treasury takes on debt to buy cryptocurrency, in an obvious pump and dump scheme
*The Congressional Budget Office is abolished, neutralized, or packed with cronies.
*Ten independent journalists are jailed for criticizing the regime.
*The Constitution is changed to enable Trump to run for a third term, or for Musk to run for president.
*Social Security is significantly cut, defined as a 10% reduction in payments OR an end to inflation indexing.
*Medicaid or Medicare are significantly cut, defined as a 20% reduction in spending.
*Government data sources such as the BEA, BLS, or Federal Reserve Banks either stop reporting key data series OR are politically influenced so that the data are not considered credible by a significant number (20%) of economists who previously considered them credible.
*The US government attempts to unilaterally cancel treasury debts to a non-governmental bondholder.
*The projected US federal deficit surpasses 15% of GDP in the absence of a recession, or 25% during a recession.
*The US enters a military conflict with China.
*Compulsory primary and secondary education is ended OR most public schools are privatized/closed.
*The government attempts to switch back to an asset-based currency system, such as a gold-standard or crypto-standard.
*Three or more state universities are shuttered due to funding being cut off.
*The Federal Reserve cuts rates in an inflationary environment due to political pressure, or disengages from rate-setting.
*The executive branch ignores a clear ruling from the Supreme Court.
*The SEC or FDIC are abolished, gutted, or limited.

* A rich unelected man is given full control of determining how government spending should be made, effectively usurping the power of congress.  Courts are unwilling or unable to reign in this man.

[sonofsven]

The "Red Line" was crossed for me in 2000 when the Supreme Court ordered the State of Florida to stop the lawful recount of the votes, handing the presidency to Bush: a decision so bad that even it's authors warned it should never be duplicated or used as a precedent.
Coincidentally (!), three current SC justices worked on the legal team representing Bush: Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barret.
Also, Roger Stone organized a fake riot of white men cosplaying as lawyers to pressure the courts.
The red line was completely obliterated with the creation of Project REDMAP (aka gerrymandering) and the subsequent SC (now headed by Roberts) decision that allowed states to do so.
We do not currently have "free and fair" elections with which to elect our representatives according to the Constitution.
I've been a witness to the ascendancy of Republican radicalism my entire life, starting with President Reagan and his obvious lies and "not recalling" any of the details of the Iran Contra scandal, where the executive branch illegally sold weapons to Iran and used the proceeds to fund terrorist training camps in South America to overthrow democratically elected leaders there.

[ChpBstrd]

A lot of the examples provided are significant negative events, but did not make the U.S. a country whose stock market you'd want to avoid, or the USD a currency you'd not want to hold. MMM literally retired on about $650k in cash shortly after the Supreme Court appointment of the disastrous Bush administration and he did fine, even as the independent media was collapsing, Citizens United ruling occurred, wars based on political lies were killing thousands of Americans per year, and a new, partisan Supreme Court was forming. 

A red line needs to be severe enough that the probability-weighted risks of waiting for a turnaround in quality of governance exceed the probability-weighted benefits. I.e. if you would have exited the US markets and currency after Trump's 2015 election, look at what you'd have missed out on.

Yet a red line also needs to be sensitive enough so that you are not the last investor holding the bag as a society crumbles. Lots of people in Turkyie' or Russia or Venezuela waited too long to divest while they still could. This is where I differ from the "invest in US stocks no matter what" crowd. Such a strategy works until it doesn't, particularly after a country's decline into authoritarianism is becoming obvious.

So different people might have different sensitivities. Those with hair-triggers risk missing out on a rally like occurred during Trump's first go-round, but in exchange are less exposed if things go badly this time. Those with resistance to change or too much optimism accept the opposite tradeoff.

[sonofsven]

A lot of the examples provided are significant negative events, but did not make the U.S. a country whose stock market you'd want to avoid, or the USD a currency you'd not want to hold. MMM literally retired on about $650k in cash shortly after the Supreme Court appointment of the disastrous Bush administration and he did fine, even as the independent media was collapsing, Citizens United ruling occurred, wars based on political lies were killing thousands of Americans per year, and a new, partisan Supreme Court was forming. 

A red line needs to be severe enough that the probability-weighted risks of waiting for a turnaround in quality of governance exceed the probability-weighted benefits. I.e. if you would have exited the US markets and currency after Trump's 2015 election, look at what you'd have missed out on.

Yet a red line also needs to be sensitive enough so that you are not the last investor holding the bag as a society crumbles. Lots of people in Turkyie' or Russia or Venezuela waited too long to divest while they still could. This is where I differ from the "invest in US stocks no matter what" crowd. Such a strategy works until it doesn't, particularly after a country's decline into authoritarianism is becoming obvious.

So different people might have different sensitivities. Those with hair-triggers risk missing out on a rally like occurred during Trump's first go-round, but in exchange are less exposed if things go badly this time. Those with resistance to change or too much optimism accept the opposite tradeoff.

Agreed, and I don't think these current events will, either.

[SuperNintendo Chalmers]

*The executive branch ignores a clear ruling from the Supreme Court.

I mentioned this in another thread, but to me this is Game Over.  There's no going back.  And unfortunately I think we're headed there. 

[Poundwise]

If one already has a foreign bank account, what are some possible pitfalls in transferring money from the US to there?

[ChpBstrd]

If one already has a foreign bank account, what are some possible pitfalls in transferring money from the US to there?

I'm doing what I can to study these issues, but don't know much. Here's what I've identified so far:

1) Your tax-advantaged US retirement accounts (traditional IRA, Roth, 401k, HSA) will suddenly be converted to taxable. Not only do you lose the massive advantage of tax-free growth, but you also might have to pay hefty early withdraw penalties.

2) There is a risk of double-taxation if your bond interest, for example, is claimed as income by both the US and the other country. The U.S. is one of a handful of countries that claim its citizens' income earned abroad, which is why some expats give up their citizenship.

3) If by "transferring money" you mean keeping USD's in an account at a foreign bank, you remain vulnerable to a decline in the value of the USD. If you mean convert to local currency, you become vulnerable to a decline in the value of that currency.

4) You may not be eligible for the other country's retirement accounts if you are not a citizen, OR the other country's retirement system may be based on a national pension that you aren't eligible for as a non-citizen, or which would provide only a tiny income in your retirement because you haven't been paying into it your whole life if you obtained citizenship.

If it's just a plain taxable account and your goal is to establish a foreign-domiciled bug-out-account then there's not much downside.

[tooqk4u22]

If one already has a foreign bank account, what are some possible pitfalls in transferring money from the US to there?

I'm doing what I can to study these issues, but don't know much. Here's what I've identified so far:

1) Your tax-advantaged US retirement accounts (traditional IRA, Roth, 401k, HSA) will suddenly be converted to taxable. Not only do you lose the massive advantage of tax-free growth, but you also might have to pay hefty early withdraw penalties.

2) There is a risk of double-taxation if your bond interest, for example, is claimed as income by both the US and the other country. The U.S. is one of a handful of countries that claim its citizens' income earned abroad, which is why some expats give up their citizenship.

3) If by "transferring money" you mean keeping USD's in an account at a foreign bank, you remain vulnerable to a decline in the value of the USD. If you mean convert to local currency, you become vulnerable to a decline in the value of that currency.

4) You may not be eligible for the other country's retirement accounts if you are not a citizen, OR the other country's retirement system may be based on a national pension that you aren't eligible for as a non-citizen, or which would provide only a tiny income in your retirement because you haven't been paying into it your whole life if you obtained citizenship.

If it's just a plain taxable account and your goal is to establish a foreign-domiciled bug-out-account then there's not much downside.

Convert everything to gold bars, smuggle out, and sell as needed. 

[Poundwise]

Convert everything to gold bars, smuggle out, and sell as needed.

Those things are heavy!! If you ever went to a Federal Reserve you'd see they need special metal toed shoes to protect their feet against a gold bar mishap.

@ChpBstrd , thanks for the thoughtful response. Yes, we're thinking about using a legacy bank account that an overseas relative gave us as storage for bugout money but never actually put money in there. Mr. Poundwise is eligible for dual citizenship if he wants it.

[tooqk4u22]

Convert everything to gold bars, smuggle out, and sell as needed.

Those things are heavy!! If you ever went to a Federal Reserve you'd see they need special metal toed shoes to protect their feet against a gold bar mishap.

@ChpBstrd , thanks for the thoughtful response. Yes, we're thinking about using a legacy bank account that an overseas relative gave us as storage for bugout money but never actually put money in there. Mr. Poundwise is eligible for dual citizenship if he wants it.

It was a joke buttttt how many bars do you really need .....a bar is about $1.1MM now and weighs 27.5lbs so manageable.

[maizefolk]

@ChpBstrd , thanks for the thoughtful response. Yes, we're thinking about using a legacy bank account that an overseas relative gave us as storage for bugout money but never actually put money in there. Mr. Poundwise is eligible for dual citizenship if he wants it.

Is the account in your name(s) or that of your relative?

In the first case be aware that once you put any significant money into the account you'll likely need to comply with FBAR and FATCA reporting requirements.

In the second case that starts to get into a weird gray area (at best) and is something I'd personally want to avoid.

[jrhampt]

Huh.  I was just idly researching offshore banking.  I did wonder how many mustachians have offshore accounts and why, pros/cons.  Might deserve its own thread.

[LennStar]

Convert everything to gold bars, smuggle out, and sell as needed.

Those things are heavy!! If you ever went to a Federal Reserve you'd see they need special metal toed shoes to protect their feet against a gold bar mishap.

As someone who at the moment is unable to sit pain-free because I dropped myself 1m on my backside, I can certainly underline that this can hurt.
But on the other side, if you have to run with gold in your hand, a 1% chance of broken toe might be an acceptable risk.

In the first case be aware that once you put any significant money into the account you'll likely need to comply with FBAR and FATCA reporting requirements.

In the second case that starts to get into a weird gray area (at best) and is something I'd personally want to avoid.

Soudns right. I don't know what the 4 letter things are, but if you transferred a big amount of money from the US to EU accounts, there is probably someone going to look at it. After all you might be someone trying to buy Fentanyl from the EU now that nothing will ever be able to come in from Canada, thanks to the greatest president of all times!

[2Birds1Stone]

Convert everything to gold bars, smuggle out, and sell as needed.

Those things are heavy!! If you ever went to a Federal Reserve you'd see they need special metal toed shoes to protect their feet against a gold bar mishap.

@ChpBstrd , thanks for the thoughtful response. Yes, we're thinking about using a legacy bank account that an overseas relative gave us as storage for bugout money but never actually put money in there. Mr. Poundwise is eligible for dual citizenship if he wants it.

It was a joke buttttt how many bars do you really need .....a bar is about $1.1MM now and weighs 27.5lbs so manageable.

Never thought I would say this.....but BTC weighs nothing (I own 0 crypto and don't plan to change that).

[Poundwise]

@ChpBstrd , thanks for the thoughtful response. Yes, we're thinking about using a legacy bank account that an overseas relative gave us as storage for bugout money but never actually put money in there. Mr. Poundwise is eligible for dual citizenship if he wants it.

Is the account in your name(s) or that of your relative?

In the first case be aware that once you put any significant money into the account you'll likely need to comply with FBAR and FATCA reporting requirements.

In the second case that starts to get into a weird gray area (at best) and is something I'd personally want to avoid.

It's our account. My research indicates that a maximum of $10K can be transferred per year before your bank has to report it to the IRS.
I found the following article.  https://shinerman.com/article/international-wire-regulations-the-irs-limits-laws-your-rights/1781
"Ultimately, there are only two key things you need to know about international money transfer laws and the IRS. The first is that your bank will automatically report transfers over $10,000. The second is that if you hold $50,000 or more in foreign bank accounts, you’ll need to complete an additional form with your annual tax return.

Other than that, it’s good to know that you have rights and protections in place as a consumer thanks to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau." (sigh)

[ChpBstrd]

I'm reading more about Interactive Brokers. Their platform allows one to swap into a different currency, trade on different exchanges, access foreign bonds and funds denominated in different currencies, etc.

The benefit would be that one could keep their US IRA and Roth accounts as such, while investing in all the same things they'd invest in if moving into a foreign brokerage. This might be perfect for someone looking to establish temporary residency for a couple of years, someone who wants to postpone all the legal legwork, or someone who simply wants to reduce their US dollar exposure ASAP.

This plan would rely somewhat on an assumption that property rights will be respected for paper assets, and that your Greenwich, CT based broker would not be cut off by political developments like foreign sanctions or domestic currency controls and asset seizures. Such an assumption seems like a reasonable risk to take, given the nature of the one-party state. Yet confidence in the assumption could be shaken by developments such as wars, roundups of political opponents, deteriorating relations with former partners, etc. based on the Russian template. Still, the IB route allows for immediately greater investment and risk control agility, an avoidance of US tax penalties, and a ready-to-go plan for those with a passport and the intent to jump ship. It's a good intermediary step that avoids getting bogged down in analysis paralysis, the study of foreign law, or a commitment to a particular foreign country where you may be unable to obtain residence anyway, and holds onto the option value of a recovery in U.S. governance.   

[reeshau]

@ChpBstrd , thanks for the thoughtful response. Yes, we're thinking about using a legacy bank account that an overseas relative gave us as storage for bugout money but never actually put money in there. Mr. Poundwise is eligible for dual citizenship if he wants it.

Is the account in your name(s) or that of your relative?

In the first case be aware that once you put any significant money into the account you'll likely need to comply with FBAR and FATCA reporting requirements.

In the second case that starts to get into a weird gray area (at best) and is something I'd personally want to avoid.

It's our account. My research indicates that a maximum of $10K can be transferred per year before your bank has to report it to the IRS.
I found the following article.  https://shinerman.com/article/international-wire-regulations-the-irs-limits-laws-your-rights/1781
"Ultimately, there are only two key things you need to know about international money transfer laws and the IRS. The first is that your bank will automatically report transfers over $10,000. The second is that if you hold $50,000 or more in foreign bank accounts, you’ll need to complete an additional form with your annual tax return.

Other than that, it’s good to know that you have rights and protections in place as a consumer thanks to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau." (sigh)

The penalties attached to FBAR and FATCA sound scary, because they are meant to fight money laundering.  But honestly, the hardest thing about them is remembering to fill them out.  And, when you have done it once, subsequent years are basically a copy and paste, just updating the numbers.

[GuitarStv]

Convert everything to gold bars, smuggle out, and sell as needed.

Those things are heavy!! If you ever went to a Federal Reserve you'd see they need special metal toed shoes to protect their feet against a gold bar mishap.

As someone who at the moment is unable to sit pain-free because I dropped myself 1m on my backside, I can certainly underline that this can hurt.

Now imagine the pain if you had keistered a couple gold bars.  :P

[Scandium]

@ChpBstrd , thanks for the thoughtful response. Yes, we're thinking about using a legacy bank account that an overseas relative gave us as storage for bugout money but never actually put money in there. Mr. Poundwise is eligible for dual citizenship if he wants it.

Is the account in your name(s) or that of your relative?

In the first case be aware that once you put any significant money into the account you'll likely need to comply with FBAR and FATCA reporting requirements.

In the second case that starts to get into a weird gray area (at best) and is something I'd personally want to avoid.

It's our account. My research indicates that a maximum of $10K can be transferred per year before your bank has to report it to the IRS.
I found the following article.  https://shinerman.com/article/international-wire-regulations-the-irs-limits-laws-your-rights/1781
"Ultimately, there are only two key things you need to know about international money transfer laws and the IRS. The first is that your bank will automatically report transfers over $10,000. The second is that if you hold $50,000 or more in foreign bank accounts, you’ll need to complete an additional form with your annual tax return.

Other than that, it’s good to know that you have rights and protections in place as a consumer thanks to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau." (sigh)

Bolded is not correct The limit for FBAR filing is holding more than $10,000 in a foreign bank account at any one point during the year. But yes that is technically not filed with your tax return, it's filed on the treasury department website.
You must file FATCA with your tax return if foreign financial assets exceed $50,000.

[Scandium]

This plan would rely somewhat on an assumption that property rights will be respected for paper assets, and that your Greenwich, CT based broker would not be cut off by political developments like foreign sanctions or domestic currency controls and asset seizures.

I'm not quite at that level of paranoia, and considering the oligarch nature of our present threat, I don't think seizure of financial assents would ever be very likely. Seems like they mostly want to pick on vulnerable groups. Which of course is despicable, but I'm not one of those groups so not relevant to the present discussion.

But if one were concerned about the US financial market and state interference/seizure, I don't think it would make sense to keep your assets anywhere that could be reached by the US government. So any broker with US HQ, or even operations, would be out of the question. I have some assets at Schwab, which has reportedly good service for non-US investors, but I have no doubt that could be shaken down by the US government to hand over my assets if it came to that. Ditto for IB.

Anything in USD the US Treasury consider their purview, so you'd have to use a different currency of course. If you're a US citizen the IRS has the right to go after you anywhere anyway. So if they want they'd just make up some tax evasion charge, and seize all your assets no matter where you are, if they can get to them. I would not gamble on them not finding you or your paper trail. You would need a country that would refuse to hand over your info/assets. That list is pretty short. Sticking your money in Euros or Turkish lira or whatever seems pretty pointless to me.

It would be an interesting exercise to find the best location and avenue for transferring assets out of the US to a "safe" location. I'm not sure where that would be? What is both a country and financial institution that would not be susceptible to US pressure? We have seen that smaller countries can be pressured to give up info, like Switzerland did. No small, or even large, country will anger the US to protect one of it's (rich) non-citizens. Perhaps ironically, some the "enemies" of the US might be the best bet? So China, Russia, Iran? Of course that comes with other horrible risk and issues. And for now IMO is definitely not worth the gamble compared to the US markets.

[dragoncar]

IBKR (interactive brokers) is also the best way I’ve found to convert currency.  You basically get the straight FOREX exchange rate and then you can wire the money denominated in that currency to your account abroad.  I’ve never done it but that’s what I decided to do back before this was just for mundane reasons

I don’t personally worry about forms.  The government probably already knows or can easily obtain the details of any transaction you made within the traditional banking system.  I’m more concerned with their ability to claw the money which will depend on the government and bank you sent the money to

[ChpBstrd]

This plan would rely somewhat on an assumption that property rights will be respected for paper assets, and that your Greenwich, CT based broker would not be cut off by political developments like foreign sanctions or domestic currency controls and asset seizures.

I'm not quite at that level of paranoia, and considering the oligarch nature of our present threat, I don't think seizure of financial assents would ever be very likely. Seems like they mostly want to pick on vulnerable groups. Which of course is despicable, but I'm not one of those groups so not relevant to the present discussion.

But if one were concerned about the US financial market and state interference/seizure, I don't think it would make sense to keep your assets anywhere that could be reached by the US government. So any broker with US HQ, or even operations, would be out of the question. I have some assets at Schwab, which has reportedly good service for non-US investors, but I have no doubt that could be shaken down by the US government to hand over my assets if it came to that. Ditto for IB.

Anything in USD the US Treasury consider their purview, so you'd have to use a different currency of course. If you're a US citizen the IRS has the right to go after you anywhere anyway. So if they want they'd just make up some tax evasion charge, and seize all your assets no matter where you are, if they can get to them. I would not gamble on them not finding you or your paper trail. You would need a country that would refuse to hand over your info/assets. That list is pretty short. Sticking your money in Euros or Turkish lira or whatever seems pretty pointless to me.

It would be an interesting exercise to find the best location and avenue for transferring assets out of the US to a "safe" location. I'm not sure where that would be? What is both a country and financial institution that would not be susceptible to US pressure? We have seen that smaller countries can be pressured to give up info, like Switzerland did. No small, or even large, country will anger the US to protect one of it's (rich) non-citizens. Perhaps ironically, some the "enemies" of the US might be the best bet? So China, Russia, Iran? Of course that comes with other horrible risk and issues. And for now IMO is definitely not worth the gamble compared to the US markets.

Yea, I've had much the same thought process in trying to think two or three moves ahead. U.S. citizenship could be a liability to one's paper assets regardless of one's residence. And you are right that probably no country would accept negative geopolitical or financial outcomes in order to protect non-citizen financial tourists' assets. Cyprus put up a good fight to protect Russian assets, because they were earning fees for doing so. Yet, in the end many Russians still had their money seized, regardless of their ties to the Putin regime. Such is the nature of imperial politics.

You note that you are not among the vulnerable groups currently being targeted, but I can imagine a scenario where blame could shift to investors and expats. How would this government, which earns support by blaming scapegoats for problems, deal with an issue where the USD was dropping, stocks/bonds were collapsing, and unemployment was rising as assets fled the U.S?

Well, of course the nativists could blame the "market manipulators" shipping "our" money offshore or disloyally buying "globalist" foreign currencies and assets. This could be a financial "night of the long knives" for the oligarchs vying to concentrate their power and seeking to punish their fellow oligarch rivals - especially those outside the regime, as holding/buying U.S. assets becomes a political loyalty test. For regime oligarchs, it could create an asset fire-sale to rival what happened after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Engineering such a fire sale would be a goal in itself.

Currency controls, special exit taxes, politically motivated fraud charges, or laws against foreign investment could follow. If it got that bad, the idea of just using IB accounts would prove insufficient. Yet the idea may have legs right now as a way to make the right moves over the next 2-4 years. Then, if things get worse, you accept the costs of converting your accounts and citizenship to wherever you ended up, slipping through the financial noose before it closes around a fleeing herd. If governance does not get worse, then you haven't liquidated your IRAs and it's a win that way too. 

Do current conditions warrant a full-fleeing approach? Probably not, but that could change within months. People will have different "red lines" but the IB idea seems like an intermediate step that reduces the risks of over-reacting to hypotheticals or under-reacting to realities. There's no harm done in setting up a traditional IRA, Roth IRA, and taxable account at IB, and then practicing the conversion of money or the purchasing of foreign assets in foreign currencies (will look into whether paper trading can simulate these acts). I'm thinking about taking a European vacation and testing various plans to get Euros in hand. It's basic disaster preparation at this point, and being prepared could be the difference between early decisive action and getting caught in the financial noose.

[Fru-Gal]

IBKR (interactive brokers) is also the best way I’ve found to convert currency.  You basically get the straight FOREX exchange rate and then you can wire the money denominated in that currency to your account abroad.  I’ve never done it but that’s what I decided to do back before this was just for mundane reasons

I don’t personally worry about forms.  The government probably already knows or can easily obtain the details of any transaction you made within the traditional banking system.  I’m more concerned with their ability to claw the money which will depend on the government and bank you sent the money to

I’m gonna look into this.

[dragoncar]

To continue scandium’s exercise, assuming you can transfer the money electronically but are worried about seizure, I guess you could buy gold/cash in the target country.  For example if I move i could withdraw cash and give it to family members.  That would beat trying to carry it across borders myself.  If something like that wouldn’t work (for example, destination government in total cahoots with the US), then the destination country probably was already a bad choice

Also considered simply transfer directly to family abroad.  From what I can tell with quick googling I don’t think gift tax is a big problem at my level of wealth.  If this is a preemptive measure taken over several years, then the limits involved are more than I’d need

[dragoncar]

IBKR (interactive brokers) is also the best way I’ve found to convert currency.  You basically get the straight FOREX exchange rate and then you can wire the money denominated in that currency to your account abroad.  I’ve never done it but that’s what I decided to do back before this was just for mundane reasons

I don’t personally worry about forms.  The government probably already knows or can easily obtain the details of any transaction you made within the traditional banking system.  I’m more concerned with their ability to claw the money which will depend on the government and bank you sent the money to

I’m gonna look into this.

Checked again and it seems like they don’t like this much.  So might have to do it in one shot or use wise and pay more. https://www.reddit.com/r/interactivebrokers/s/gHXwqI1Muf

I’ve been investing with them for years so maybe it wouldn’t cause the same flags as that Reddit post

[Fru-Gal]

We’ve supported extended family outside the US for decades. For a while they were able to use a debit card linked to our US bank account to withdraw (there were exchange fees associated, but still less than a money transfer like Western Union), but the bank eventually shut down that loophole. I imagine the super rich people in this world don’t have to deal with all the fees but outside of that debit card hack there is no easy way to transfer money across borders without high fees. That’s why this appeals to me, and we’re going to look into opening an account in our own name in that country. The amounts of money transferred would likely be very much less than $10k.

According to that thread, “If you're in the US Schwab has an international debit card that has a $0 atm fee. It's meant for travel, but it may be an alternative depending on what you're trying to do.”

Except I hate Schwab’s anti-woman agenda, so I can’t support them.

[dragoncar]

We’ve supported extended family outside the US for decades. For a while they were able to use a debit card linked to our US bank account to withdraw (there were exchange fees associated, but still less than a money transfer like Western Union), but the bank eventually shut down that loophole. I imagine the super rich people in this world don’t have to deal with all the fees but outside of that debit card hack there is no easy way to transfer money across borders without high fees. That’s why this appeals to me, and we’re going to look into opening an account in our own name in that country. The amounts of money transferred would likely be very much less than $10k.

According to that thread, “If you're in the US Schwab has an international debit card that has a $0 atm fee. It's meant for travel, but it may be an alternative depending on what you're trying to do.”

Except I hate Schwab’s anti-woman agenda, so I can’t support them.

I do use Schwab for small withdrawal abroad and had considered giving a card to family.  I used to feel a little bad since I only have one share in the investment account and a couple bucks in checking unless I’m traveling.  Unfortunately I still have to pay fees because they don’t accurately determine the fee it gets rolled into the total in some way depending on the bank and while I don’t let them do the dynamic ripoff currency conversion the exchange rate is decent but it’s usually still easier to just use a credit card

[Scandium]

We’ve supported extended family outside the US for decades. For a while they were able to use a debit card linked to our US bank account to withdraw (there were exchange fees associated, but still less than a money transfer like Western Union), but the bank eventually shut down that loophole. I imagine the super rich people in this world don’t have to deal with all the fees but outside of that debit card hack there is no easy way to transfer money across borders without high fees. That’s why this appeals to me, and we’re going to look into opening an account in our own name in that country. The amounts of money transferred would likely be very much less than $10k.

According to that thread, “If you're in the US Schwab has an international debit card that has a $0 atm fee. It's meant for travel, but it may be an alternative depending on what you're trying to do.”

Except I hate Schwab’s anti-woman agenda, so I can’t support them.

Yes you can use a foreign ATM fee-free with Schwab, but of course that only lets you take out a limited amount. Usually a few thousand. Not realistic for transferring one's $500k+ assets abroad in a hurry.

What exactly is Schwab’s anti-woman agenda? I'm not familiar with it. Only thing I found was a discrimination lawsuit by a pregnant woman (by her schwab manger). Pretty bad, but no indication that's systemic. Schwab closed their PAC in 2021, so they don't contribute to any politicians.

[Scandium]

To continue scandium’s exercise, assuming you can transfer the money electronically but are worried about seizure, I guess you could buy gold/cash in the target country.  For example if I move i could withdraw cash and give it to family members.  That would beat trying to carry it across borders myself.  If something like that wouldn’t work (for example, destination government in total cahoots with the US), then the destination country probably was already a bad choice

Also considered simply transfer directly to family abroad.  From what I can tell with quick googling I don’t think gift tax is a big problem at my level of wealth.  If this is a preemptive measure taken over several years, then the limits involved are more than I’d need

Yes, cash, gold or similar seems to be the "safest". Since you could theoretically store it yourself, so can't be seized electronically. The US, or the local police on the orders of the US, would have to physically take it from you (though that is a possibility). Storing them in a bank vault is likely no better than a bank account though, IRS would be on that pretty quickly.

The problem here is of course that this is pretty irreversible, so the 'false negative' risk is high. Converting your full IRA to gold bars stored in your grandma's yard in Romania could have a host of pretty negative consequences if nothing happens (not least of which is your grandma gossiping at bingo night and some local hooligans doing some digging..).

[Fru-Gal]

We’ve supported extended family outside the US for decades. For a while they were able to use a debit card linked to our US bank account to withdraw (there were exchange fees associated, but still less than a money transfer like Western Union), but the bank eventually shut down that loophole. I imagine the super rich people in this world don’t have to deal with all the fees but outside of that debit card hack there is no easy way to transfer money across borders without high fees. That’s why this appeals to me, and we’re going to look into opening an account in our own name in that country. The amounts of money transferred would likely be very much less than $10k.

According to that thread, “If you're in the US Schwab has an international debit card that has a $0 atm fee. It's meant for travel, but it may be an alternative depending on what you're trying to do.”

Except I hate Schwab’s anti-woman agenda, so I can’t support them.

Yes you can use a foreign ATM fee-free with Schwab, but of course that only lets you take out a limited amount. Usually a few thousand. Not realistic for transferring one's $500k+ assets abroad in a hurry.

What exactly is Schwab’s anti-woman agenda? I'm not familiar with it. Only thing I found was a discrimination lawsuit by a pregnant woman (by her schwab manger). Pretty bad, but no indication that's systemic. Schwab closed their PAC in 2021, so they don't contribute to any politicians.

https://rewirenewsgroup.com/2019/06/14/these-corporations-and-public-charities-funded-the-state-abortion-bans/

Looks like it was a Schwab Charitable DAF.

But yeah it looks like they shut down lobbying in response to Jan 6?

https://www.aboutschwab.com/why-we-dont-take-sides-on-political-Issues

Also https://www.advisorhub.com/ubs-edward-jones-and-others-keep-mum-about-covering-abortion-travel-costs/

Thanks for updating me on this.

[lhamo]

We’ve supported extended family outside the US for decades. For a while they were able to use a debit card linked to our US bank account to withdraw (there were exchange fees associated, but still less than a money transfer like Western Union), but the bank eventually shut down that loophole. I imagine the super rich people in this world don’t have to deal with all the fees but outside of that debit card hack there is no easy way to transfer money across borders without high fees. That’s why this appeals to me, and we’re going to look into opening an account in our own name in that country. The amounts of money transferred would likely be very much less than $10k.

According to that thread, “If you're in the US Schwab has an international debit card that has a $0 atm fee. It's meant for travel, but it may be an alternative depending on what you're trying to do.”

Except I hate Schwab’s anti-woman agenda, so I can’t support them.

Yes you can use a foreign ATM fee-free with Schwab, but of course that only lets you take out a limited amount. Usually a few thousand. Not realistic for transferring one's $500k+ assets abroad in a hurry.

What exactly is Schwab’s anti-woman agenda? I'm not familiar with it. Only thing I found was a discrimination lawsuit by a pregnant woman (by her schwab manger). Pretty bad, but no indication that's systemic. Schwab closed their PAC in 2021, so they don't contribute to any politicians.

https://rewirenewsgroup.com/2019/06/14/these-corporations-and-public-charities-funded-the-state-abortion-bans/

Looks like it was a Schwab Charitable DAF.

But yeah it looks like they shut down lobbying in response to Jan 6?

https://www.aboutschwab.com/why-we-dont-take-sides-on-political-Issues

Also https://www.advisorhub.com/ubs-edward-jones-and-others-keep-mum-about-covering-abortion-travel-costs/

Thanks for updating me on this.

Re:  the donations thing -- I was taken aback at first to see that the amount that "Fidelity Charitable" donated was nearly 8x that of Schwab.  But then I realized Vangaurd is also on the list, and that these are funds flowing THROUGH the DAF structure donated by individuals who have set up their giving through those entities.  It is not Fidelity/Schwab/Vanguard donating toward those causes as corporations or through their corporate charitable entities.

Very sloppy reporting by that "rewirenewsgroup" to not make this clear.

[Scandium]

Re:  the donations thing -- I was taken aback at first to see that the amount that "Fidelity Charitable" donated was nearly 8x that of Schwab.  But then I realized Vangaurd is also on the list, and that these are funds flowing THROUGH the DAF structure donated by individuals who have set up their giving through those entities.  It is not Fidelity/Schwab/Vanguard donating toward those causes as corporations or through their corporate charitable entities.

Very sloppy reporting by that "rewirenewsgroup" to not make this clear.

Yes, exactly. I could set up a Schwab DAF right now, I think minimum is $5000. And donate to any IRS registered charity. Schwab/vanguard etc of course have nothing to do with where it goes. 

[Fru-Gal]

Regardless, the man himself is very conservative and a major GOP donor along with his wife.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2021/05/05/after-the-capitol-riots-this-company-closed-its-pac-but-its-billionaire-founder-is-still-spending-big/

But Charles Schwab, the man, had another idea. A dedicated Republican donor, who remains chairman of the firm he founded, Schwab has for years given more money out of his own pocket than his company gives out of its PAC. So while the company dropped its donations from $69,000 during the first quarter of 2020 to $0 this year, Schwab and his wife Helen donated even more this year, handing out at least $780,000 between January and March.

Some of the beneficiaries were lawmakers who refused to certify the election results. In March, Schwab donated $266,300 to the McCarthy Victory Fund, a joint-fundraising committee that supports House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, one of 139 representatives who voted against certifying Biden’s victory. That was the largest single contribution made to McCarthy’s PAC during the first three months of 2021.

Schwab also donated $255,500 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, a group chaired by Senator Rick Scott of Florida, one of eight senators to vote against certifying the election results. And his wife Helen gave $266,300 to a committee supporting Republican representatives in the House, including at least two dozen lawmakers who voted against certifying President Biden’s win.

Even though those donations were inconsistent with the policies of the brokerage firm, where the tycoon made his $11.2 billion fortune, they were in line with Schwab’s previous personal giving. In 2019 and 2020, the mogul and his wife donated $21.2 million to federal candidates, committees and super-PACs supporting Republicans running for Congress—enough for Schwab to qualify as one of the top 20 billionaire donors in the country last year.

“Every individual in our firm has a right to their own, individual political beliefs and we respect that right. Their individual beliefs or contributions do not represent the position of the firm as a whole,” said a company spokesperson in a statement. “Like every Schwab employee, our chairman’s personal political activities are his own, and are separate from The Charles Schwab Corporation and its subsidiaries.”

[partgypsy]

Well Im a fed employee. Due to my risk tolerance (as I define, not able to sleep at night) shifted half of my fed retirement funds to g fund. I am not retired so cannot shift it outside the government. Or even know where I could shift it to even if I could. Contribution allocation stays the same (but that is a fraction).  The worst that happens is I miss out on gains. But the benefit of not stressing about losing both my job and savings at same time. Other than small rebalancing I have never done this. I guess there is a first time for everything.  I hope I am pleasantly surprised and this is not as bad as I fear. I still remember my dad (as a child in an occupied country during WW2) seeing a man begging trying to trade a gold watch for a loaf of bread and getting no takers. The fact the economy eventually DID recover (after his entire family starved to death) was probably small solace.

[dragoncar]

Regardless, the man himself is very conservative and a major GOP donor along with his wife.

Seems like his ownership is very small… like .5%? (5% for my powers of ten wrong) If you have infinite ability to boycott that’s great.. better for your wallet.  But when most every CEO is some kind of shitty person I choose to focus my energies on the biggest fish (for example, Walton’s own nearly 50% of Walmart, musk 10-20% of Tesla)

[Scandium]

Regardless, the man himself is very conservative and a major GOP donor along with his wife.

Seems like his ownership is very small… like .5%?  If you have infinite ability to boycott that’s great.. better for your wallet.  But when most every CEO is some kind of shitty person I choose to focus my energies on the biggest fish (for example, Walton’s own nearly 50% of Walmart, musk 10-20% of Tesla)

Looks like 5.4%, if this can be believed.
https://www.tipranks.com/stocks/schw/ownership
But I agree. I'm not going to liquidate taxable investments, transfer everything, and switch up all my banking, that I've used for 10+ years (and that I otherwise enjoy as a bank), because of it. I boycott where it makes sense, like you said try not to shop at walmart, or a Tesla.

If anything, since I just buy and hold their index funds, and use zero advisor services, schwab (the bank and the man) is probably loosing money on me. I'm doing my part!

[Fru-Gal]

Agreed. But in my case I don’t already have any Schwab so I don’t feel the need to invest with them.

[Morning Glory]

Agreed. But in my case I don’t already have any Schwab so I don’t feel the need to invest with them.

They are supposed to be the best bank account/credit card combo for USians traveling or temporarily living abroad.  Someone in another thread mentioned Interactive Brokers for that purpose.  Can someone who has traveled more recently chime in on alternatives?

[dividendman]

This is a good opportunity to update Dividendman's list of significant events where people tend to question their market strategies. Is Trump 2.0 bigger than...

1900 - Italy's king is assasinated
1901 - Queen Victoria dies, President McKinley is assassinated
1903 - plague in India and China, killing over 12 million pepole
1904 - Russia and Japan go to war
1905 - Russia has a bloody revolution
1906 - San Francisco burns down
1908 - a massive explosion mysteriously happens in Russia, leveling 830 square miles. Truks revolt in the Ottoman empire, a massive earthquake in Italy kills 150 thousand people
1909 - Japan's prince is assasinated
1911 - The Chinese bloody revolution
1912 - the Titanic Sinks
1913 - personal income tax introduced in the US
1914 - WWI starts
1915 - WWI still going, millions dying, Armenian genocide is going on
1916 - yep, WWI still going, tanks and chemical weapons being used, airplanes for dropping bombs
1917 - another russian revolution, this time to communism, WWI still going and the US joins in
1918 - WWI still going, but who cares, the Spanish flu kills 100 MILLION people, 5% of the world's population
1919 - WWI finally ends, spanish flu still killing though
1920 - another plague in India, US outlaws alcohol
1921 - german hyper inflation going on, the Irish declare independence
1922 - some guy named Mussolini takes over Italy
1923 - some dude named Hitler has a failed coup in germany - woo, the world lucked out
1929 - the great depression starts
1930 - Stalin starts killing people all over the place, great depression
1931 - yup, still in the depression
1932 - still there, nothing is getting better
1933 - still depressed, and this time Hitler takes over germany
1934 - The dust bowl starts peaking... i.e. a decade of drought, no crops, everyone starving, this keeps going until 1939!
1935 - dangerous communist social program started in the US (Social Security)
1936 - spanish civil war begins, stalin ramps up his killings into the millions
1937 - Japan invades china
1938 - Hitler annexes Austria, at least he's stopping there
1939 - whoops, maybe, not WWII starts... millions killed, trillions infrastructure wiped out in Europe and across the world
1940 - Nazi's start murdering millions of civilian "undesirables", FDR takes 3rd term ignoring Washington's precedent
1941 - Japan bombs pearl harbor, world still f'd up in a huge war, Vietnam turns communist
1942 - is the warover? nope, just ramping up, millions more dying
1943 - everyone is still dying in WW2
1945 - woohoo, WWII is over, oh wait, that happened by dropping a devastating indiscriminate nuclear radiation bombs on civilians! oh, and FDR died in office
1946 - peace in our time! except the USSR annexes half of europe, which is a pile of rubble thanks to carpet bombing
1947 - India and Pakistan gain independence from Great Britian, and then go to war against each other
1948 - Israel founded, that won't cause any problems. Ghandi gets assassinated
1949 - China becomes communist, USSR, the nemesis of hte free world, gains nuclear weapons
1950 - whoops, another devastating total war, this time in Korea, but not between Koreans, a proxy war between the US/Russia/China and others
1952 - we get a polio vaccine... wait what? Oh yeah, people were getting f'd up by polio for the last forever years
1954 - segregation is ruled illegal in the US, so race relations are finally fixed
1955 - Warsaw pact created, basically a bunch of countries banded together to defeat america/western capitalist democracies
1956 - Hungarian revoltion, Suez crisis
1957 - Russians beat everyone into space
1960 - a 9.6 magnitude earthquake, the biggest ever recorded hits chili, lots of people die, civil rights riots and protests start happening
1961 - US backed rebels unsuccessfully invade Cuba, Berlin wall goes up, more civil rights disruptions, Soviets get the first man in space, Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever denoted is denoted, we can now destroy the world
1962 - Now that we have the bombs to blow up the world, the Cuban missile crisis happens, which almost blows up the word
1963 - another president killed in office
1964 - civil rights act passed, ok, now race relations are good for sure, no more civil rights disruptions ever
1965 - US sends a few troops to Vietnam just in case, Malcom X is assassinated, India and Pakistan go to war again
1966 - Chairman Mao has a cultural revolution in china, lots die, the US institutes the draft
1967 - the Australian PM disappears, the six day war between Israel and it's neighbors happens, civil rights unrest continues
1968 - MLK Jr. assassinated, RFK assassinated, Tet Offensive in Vietnam happens, yeah, the Vietnam war is going full speed ahead
1971 - the US capitalist system institutes wage and price controls, India and Pakistan go to war again
1972 - Vietnam war still going on
1973 - US declares victory and leaves vietnam, the US can't get oil because of an embargo
1974 - the US president up and quits
1975 - big Cambodian genocide, Civil war in lebanon, the US president escapes two assassination attempts
1976 - Tangshan earthquake kills a quarter million folks, Vietnam is all communist now
1979 - Iranian revolution, a US nuclear reactor has a partial meltdown
1980 - mount st helens erupts, the US embargoes the USSR, US inflation hits 14%, Iran Iraq war starts, and goes on for 8 years
1981 - someone tries to kill the US president, again
1982 - Falkands war starts, Lebanon war starts
1983 - US embassy bombed, a bunch of coups happening, USSR downs a korean airliner, famine in ethiopia kills half million
1984 - India's PM assassinated
1986 - Russian nuclear reactor melts down
1987 - black monday in US markets
1989 - berlin wall falls, USSR breaking up
1990 - Persian gulf war, Germany reunites, US doing more coupy type things in south america
1991 - USSR officially collapses, Balkans war starts, bosnian genocide starts
1994 - massive genocide in rwanda
1995 - Sarin gas is used in a Tokyo subway, Rabin assassinated
1996 - mad cow disease
1998 - india and pakistan test nukes
1999 - India and pakistan go to war and they have nukes
2000 - .com bust
2000 - election decided by the supreme court
2001 - 9/11, Afghanistan war
2002 - Euro currency created
2003 - 2nd gulf war started
2004 - Indian Ocean Tsunami, killing over 200k people instantly and displacing millions. Facebook is created.
2005 - Hurricane katrina, Youtube online
2006 - Israel lebanon war, North Korea gets Nukes
2007 - Great recession starts
2008 - A cyclone in china and earthquake in myanmar kill over 200k
2009 - great recession continues
2010 - arab spring starts
2011 - Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown, Syrian and Libyan civil wars
2014 - ISIS forms, Ebola outbreak in Africa, Russia annexes Crimea
2016 - Trump 1.0
2017 - Rohingya genocide, ISIS captures Mosul
2018 - Venezuelan refugee crisis intensifies, with over 5 Million refugees leaving the country
2019 - Brexit, US-China tariff/trade war continues, Hong Kong democracy protests quashed
2020 - COVID worldwide pandemic
2021 - Taliban recapture Afghanistan
2022 - Russia invades Ukraine in the largest European invasion since WW2
2023 - Hamas attacks Israel, Sudanese civil war/genocide
2024 - Israel Iran Lebanon Hezbollah and Hamas engaged in conflict
2025 - Trump 2.0!

[Scandium]

Agreed. But in my case I don’t already have any Schwab so I don’t feel the need to invest with them.

They are supposed to be the best bank account/credit card combo for USians traveling or temporarily living abroad.  Someone in another thread mentioned Interactive Brokers for that purpose.  Can someone who has traveled more recently chime in on alternatives?

Yes, I moved to Schwab years ago partially because I travel abroad occasionally and they are one of the recommended options for debit cards for that. You can get cash from any ATM, including abroad, with a "fair" exchange rate, and zero fee. And they'll refund you that "this ATM charge a $4 fee". The other option that I know of is the Fidelity debit card. There might be other options, but I don't know or remember them now.

Living, and investing, abroad is obviously more complicated. Due to FATCA and KYC rules most brokers will refuse to do business with you. And this is another reason I'm sticking with Schwab; they actively offer investing services to non-US residents, with their "international" offering, and i believe they have some offices abroad
https://international.schwab.com/

Fidelity is not as helpful, and take the line similar to Vanguard and other brokerages. They will at least not liquidate your account (how kind..), but they will also severely restrict what you can do if you're a non-US resident.
https://www.fidelity.com/accounts/services/investors_outside_US_faq.shtml

It seems like IBKR's offers a service similar to Schwab, so could be another option. I do like that Schwab also has bank service, and I trust them more than IB just based on brand recognition (to me IB is more of a service is see mentioned for the daytrader/WSB types).

I have no experience with either options, so can't speak to actually using it. But just from my research, at least Schwab seems more geared towards these customers and have a system in place.

[Tyson]

This is a good opportunity to update Dividendman's list of significant events where people tend to question their market strategies. Is Trump 2.0 bigger than...

1900 - Italy's king is assasinated
1901 - Queen Victoria dies, President McKinley is assassinated
1903 - plague in India and China, killing over 12 million pepole
1904 - Russia and Japan go to war
1905 - Russia has a bloody revolution
1906 - San Francisco burns down
1908 - a massive explosion mysteriously happens in Russia, leveling 830 square miles. Truks revolt in the Ottoman empire, a massive earthquake in Italy kills 150 thousand people
1909 - Japan's prince is assasinated
1911 - The Chinese bloody revolution
1912 - the Titanic Sinks
1913 - personal income tax introduced in the US
1914 - WWI starts
1915 - WWI still going, millions dying, Armenian genocide is going on
1916 - yep, WWI still going, tanks and chemical weapons being used, airplanes for dropping bombs
1917 - another russian revolution, this time to communism, WWI still going and the US joins in
1918 - WWI still going, but who cares, the Spanish flu kills 100 MILLION people, 5% of the world's population
1919 - WWI finally ends, spanish flu still killing though
1920 - another plague in India, US outlaws alcohol
1921 - german hyper inflation going on, the Irish declare independence
1922 - some guy named Mussolini takes over Italy
1923 - some dude named Hitler has a failed coup in germany - woo, the world lucked out
1929 - the great depression starts
1930 - Stalin starts killing people all over the place, great depression
1931 - yup, still in the depression
1932 - still there, nothing is getting better
1933 - still depressed, and this time Hitler takes over germany
1934 - The dust bowl starts peaking... i.e. a decade of drought, no crops, everyone starving, this keeps going until 1939!
1935 - dangerous communist social program started in the US (Social Security)
1936 - spanish civil war begins, stalin ramps up his killings into the millions
1937 - Japan invades china
1938 - Hitler annexes Austria, at least he's stopping there
1939 - whoops, maybe, not WWII starts... millions killed, trillions infrastructure wiped out in Europe and across the world
1940 - Nazi's start murdering millions of civilian "undesirables", FDR takes 3rd term ignoring Washington's precedent
1941 - Japan bombs pearl harbor, world still f'd up in a huge war, Vietnam turns communist
1942 - is the warover? nope, just ramping up, millions more dying
1943 - everyone is still dying in WW2
1945 - woohoo, WWII is over, oh wait, that happened by dropping a devastating indiscriminate nuclear radiation bombs on civilians! oh, and FDR died in office
1946 - peace in our time! except the USSR annexes half of europe, which is a pile of rubble thanks to carpet bombing
1947 - India and Pakistan gain independence from Great Britian, and then go to war against each other
1948 - Israel founded, that won't cause any problems. Ghandi gets assassinated
1949 - China becomes communist, USSR, the nemesis of hte free world, gains nuclear weapons
1950 - whoops, another devastating total war, this time in Korea, but not between Koreans, a proxy war between the US/Russia/China and others
1952 - we get a polio vaccine... wait what? Oh yeah, people were getting f'd up by polio for the last forever years
1954 - segregation is ruled illegal in the US, so race relations are finally fixed
1955 - Warsaw pact created, basically a bunch of countries banded together to defeat america/western capitalist democracies
1956 - Hungarian revoltion, Suez crisis
1957 - Russians beat everyone into space
1960 - a 9.6 magnitude earthquake, the biggest ever recorded hits chili, lots of people die, civil rights riots and protests start happening
1961 - US backed rebels unsuccessfully invade Cuba, Berlin wall goes up, more civil rights disruptions, Soviets get the first man in space, Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever denoted is denoted, we can now destroy the world
1962 - Now that we have the bombs to blow up the world, the Cuban missile crisis happens, which almost blows up the word
1963 - another president killed in office
1964 - civil rights act passed, ok, now race relations are good for sure, no more civil rights disruptions ever
1965 - US sends a few troops to Vietnam just in case, Malcom X is assassinated, India and Pakistan go to war again
1966 - Chairman Mao has a cultural revolution in china, lots die, the US institutes the draft
1967 - the Australian PM disappears, the six day war between Israel and it's neighbors happens, civil rights unrest continues
1968 - MLK Jr. assassinated, RFK assassinated, Tet Offensive in Vietnam happens, yeah, the Vietnam war is going full speed ahead
1971 - the US capitalist system institutes wage and price controls, India and Pakistan go to war again
1972 - Vietnam war still going on
1973 - US declares victory and leaves vietnam, the US can't get oil because of an embargo
1974 - the US president up and quits
1975 - big Cambodian genocide, Civil war in lebanon, the US president escapes two assassination attempts
1976 - Tangshan earthquake kills a quarter million folks, Vietnam is all communist now
1979 - Iranian revolution, a US nuclear reactor has a partial meltdown
1980 - mount st helens erupts, the US embargoes the USSR, US inflation hits 14%, Iran Iraq war starts, and goes on for 8 years
1981 - someone tries to kill the US president, again
1982 - Falkands war starts, Lebanon war starts
1983 - US embassy bombed, a bunch of coups happening, USSR downs a korean airliner, famine in ethiopia kills half million
1984 - India's PM assassinated
1986 - Russian nuclear reactor melts down
1987 - black monday in US markets
1989 - berlin wall falls, USSR breaking up
1990 - Persian gulf war, Germany reunites, US doing more coupy type things in south america
1991 - USSR officially collapses, Balkans war starts, bosnian genocide starts
1994 - massive genocide in rwanda
1995 - Sarin gas is used in a Tokyo subway, Rabin assassinated
1996 - mad cow disease
1998 - india and pakistan test nukes
1999 - India and pakistan go to war and they have nukes
2000 - .com bust
2000 - election decided by the supreme court
2001 - 9/11, Afghanistan war
2002 - Euro currency created
2003 - 2nd gulf war started
2004 - Indian Ocean Tsunami, killing over 200k people instantly and displacing millions. Facebook is created.
2005 - Hurricane katrina, Youtube online
2006 - Israel lebanon war, North Korea gets Nukes
2007 - Great recession starts
2008 - A cyclone in china and earthquake in myanmar kill over 200k
2009 - great recession continues
2010 - arab spring starts
2011 - Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown, Syrian and Libyan civil wars
2014 - ISIS forms, Ebola outbreak in Africa, Russia annexes Crimea
2016 - Trump 1.0
2017 - Rohingya genocide, ISIS captures Mosul
2018 - Venezuelan refugee crisis intensifies, with over 5 Million refugees leaving the country
2019 - Brexit, US-China tariff/trade war continues, Hong Kong democracy protests quashed
2020 - COVID worldwide pandemic
2021 - Taliban recapture Afghanistan
2022 - Russia invades Ukraine in the largest European invasion since WW2
2023 - Hamas attacks Israel, Sudanese civil war/genocide
2024 - Israel Iran Lebanon Hezbollah and Hamas engaged in conflict
2025 - Trump 2.0!

How dare you post evidence that things are going to be fine.  Don't you know people want to freak out?

[Kris]

This is a good opportunity to update Dividendman's list of significant events where people tend to question their market strategies. Is Trump 2.0 bigger than...

1900 - Italy's king is assasinated
1901 - Queen Victoria dies, President McKinley is assassinated
1903 - plague in India and China, killing over 12 million pepole
1904 - Russia and Japan go to war
1905 - Russia has a bloody revolution
1906 - San Francisco burns down
1908 - a massive explosion mysteriously happens in Russia, leveling 830 square miles. Truks revolt in the Ottoman empire, a massive earthquake in Italy kills 150 thousand people
1909 - Japan's prince is assasinated
1911 - The Chinese bloody revolution
1912 - the Titanic Sinks
1913 - personal income tax introduced in the US
1914 - WWI starts
1915 - WWI still going, millions dying, Armenian genocide is going on
1916 - yep, WWI still going, tanks and chemical weapons being used, airplanes for dropping bombs
1917 - another russian revolution, this time to communism, WWI still going and the US joins in
1918 - WWI still going, but who cares, the Spanish flu kills 100 MILLION people, 5% of the world's population
1919 - WWI finally ends, spanish flu still killing though
1920 - another plague in India, US outlaws alcohol
1921 - german hyper inflation going on, the Irish declare independence
1922 - some guy named Mussolini takes over Italy
1923 - some dude named Hitler has a failed coup in germany - woo, the world lucked out
1929 - the great depression starts
1930 - Stalin starts killing people all over the place, great depression
1931 - yup, still in the depression
1932 - still there, nothing is getting better
1933 - still depressed, and this time Hitler takes over germany
1934 - The dust bowl starts peaking... i.e. a decade of drought, no crops, everyone starving, this keeps going until 1939!
1935 - dangerous communist social program started in the US (Social Security)
1936 - spanish civil war begins, stalin ramps up his killings into the millions
1937 - Japan invades china
1938 - Hitler annexes Austria, at least he's stopping there
1939 - whoops, maybe, not WWII starts... millions killed, trillions infrastructure wiped out in Europe and across the world
1940 - Nazi's start murdering millions of civilian "undesirables", FDR takes 3rd term ignoring Washington's precedent
1941 - Japan bombs pearl harbor, world still f'd up in a huge war, Vietnam turns communist
1942 - is the warover? nope, just ramping up, millions more dying
1943 - everyone is still dying in WW2
1945 - woohoo, WWII is over, oh wait, that happened by dropping a devastating indiscriminate nuclear radiation bombs on civilians! oh, and FDR died in office
1946 - peace in our time! except the USSR annexes half of europe, which is a pile of rubble thanks to carpet bombing
1947 - India and Pakistan gain independence from Great Britian, and then go to war against each other
1948 - Israel founded, that won't cause any problems. Ghandi gets assassinated
1949 - China becomes communist, USSR, the nemesis of hte free world, gains nuclear weapons
1950 - whoops, another devastating total war, this time in Korea, but not between Koreans, a proxy war between the US/Russia/China and others
1952 - we get a polio vaccine... wait what? Oh yeah, people were getting f'd up by polio for the last forever years
1954 - segregation is ruled illegal in the US, so race relations are finally fixed
1955 - Warsaw pact created, basically a bunch of countries banded together to defeat america/western capitalist democracies
1956 - Hungarian revoltion, Suez crisis
1957 - Russians beat everyone into space
1960 - a 9.6 magnitude earthquake, the biggest ever recorded hits chili, lots of people die, civil rights riots and protests start happening
1961 - US backed rebels unsuccessfully invade Cuba, Berlin wall goes up, more civil rights disruptions, Soviets get the first man in space, Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever denoted is denoted, we can now destroy the world
1962 - Now that we have the bombs to blow up the world, the Cuban missile crisis happens, which almost blows up the word
1963 - another president killed in office
1964 - civil rights act passed, ok, now race relations are good for sure, no more civil rights disruptions ever
1965 - US sends a few troops to Vietnam just in case, Malcom X is assassinated, India and Pakistan go to war again
1966 - Chairman Mao has a cultural revolution in china, lots die, the US institutes the draft
1967 - the Australian PM disappears, the six day war between Israel and it's neighbors happens, civil rights unrest continues
1968 - MLK Jr. assassinated, RFK assassinated, Tet Offensive in Vietnam happens, yeah, the Vietnam war is going full speed ahead
1971 - the US capitalist system institutes wage and price controls, India and Pakistan go to war again
1972 - Vietnam war still going on
1973 - US declares victory and leaves vietnam, the US can't get oil because of an embargo
1974 - the US president up and quits
1975 - big Cambodian genocide, Civil war in lebanon, the US president escapes two assassination attempts
1976 - Tangshan earthquake kills a quarter million folks, Vietnam is all communist now
1979 - Iranian revolution, a US nuclear reactor has a partial meltdown
1980 - mount st helens erupts, the US embargoes the USSR, US inflation hits 14%, Iran Iraq war starts, and goes on for 8 years
1981 - someone tries to kill the US president, again
1982 - Falkands war starts, Lebanon war starts
1983 - US embassy bombed, a bunch of coups happening, USSR downs a korean airliner, famine in ethiopia kills half million
1984 - India's PM assassinated
1986 - Russian nuclear reactor melts down
1987 - black monday in US markets
1989 - berlin wall falls, USSR breaking up
1990 - Persian gulf war, Germany reunites, US doing more coupy type things in south america
1991 - USSR officially collapses, Balkans war starts, bosnian genocide starts
1994 - massive genocide in rwanda
1995 - Sarin gas is used in a Tokyo subway, Rabin assassinated
1996 - mad cow disease
1998 - india and pakistan test nukes
1999 - India and pakistan go to war and they have nukes
2000 - .com bust
2000 - election decided by the supreme court
2001 - 9/11, Afghanistan war
2002 - Euro currency created
2003 - 2nd gulf war started
2004 - Indian Ocean Tsunami, killing over 200k people instantly and displacing millions. Facebook is created.
2005 - Hurricane katrina, Youtube online
2006 - Israel lebanon war, North Korea gets Nukes
2007 - Great recession starts
2008 - A cyclone in china and earthquake in myanmar kill over 200k
2009 - great recession continues
2010 - arab spring starts
2011 - Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown, Syrian and Libyan civil wars
2014 - ISIS forms, Ebola outbreak in Africa, Russia annexes Crimea
2016 - Trump 1.0
2017 - Rohingya genocide, ISIS captures Mosul
2018 - Venezuelan refugee crisis intensifies, with over 5 Million refugees leaving the country
2019 - Brexit, US-China tariff/trade war continues, Hong Kong democracy protests quashed
2020 - COVID worldwide pandemic
2021 - Taliban recapture Afghanistan
2022 - Russia invades Ukraine in the largest European invasion since WW2
2023 - Hamas attacks Israel, Sudanese civil war/genocide
2024 - Israel Iran Lebanon Hezbollah and Hamas engaged in conflict
2025 - Trump 2.0!

How dare you post evidence that things are going to be fine.  Don't you know people want to freak out?

So… you’d say that everything was fine after each of these events?

[Tyson]

This is a good opportunity to update Dividendman's list of significant events where people tend to question their market strategies. Is Trump 2.0 bigger than...

1900 - Italy's king is assasinated
1901 - Queen Victoria dies, President McKinley is assassinated
1903 - plague in India and China, killing over 12 million pepole
1904 - Russia and Japan go to war
1905 - Russia has a bloody revolution
1906 - San Francisco burns down
1908 - a massive explosion mysteriously happens in Russia, leveling 830 square miles. Truks revolt in the Ottoman empire, a massive earthquake in Italy kills 150 thousand people
1909 - Japan's prince is assasinated
1911 - The Chinese bloody revolution
1912 - the Titanic Sinks
1913 - personal income tax introduced in the US
1914 - WWI starts
1915 - WWI still going, millions dying, Armenian genocide is going on
1916 - yep, WWI still going, tanks and chemical weapons being used, airplanes for dropping bombs
1917 - another russian revolution, this time to communism, WWI still going and the US joins in
1918 - WWI still going, but who cares, the Spanish flu kills 100 MILLION people, 5% of the world's population
1919 - WWI finally ends, spanish flu still killing though
1920 - another plague in India, US outlaws alcohol
1921 - german hyper inflation going on, the Irish declare independence
1922 - some guy named Mussolini takes over Italy
1923 - some dude named Hitler has a failed coup in germany - woo, the world lucked out
1929 - the great depression starts
1930 - Stalin starts killing people all over the place, great depression
1931 - yup, still in the depression
1932 - still there, nothing is getting better
1933 - still depressed, and this time Hitler takes over germany
1934 - The dust bowl starts peaking... i.e. a decade of drought, no crops, everyone starving, this keeps going until 1939!
1935 - dangerous communist social program started in the US (Social Security)
1936 - spanish civil war begins, stalin ramps up his killings into the millions
1937 - Japan invades china
1938 - Hitler annexes Austria, at least he's stopping there
1939 - whoops, maybe, not WWII starts... millions killed, trillions infrastructure wiped out in Europe and across the world
1940 - Nazi's start murdering millions of civilian "undesirables", FDR takes 3rd term ignoring Washington's precedent
1941 - Japan bombs pearl harbor, world still f'd up in a huge war, Vietnam turns communist
1942 - is the warover? nope, just ramping up, millions more dying
1943 - everyone is still dying in WW2
1945 - woohoo, WWII is over, oh wait, that happened by dropping a devastating indiscriminate nuclear radiation bombs on civilians! oh, and FDR died in office
1946 - peace in our time! except the USSR annexes half of europe, which is a pile of rubble thanks to carpet bombing
1947 - India and Pakistan gain independence from Great Britian, and then go to war against each other
1948 - Israel founded, that won't cause any problems. Ghandi gets assassinated
1949 - China becomes communist, USSR, the nemesis of hte free world, gains nuclear weapons
1950 - whoops, another devastating total war, this time in Korea, but not between Koreans, a proxy war between the US/Russia/China and others
1952 - we get a polio vaccine... wait what? Oh yeah, people were getting f'd up by polio for the last forever years
1954 - segregation is ruled illegal in the US, so race relations are finally fixed
1955 - Warsaw pact created, basically a bunch of countries banded together to defeat america/western capitalist democracies
1956 - Hungarian revoltion, Suez crisis
1957 - Russians beat everyone into space
1960 - a 9.6 magnitude earthquake, the biggest ever recorded hits chili, lots of people die, civil rights riots and protests start happening
1961 - US backed rebels unsuccessfully invade Cuba, Berlin wall goes up, more civil rights disruptions, Soviets get the first man in space, Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever denoted is denoted, we can now destroy the world
1962 - Now that we have the bombs to blow up the world, the Cuban missile crisis happens, which almost blows up the word
1963 - another president killed in office
1964 - civil rights act passed, ok, now race relations are good for sure, no more civil rights disruptions ever
1965 - US sends a few troops to Vietnam just in case, Malcom X is assassinated, India and Pakistan go to war again
1966 - Chairman Mao has a cultural revolution in china, lots die, the US institutes the draft
1967 - the Australian PM disappears, the six day war between Israel and it's neighbors happens, civil rights unrest continues
1968 - MLK Jr. assassinated, RFK assassinated, Tet Offensive in Vietnam happens, yeah, the Vietnam war is going full speed ahead
1971 - the US capitalist system institutes wage and price controls, India and Pakistan go to war again
1972 - Vietnam war still going on
1973 - US declares victory and leaves vietnam, the US can't get oil because of an embargo
1974 - the US president up and quits
1975 - big Cambodian genocide, Civil war in lebanon, the US president escapes two assassination attempts
1976 - Tangshan earthquake kills a quarter million folks, Vietnam is all communist now
1979 - Iranian revolution, a US nuclear reactor has a partial meltdown
1980 - mount st helens erupts, the US embargoes the USSR, US inflation hits 14%, Iran Iraq war starts, and goes on for 8 years
1981 - someone tries to kill the US president, again
1982 - Falkands war starts, Lebanon war starts
1983 - US embassy bombed, a bunch of coups happening, USSR downs a korean airliner, famine in ethiopia kills half million
1984 - India's PM assassinated
1986 - Russian nuclear reactor melts down
1987 - black monday in US markets
1989 - berlin wall falls, USSR breaking up
1990 - Persian gulf war, Germany reunites, US doing more coupy type things in south america
1991 - USSR officially collapses, Balkans war starts, bosnian genocide starts
1994 - massive genocide in rwanda
1995 - Sarin gas is used in a Tokyo subway, Rabin assassinated
1996 - mad cow disease
1998 - india and pakistan test nukes
1999 - India and pakistan go to war and they have nukes
2000 - .com bust
2000 - election decided by the supreme court
2001 - 9/11, Afghanistan war
2002 - Euro currency created
2003 - 2nd gulf war started
2004 - Indian Ocean Tsunami, killing over 200k people instantly and displacing millions. Facebook is created.
2005 - Hurricane katrina, Youtube online
2006 - Israel lebanon war, North Korea gets Nukes
2007 - Great recession starts
2008 - A cyclone in china and earthquake in myanmar kill over 200k
2009 - great recession continues
2010 - arab spring starts
2011 - Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown, Syrian and Libyan civil wars
2014 - ISIS forms, Ebola outbreak in Africa, Russia annexes Crimea
2016 - Trump 1.0
2017 - Rohingya genocide, ISIS captures Mosul
2018 - Venezuelan refugee crisis intensifies, with over 5 Million refugees leaving the country
2019 - Brexit, US-China tariff/trade war continues, Hong Kong democracy protests quashed
2020 - COVID worldwide pandemic
2021 - Taliban recapture Afghanistan
2022 - Russia invades Ukraine in the largest European invasion since WW2
2023 - Hamas attacks Israel, Sudanese civil war/genocide
2024 - Israel Iran Lebanon Hezbollah and Hamas engaged in conflict
2025 - Trump 2.0!

How dare you post evidence that things are going to be fine.  Don't you know people want to freak out?

So… you’d say that everything was fine after each of these events?

Better than fine.  We are living in the best time to be alive in all history.  We are living in a time so stinking rich, that there are entire forums online showing people how to retire early and live off their wealth. 

[Cannot Wait!]

I remember seeing a similar list on this forum but it included the 1993 Lorena Bobbitt 'incident' lol.
I can't seem to find it now.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/john-bobbitt-speaks-25-years-wife-infamously-cut/story?id=60023049

[RWD]

This is a good opportunity to update Dividendman's list of significant events where people tend to question their market strategies. Is Trump 2.0 bigger than...

1900 - Italy's king is assasinated
1901 - Queen Victoria dies, President McKinley is assassinated
1903 - plague in India and China, killing over 12 million pepole
1904 - Russia and Japan go to war
1905 - Russia has a bloody revolution
1906 - San Francisco burns down
1908 - a massive explosion mysteriously happens in Russia, leveling 830 square miles. Truks revolt in the Ottoman empire, a massive earthquake in Italy kills 150 thousand people
1909 - Japan's prince is assasinated
1911 - The Chinese bloody revolution
1912 - the Titanic Sinks
1913 - personal income tax introduced in the US
1914 - WWI starts
1915 - WWI still going, millions dying, Armenian genocide is going on
1916 - yep, WWI still going, tanks and chemical weapons being used, airplanes for dropping bombs
1917 - another russian revolution, this time to communism, WWI still going and the US joins in
1918 - WWI still going, but who cares, the Spanish flu kills 100 MILLION people, 5% of the world's population
1919 - WWI finally ends, spanish flu still killing though
1920 - another plague in India, US outlaws alcohol
1921 - german hyper inflation going on, the Irish declare independence
1922 - some guy named Mussolini takes over Italy
1923 - some dude named Hitler has a failed coup in germany - woo, the world lucked out
1929 - the great depression starts
1930 - Stalin starts killing people all over the place, great depression
1931 - yup, still in the depression
1932 - still there, nothing is getting better
1933 - still depressed, and this time Hitler takes over germany
1934 - The dust bowl starts peaking... i.e. a decade of drought, no crops, everyone starving, this keeps going until 1939!
1935 - dangerous communist social program started in the US (Social Security)
1936 - spanish civil war begins, stalin ramps up his killings into the millions
1937 - Japan invades china
1938 - Hitler annexes Austria, at least he's stopping there
1939 - whoops, maybe, not WWII starts... millions killed, trillions infrastructure wiped out in Europe and across the world
1940 - Nazi's start murdering millions of civilian "undesirables", FDR takes 3rd term ignoring Washington's precedent
1941 - Japan bombs pearl harbor, world still f'd up in a huge war, Vietnam turns communist
1942 - is the warover? nope, just ramping up, millions more dying
1943 - everyone is still dying in WW2
1945 - woohoo, WWII is over, oh wait, that happened by dropping a devastating indiscriminate nuclear radiation bombs on civilians! oh, and FDR died in office
1946 - peace in our time! except the USSR annexes half of europe, which is a pile of rubble thanks to carpet bombing
1947 - India and Pakistan gain independence from Great Britian, and then go to war against each other
1948 - Israel founded, that won't cause any problems. Ghandi gets assassinated
1949 - China becomes communist, USSR, the nemesis of hte free world, gains nuclear weapons
1950 - whoops, another devastating total war, this time in Korea, but not between Koreans, a proxy war between the US/Russia/China and others
1952 - we get a polio vaccine... wait what? Oh yeah, people were getting f'd up by polio for the last forever years
1954 - segregation is ruled illegal in the US, so race relations are finally fixed
1955 - Warsaw pact created, basically a bunch of countries banded together to defeat america/western capitalist democracies
1956 - Hungarian revoltion, Suez crisis
1957 - Russians beat everyone into space
1960 - a 9.6 magnitude earthquake, the biggest ever recorded hits chili, lots of people die, civil rights riots and protests start happening
1961 - US backed rebels unsuccessfully invade Cuba, Berlin wall goes up, more civil rights disruptions, Soviets get the first man in space, Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever denoted is denoted, we can now destroy the world
1962 - Now that we have the bombs to blow up the world, the Cuban missile crisis happens, which almost blows up the word
1963 - another president killed in office
1964 - civil rights act passed, ok, now race relations are good for sure, no more civil rights disruptions ever
1965 - US sends a few troops to Vietnam just in case, Malcom X is assassinated, India and Pakistan go to war again
1966 - Chairman Mao has a cultural revolution in china, lots die, the US institutes the draft
1967 - the Australian PM disappears, the six day war between Israel and it's neighbors happens, civil rights unrest continues
1968 - MLK Jr. assassinated, RFK assassinated, Tet Offensive in Vietnam happens, yeah, the Vietnam war is going full speed ahead
1971 - the US capitalist system institutes wage and price controls, India and Pakistan go to war again
1972 - Vietnam war still going on
1973 - US declares victory and leaves vietnam, the US can't get oil because of an embargo
1974 - the US president up and quits
1975 - big Cambodian genocide, Civil war in lebanon, the US president escapes two assassination attempts
1976 - Tangshan earthquake kills a quarter million folks, Vietnam is all communist now
1979 - Iranian revolution, a US nuclear reactor has a partial meltdown
1980 - mount st helens erupts, the US embargoes the USSR, US inflation hits 14%, Iran Iraq war starts, and goes on for 8 years
1981 - someone tries to kill the US president, again
1982 - Falkands war starts, Lebanon war starts
1983 - US embassy bombed, a bunch of coups happening, USSR downs a korean airliner, famine in ethiopia kills half million
1984 - India's PM assassinated
1986 - Russian nuclear reactor melts down
1987 - black monday in US markets
1989 - berlin wall falls, USSR breaking up
1990 - Persian gulf war, Germany reunites, US doing more coupy type things in south america
1991 - USSR officially collapses, Balkans war starts, bosnian genocide starts
1994 - massive genocide in rwanda
1995 - Sarin gas is used in a Tokyo subway, Rabin assassinated
1996 - mad cow disease
1998 - india and pakistan test nukes
1999 - India and pakistan go to war and they have nukes
2000 - .com bust
2000 - election decided by the supreme court
2001 - 9/11, Afghanistan war
2002 - Euro currency created
2003 - 2nd gulf war started
2004 - Indian Ocean Tsunami, killing over 200k people instantly and displacing millions. Facebook is created.
2005 - Hurricane katrina, Youtube online
2006 - Israel lebanon war, North Korea gets Nukes
2007 - Great recession starts
2008 - A cyclone in china and earthquake in myanmar kill over 200k
2009 - great recession continues
2010 - arab spring starts
2011 - Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown, Syrian and Libyan civil wars
2014 - ISIS forms, Ebola outbreak in Africa, Russia annexes Crimea
2016 - Trump 1.0
2017 - Rohingya genocide, ISIS captures Mosul
2018 - Venezuelan refugee crisis intensifies, with over 5 Million refugees leaving the country
2019 - Brexit, US-China tariff/trade war continues, Hong Kong democracy protests quashed
2020 - COVID worldwide pandemic
2021 - Taliban recapture Afghanistan
2022 - Russia invades Ukraine in the largest European invasion since WW2
2023 - Hamas attacks Israel, Sudanese civil war/genocide
2024 - Israel Iran Lebanon Hezbollah and Hamas engaged in conflict
2025 - Trump 2.0!

How dare you post evidence that things are going to be fine.  Don't you know people want to freak out?

So… you’d say that everything was fine after each of these events?

Better than fine.  We are living in the best time to be alive in all history.  We are living in a time so stinking rich, that there are entire forums online showing people how to retire early and live off their wealth.

I think the bolded is one of the key parts that people are concerned about. Quite a lot of those events resulted in hundreds of thousands or even millions of deaths. Hard to enjoy being stinking rich if you're dead.

[Scandium]

I remember seeing a similar list on this forum but it included the 1993 Lorena Bobbitt 'incident' lol.
I can't seem to find it now.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/john-bobbitt-speaks-25-years-wife-infamously-cut/story?id=60023049

The biggest crime there is how ABC managed to make a 2 hour (!) documentary about some dude having his dick cut off!
The marriage was going great, but then it was all cut short..

[GuitarStv]

This is a good opportunity to update Dividendman's list of significant events where people tend to question their market strategies. Is Trump 2.0 bigger than...

1900 - Italy's king is assasinated
1901 - Queen Victoria dies, President McKinley is assassinated
1903 - plague in India and China, killing over 12 million pepole
1904 - Russia and Japan go to war
1905 - Russia has a bloody revolution
1906 - San Francisco burns down
1908 - a massive explosion mysteriously happens in Russia, leveling 830 square miles. Truks revolt in the Ottoman empire, a massive earthquake in Italy kills 150 thousand people
1909 - Japan's prince is assasinated
1911 - The Chinese bloody revolution
1912 - the Titanic Sinks
1913 - personal income tax introduced in the US
1914 - WWI starts
1915 - WWI still going, millions dying, Armenian genocide is going on
1916 - yep, WWI still going, tanks and chemical weapons being used, airplanes for dropping bombs
1917 - another russian revolution, this time to communism, WWI still going and the US joins in
1918 - WWI still going, but who cares, the Spanish flu kills 100 MILLION people, 5% of the world's population
1919 - WWI finally ends, spanish flu still killing though
1920 - another plague in India, US outlaws alcohol
1921 - german hyper inflation going on, the Irish declare independence
1922 - some guy named Mussolini takes over Italy
1923 - some dude named Hitler has a failed coup in germany - woo, the world lucked out
1929 - the great depression starts
1930 - Stalin starts killing people all over the place, great depression
1931 - yup, still in the depression
1932 - still there, nothing is getting better
1933 - still depressed, and this time Hitler takes over germany
1934 - The dust bowl starts peaking... i.e. a decade of drought, no crops, everyone starving, this keeps going until 1939!
1935 - dangerous communist social program started in the US (Social Security)
1936 - spanish civil war begins, stalin ramps up his killings into the millions
1937 - Japan invades china
1938 - Hitler annexes Austria, at least he's stopping there
1939 - whoops, maybe, not WWII starts... millions killed, trillions infrastructure wiped out in Europe and across the world
1940 - Nazi's start murdering millions of civilian "undesirables", FDR takes 3rd term ignoring Washington's precedent
1941 - Japan bombs pearl harbor, world still f'd up in a huge war, Vietnam turns communist
1942 - is the warover? nope, just ramping up, millions more dying
1943 - everyone is still dying in WW2
1945 - woohoo, WWII is over, oh wait, that happened by dropping a devastating indiscriminate nuclear radiation bombs on civilians! oh, and FDR died in office
1946 - peace in our time! except the USSR annexes half of europe, which is a pile of rubble thanks to carpet bombing
1947 - India and Pakistan gain independence from Great Britian, and then go to war against each other
1948 - Israel founded, that won't cause any problems. Ghandi gets assassinated
1949 - China becomes communist, USSR, the nemesis of hte free world, gains nuclear weapons
1950 - whoops, another devastating total war, this time in Korea, but not between Koreans, a proxy war between the US/Russia/China and others
1952 - we get a polio vaccine... wait what? Oh yeah, people were getting f'd up by polio for the last forever years
1954 - segregation is ruled illegal in the US, so race relations are finally fixed
1955 - Warsaw pact created, basically a bunch of countries banded together to defeat america/western capitalist democracies
1956 - Hungarian revoltion, Suez crisis
1957 - Russians beat everyone into space
1960 - a 9.6 magnitude earthquake, the biggest ever recorded hits chili, lots of people die, civil rights riots and protests start happening
1961 - US backed rebels unsuccessfully invade Cuba, Berlin wall goes up, more civil rights disruptions, Soviets get the first man in space, Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever denoted is denoted, we can now destroy the world
1962 - Now that we have the bombs to blow up the world, the Cuban missile crisis happens, which almost blows up the word
1963 - another president killed in office
1964 - civil rights act passed, ok, now race relations are good for sure, no more civil rights disruptions ever
1965 - US sends a few troops to Vietnam just in case, Malcom X is assassinated, India and Pakistan go to war again
1966 - Chairman Mao has a cultural revolution in china, lots die, the US institutes the draft
1967 - the Australian PM disappears, the six day war between Israel and it's neighbors happens, civil rights unrest continues
1968 - MLK Jr. assassinated, RFK assassinated, Tet Offensive in Vietnam happens, yeah, the Vietnam war is going full speed ahead
1971 - the US capitalist system institutes wage and price controls, India and Pakistan go to war again
1972 - Vietnam war still going on
1973 - US declares victory and leaves vietnam, the US can't get oil because of an embargo
1974 - the US president up and quits
1975 - big Cambodian genocide, Civil war in lebanon, the US president escapes two assassination attempts
1976 - Tangshan earthquake kills a quarter million folks, Vietnam is all communist now
1979 - Iranian revolution, a US nuclear reactor has a partial meltdown
1980 - mount st helens erupts, the US embargoes the USSR, US inflation hits 14%, Iran Iraq war starts, and goes on for 8 years
1981 - someone tries to kill the US president, again
1982 - Falkands war starts, Lebanon war starts
1983 - US embassy bombed, a bunch of coups happening, USSR downs a korean airliner, famine in ethiopia kills half million
1984 - India's PM assassinated
1986 - Russian nuclear reactor melts down
1987 - black monday in US markets
1989 - berlin wall falls, USSR breaking up
1990 - Persian gulf war, Germany reunites, US doing more coupy type things in south america
1991 - USSR officially collapses, Balkans war starts, bosnian genocide starts
1994 - massive genocide in rwanda
1995 - Sarin gas is used in a Tokyo subway, Rabin assassinated
1996 - mad cow disease
1998 - india and pakistan test nukes
1999 - India and pakistan go to war and they have nukes
2000 - .com bust
2000 - election decided by the supreme court
2001 - 9/11, Afghanistan war
2002 - Euro currency created
2003 - 2nd gulf war started
2004 - Indian Ocean Tsunami, killing over 200k people instantly and displacing millions. Facebook is created.
2005 - Hurricane katrina, Youtube online
2006 - Israel lebanon war, North Korea gets Nukes
2007 - Great recession starts
2008 - A cyclone in china and earthquake in myanmar kill over 200k
2009 - great recession continues
2010 - arab spring starts
2011 - Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown, Syrian and Libyan civil wars
2014 - ISIS forms, Ebola outbreak in Africa, Russia annexes Crimea
2016 - Trump 1.0
2017 - Rohingya genocide, ISIS captures Mosul
2018 - Venezuelan refugee crisis intensifies, with over 5 Million refugees leaving the country
2019 - Brexit, US-China tariff/trade war continues, Hong Kong democracy protests quashed
2020 - COVID worldwide pandemic
2021 - Taliban recapture Afghanistan
2022 - Russia invades Ukraine in the largest European invasion since WW2
2023 - Hamas attacks Israel, Sudanese civil war/genocide
2024 - Israel Iran Lebanon Hezbollah and Hamas engaged in conflict
2025 - Trump 2.0!

How dare you post evidence that things are going to be fine.  Don't you know people want to freak out?

So… you’d say that everything was fine after each of these events?

Better than fine.  We are living in the best time to be alive in all history.  We are living in a time so stinking rich, that there are entire forums online showing people how to retire early and live off their wealth.

I think the bolded is one of the key parts that people are concerned about. Quite a lot of those events resulted in hundreds of thousands or even millions of deaths. Hard to enjoy being stinking rich if you're dead.

The statement "We are living in the best time to be alive in all history" is demonstrably false.

If you lived in the UK through Brexit (as an example), you are about 2000 pounds worse off on average.  (3400 if you live in London.)  https://www.london.gov.uk/new-report-reveals-uk-economy-almost-ps140billion-smaller-because-brexit  - So for the average person in the UK, this is pretty clearly not the best time in history to be alive.  That time would have been pre-Brexit.

Same holds true in many cases.  Hard not to argue that the average person living in Ukraine was a lot happier and better off in 2021 than today.  Any Palestinian living in Gaza was doing better in 2020 than today.  Afghanistan has always been pretty rough, but certainly for women it is much worse today than it was in 2020.

But fuck those people.  They live far away.  So maybe the idea is to tell people in the US that they're living in the best time to be alive in all history?  Well, after two prior decades of increasing, happiness among children aged 13-19 in the US has precipitously declined since 2011 (https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2019/the-sad-state-of-happiness-in-the-united-states-and-the-role-of-digital-media/).  Internet usage, availability of porn, social media, sexting, a reduction of in-person time for relationships and experiences, ubiquitousness of cellphones everywhere - these things are making the world that we live in worse for people growing up in it.  Home affordability, a constantly changing job market (and extreme career uncertainty), concentration of wealth and power into the hands of a few elite, secondary educational debt, rampant and ever increasing environmental damage . . . these are serious systemic and unaddressed problems that exist for young working age people.  I don't think you can say that we're in the best time to be alive in all history without taking into account that people (especially young people) are much less happy than they were twenty years ago.

Now, absolutely we do live in a pretty good time historically.  We aren't being stabbed to death for animal pelts or starving most of the time.  But you shouldn't let that build complacency or blind you to the backslide that has been going on in a great many areas around the world though.  In a great many areas we are not improving quality of life, security, or happiness.  That's a serious problem that deserves a better shake than the platitude "We are living in the best time to be alive in all history".

[dividendman]

Yeah...  my list wasn't to show things are getting better or worse, but that US equities have managed despite terrible events of the past century+. And that while Trump may be a large disruption and may even cause a recession and equities to decline in value, they're probably still the best bet in the long run for passive wealth accumulation.

[bmjohnson35]

This is a good opportunity to update Dividendman's list of significant events where people tend to question their market strategies. Is Trump 2.0 bigger than...

1900 - Italy's king is assasinated
1901 - Queen Victoria dies, President McKinley is assassinated
1903 - plague in India and China, killing over 12 million pepole
1904 - Russia and Japan go to war
1905 - Russia has a bloody revolution
1906 - San Francisco burns down
1908 - a massive explosion mysteriously happens in Russia, leveling 830 square miles. Truks revolt in the Ottoman empire, a massive earthquake in Italy kills 150 thousand people
1909 - Japan's prince is assasinated
1911 - The Chinese bloody revolution
1912 - the Titanic Sinks
1913 - personal income tax introduced in the US
1914 - WWI starts
1915 - WWI still going, millions dying, Armenian genocide is going on
1916 - yep, WWI still going, tanks and chemical weapons being used, airplanes for dropping bombs
1917 - another russian revolution, this time to communism, WWI still going and the US joins in
1918 - WWI still going, but who cares, the Spanish flu kills 100 MILLION people, 5% of the world's population
1919 - WWI finally ends, spanish flu still killing though
1920 - another plague in India, US outlaws alcohol
1921 - german hyper inflation going on, the Irish declare independence
1922 - some guy named Mussolini takes over Italy
1923 - some dude named Hitler has a failed coup in germany - woo, the world lucked out
1929 - the great depression starts
1930 - Stalin starts killing people all over the place, great depression
1931 - yup, still in the depression
1932 - still there, nothing is getting better
1933 - still depressed, and this time Hitler takes over germany
1934 - The dust bowl starts peaking... i.e. a decade of drought, no crops, everyone starving, this keeps going until 1939!
1935 - dangerous communist social program started in the US (Social Security)
1936 - spanish civil war begins, stalin ramps up his killings into the millions
1937 - Japan invades china
1938 - Hitler annexes Austria, at least he's stopping there
1939 - whoops, maybe, not WWII starts... millions killed, trillions infrastructure wiped out in Europe and across the world
1940 - Nazi's start murdering millions of civilian "undesirables", FDR takes 3rd term ignoring Washington's precedent
1941 - Japan bombs pearl harbor, world still f'd up in a huge war, Vietnam turns communist
1942 - is the warover? nope, just ramping up, millions more dying
1943 - everyone is still dying in WW2
1945 - woohoo, WWII is over, oh wait, that happened by dropping a devastating indiscriminate nuclear radiation bombs on civilians! oh, and FDR died in office
1946 - peace in our time! except the USSR annexes half of europe, which is a pile of rubble thanks to carpet bombing
1947 - India and Pakistan gain independence from Great Britian, and then go to war against each other
1948 - Israel founded, that won't cause any problems. Ghandi gets assassinated
1949 - China becomes communist, USSR, the nemesis of hte free world, gains nuclear weapons
1950 - whoops, another devastating total war, this time in Korea, but not between Koreans, a proxy war between the US/Russia/China and others
1952 - we get a polio vaccine... wait what? Oh yeah, people were getting f'd up by polio for the last forever years
1954 - segregation is ruled illegal in the US, so race relations are finally fixed
1955 - Warsaw pact created, basically a bunch of countries banded together to defeat america/western capitalist democracies
1956 - Hungarian revoltion, Suez crisis
1957 - Russians beat everyone into space
1960 - a 9.6 magnitude earthquake, the biggest ever recorded hits chili, lots of people die, civil rights riots and protests start happening
1961 - US backed rebels unsuccessfully invade Cuba, Berlin wall goes up, more civil rights disruptions, Soviets get the first man in space, Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever denoted is denoted, we can now destroy the world
1962 - Now that we have the bombs to blow up the world, the Cuban missile crisis happens, which almost blows up the word
1963 - another president killed in office
1964 - civil rights act passed, ok, now race relations are good for sure, no more civil rights disruptions ever
1965 - US sends a few troops to Vietnam just in case, Malcom X is assassinated, India and Pakistan go to war again
1966 - Chairman Mao has a cultural revolution in china, lots die, the US institutes the draft
1967 - the Australian PM disappears, the six day war between Israel and it's neighbors happens, civil rights unrest continues
1968 - MLK Jr. assassinated, RFK assassinated, Tet Offensive in Vietnam happens, yeah, the Vietnam war is going full speed ahead
1971 - the US capitalist system institutes wage and price controls, India and Pakistan go to war again
1972 - Vietnam war still going on
1973 - US declares victory and leaves vietnam, the US can't get oil because of an embargo
1974 - the US president up and quits
1975 - big Cambodian genocide, Civil war in lebanon, the US president escapes two assassination attempts
1976 - Tangshan earthquake kills a quarter million folks, Vietnam is all communist now
1979 - Iranian revolution, a US nuclear reactor has a partial meltdown
1980 - mount st helens erupts, the US embargoes the USSR, US inflation hits 14%, Iran Iraq war starts, and goes on for 8 years
1981 - someone tries to kill the US president, again
1982 - Falkands war starts, Lebanon war starts
1983 - US embassy bombed, a bunch of coups happening, USSR downs a korean airliner, famine in ethiopia kills half million
1984 - India's PM assassinated
1986 - Russian nuclear reactor melts down
1987 - black monday in US markets
1989 - berlin wall falls, USSR breaking up
1990 - Persian gulf war, Germany reunites, US doing more coupy type things in south america
1991 - USSR officially collapses, Balkans war starts, bosnian genocide starts
1994 - massive genocide in rwanda
1995 - Sarin gas is used in a Tokyo subway, Rabin assassinated
1996 - mad cow disease
1998 - india and pakistan test nukes
1999 - India and pakistan go to war and they have nukes
2000 - .com bust
2000 - election decided by the supreme court
2001 - 9/11, Afghanistan war
2002 - Euro currency created
2003 - 2nd gulf war started
2004 - Indian Ocean Tsunami, killing over 200k people instantly and displacing millions. Facebook is created.
2005 - Hurricane katrina, Youtube online
2006 - Israel lebanon war, North Korea gets Nukes
2007 - Great recession starts
2008 - A cyclone in china and earthquake in myanmar kill over 200k
2009 - great recession continues
2010 - arab spring starts
2011 - Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown, Syrian and Libyan civil wars
2014 - ISIS forms, Ebola outbreak in Africa, Russia annexes Crimea
2016 - Trump 1.0
2017 - Rohingya genocide, ISIS captures Mosul
2018 - Venezuelan refugee crisis intensifies, with over 5 Million refugees leaving the country
2019 - Brexit, US-China tariff/trade war continues, Hong Kong democracy protests quashed
2020 - COVID worldwide pandemic
2021 - Taliban recapture Afghanistan
2022 - Russia invades Ukraine in the largest European invasion since WW2
2023 - Hamas attacks Israel, Sudanese civil war/genocide
2024 - Israel Iran Lebanon Hezbollah and Hamas engaged in conflict
2025 - Trump 2.0!

How dare you post evidence that things are going to be fine.  Don't you know people want to freak out?

So… you’d say that everything was fine after each of these events?

Better than fine.  We are living in the best time to be alive in all history.  We are living in a time so stinking rich, that there are entire forums online showing people how to retire early and live off their wealth.

I think the bolded is one of the key parts that people are concerned about. Quite a lot of those events resulted in hundreds of thousands or even millions of deaths. Hard to enjoy being stinking rich if you're dead.

The statement "We are living in the best time to be alive in all history" is demonstrably false.

If you lived in the UK through Brexit (as an example), you are about 2000 pounds worse off on average.  (3400 if you live in London.)  https://www.london.gov.uk/new-report-reveals-uk-economy-almost-ps140billion-smaller-because-brexit  - So for the average person in the UK, this is pretty clearly not the best time in history to be alive.  That time would have been pre-Brexit.

Same holds true in many cases.  Hard not to argue that the average person living in Ukraine was a lot happier and better off in 2021 than today.  Any Palestinian living in Gaza was doing better in 2020 than today.  Afghanistan has always been pretty rough, but certainly for women it is much worse today than it was in 2020.

But fuck those people.  They live far away.  So maybe the idea is to tell people in the US that they're living in the best time to be alive in all history?  Well, after two prior decades of increasing, happiness among children aged 13-19 in the US has precipitously declined since 2011 (https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2019/the-sad-state-of-happiness-in-the-united-states-and-the-role-of-digital-media/).  Internet usage, availability of porn, social media, sexting, a reduction of in-person time for relationships and experiences, ubiquitousness of cellphones everywhere - these things are making the world that we live in worse for people growing up in it.  Home affordability, a constantly changing job market (and extreme career uncertainty), concentration of wealth and power into the hands of a few elite, secondary educational debt, rampant and ever increasing environmental damage . . . these are serious systemic and unaddressed problems that exist for young working age people.  I don't think you can say that we're in the best time to be alive in all history without taking into account that people (especially young people) are much less happy than they were twenty years ago.

Now, absolutely we do live in a pretty good time historically.  We aren't being stabbed to death for animal pelts or starving most of the time.  But you shouldn't let that build complacency or blind you to the backslide that has been going on in a great many areas around the world though.  In a great many areas we are not improving quality of life, security, or happiness.  That's a serious problem that deserves a better shake than the platitude "We are living in the best time to be alive in all history".

"The statement "We are living in the best time to be alive in all history" is demonstrably false."

I respectfully disagree.  I've seen too many documentaries and speeches from authors and scientists who have studied the history of humanity and they generally conclude that now is the best time to be alive.  I agree that we are in troubling times, but it's easy to focus on individual examples of our failings and not recognize the incremental progress we are making.  Here is a recent opinion article covering this very topic:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/opinion/2024-child-mortality-poverty-growth.html