• Juice@midwest.social
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    5 hours ago

    inevitable only in hindsight

    I’m not so sure. I’m still friends with a guy who told me emphatically “you dont understand what we did, we destroyed the global economy” and then explained the whole subprime mortgage scam to me, back in like 2007. Lots of downstream businesses, new home builders, paint and drywall companies, building materials stores, started folding several months before the official crash as well. I wasn’t nearly as aware of things then, I was a grown adult but not yet 30 and with little formal education, but there were definitely huge flashing signs. Only the media, based 100% on the words of the banks and insurance companies, thought that a crash was undetectable.

    I’m not sure quite what it would look like yet, but I’m willing to bet if you look where these data centers are being built, when the cash runs out to keep the whole scam afloat, these big companies will stop paying their bills. The smaller companies providing services and supplies will run out of money before the huge mega corpos start showing signs, so that is one of the metrics I’m watching closely. I just happen to live in the shadow of these data centers so I’ll be pretty close to it, that is if I’m right.

    • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      I remember the news reporting about record breaking amounts of mortgage defaults in like 2007 as well. The signs were all there, but people were too oblivious or high on their own supply of farts to see them.

      Anytime people are like “we couldn’t see this coming” I never understand why they are allowed to pass that obvious lie off in public.

      The AI bubble signs are in plain view everywhere you look right now. If (or much more likely when) it bursts everyone will be talking about how they couldn’t possibly see it coming again.

      If people say they couldn’t see this shit coming, maybe their myopic asses shouldn’t be in charge of anything important ever again.

    • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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      3 hours ago

      One of the first deals I did in real estate (~2006) was a sale at 115% loan-to-value, no money down, seller-paid closing costs. The buyers received $2500 at closing. Nobody batted an eye.

    • AnyOldName3@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      There was quite a lag between the variable-rate mortgage rates going up and everything noticeably exploding, so lots of people who were aware there was a real risk of things going tits up decided that it hadn’t and therefore wasn’t going to and had stopped looking for signs by the time they started to appear.