The AI Bubble and Trillions of Debt
The AI Bubble and Trillions of Debt I graduated with a degree in Architecture in 1999. Coming back to Hong Kong after the Asian Financial Crisis , there were no real jobs for architects. Hong Kong had its SARS epidemic in 2003, and all the friends I knew who had a mortgage fell into negative equity . I remember a flying friend would recall working at the bank, and a colleague coming to him at his desk to tell him his loan was getting called. It would be years later that I would understand this to be deemed the evils of deflation. Between 1997 and 2003, flats lost maybe half of their value. Consumer prices fell for sixty-eight months in a row. Salaries were cut, or frozen, or disappeared. The mortgages stayed exactly where they were. A loan of a million dollars remained a million dollars, now owed on a flat worth half a million, by someone earning less than the year before. Hong Kong could not print its way out; the peg held the currency fixed, so the whole adjustment fell on prices, ...
