Six-Chart Sunday (#58) – It’s Probably Nothing

6 Infographics + 1 Meme (How to Understand this Substack)

Well the good news this week is they downgraded the odds of that asteroid smashing into Earth in 2032 “to nearly zero,” and we may soon be able to mine such space rocks for precious metals “to create vast fortunes.” A few other news items gave me pause, however… but maybe I’m just over-reacting?

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1. Berkshire Barometer Flashing Red. Warren Buffett’s company is once again holding a huge amount of cash, just as it did before the dot com crash and financial crisis. This time is different, right?

2. Your Money or Your Life. The U.S. government spent more paying interest on our national debt than on defense spending for the first time ever in 2024, and will again every year for the foreseeable future. Surely no big deal, right?

3. Exceptionally High. In fact America’s net interest payments on our debt are the highest among OECD nations, nine times higher than Japan’s (which has both greater debt as a share of GDP and a smaller economy!) China spent 0.96% of their GDP on interest payments last year, 1/4th America’s burden. It’s probably nothing?

4. You can’t spell pAnIc without AI. Cyber security research gurus at Palo Alto Networks found that AI can increase in the speed and efficiency of cyberattacks, taking “the time to [data] exfiltration from the median of two days down to 25 minutes — about 100 times faster.” Figure below demonstrates the speed of an attack before the use of GenAI (yellow) compared with the time when using GenAI (red). What me worry?

5. Canary in the Demographic Decline Coal Mine. “The number of babies born in Japan last year fell to the lowest level since records began 125 years ago as the country’s demographic crisis deepens and government efforts to reverse the decline continue to fail.” In Japan (and China), the market for diapers for the elderly is already larger than for babies, with ever fewer workers to support ever more retirees. The U.S. faces a similar risk unless we accelerate immigration (unlikely) or find a way to encourage greater fertility… perhaps a “Mate like Musk” campaign after DOGE wraps up?

6. Turning to Health News… It seems to me that humans need to stop eating bats and continue getting proven vaccinations for entirely preventable diseases. But I’m not a doctor, so many I’m missing something?

MEME

This perfectly sums up what it feels like to write this Substack: