Macro Voices MacroVoices #500 Lyn Alden: What Will Stop This Train?
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Oct 2, 2025 
In this insightful discussion, Lyn Alden, a macro strategist and founder of Lyn Alden Investment Strategy, dives deep into U.S. fiscal deficits and the looming risks of a reserve-currency crisis. She examines what might trigger a sudden economic shift, like rising confidence, political upheaval, or energy shocks. Lyn also elaborates on generational tensions around entitlements and explains her metaphor of a 'train' to describe persistent fiscal deficits. Her deep analysis highlights the interconnectedness of debt, politics, and societal fractures.
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Fiscal Deficits Have Reshaped Cycles
- Sustained large fiscal deficits have already changed economic cycles and muted traditional indicators like the yield curve.
- Lyn Alden argues deficits have mattered for years and will continue to shape outcomes over the next 5–10 years.
Dollar's Network Effect Buys Time
- The dollar benefits from entrenched, contractual demand such as $18 trillion of offshore dollar debt that slows rapid collapse.
- That network effect gives the U.S. a longer runway even as optional demand can evaporate quickly.
Politics, Not Just Numbers, Can Trigger Collapse
- Political shocks, not macro accounting, are likelier to trigger rapid unwinding of dollar dominance.
- Nonlinear moves include contract changes, defaults, capital controls, or sudden geopolitical realignments.
