manxu @ manxu @piefed.social

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5 mo. ago

I thought that was the plan all along?

Honestly, everything you said may be true, but the only thing that matters is the last sentence :-)

a white supremacist network that operated on the Telegram messaging and social media platform for half a decade

It's been around for 5 years, and this nutbag in Waukesha found it. I am pretty sure it wouldn't have been hard for law enforcement to know what was going on, if they had been looking.

Generally speaking, the problem when you don't repay your debt is not that other countries invade you, but that you don't get any new loans.

If America can get a new currency, default on her debt, and at the same time manage a balanced budget, all is good. Otherwise, who's going to come up with the loans required?

After using Metro and Vanilla for ages, I switched to Gramophone. Looks pretty and I find it intuitive. Also has great support for media change detection and does m3u playlists (that I rely on heavily) very well.

I fully agree with you on the current liquidity issues, and certainly on the loss of manufacturing competitiveness that comes with having reserve currency status.

My main economic concern with Trump's policies is simply that "advanced" economies will never really be able to compete in the manufacturing field again. Trump should know - he is surrounded by the richest men in the world, and the only one that does any manufacturing at all, and only as a side gig is Musk. All the other ones only do digital and finance/investment.

I agree that Europe probably doesn't want to get into that space at the moment. I am afraid Europe is pushed into doing a lot of things right now it didn't and doesn't want to do. The decision point would probably come if Trump's tariffs are really just paused and start being enacted. Then Europe will have to massively increase its trade with other nations, which will also have to do the same thing, and then using USD becomes incredibly impractical, especially with the wild swings it is going to have if tariffs are re-enacted.

And, again, totally agreed. This will require a lot of changes, and they will be painful. It just feels like there aren't a whole lot of alternatives.

I am confused by the article's insistence that the Euro is not a viable alternative because it's "one currency, 20 countries". If anything, the sheer number of countries make sure that a single election is not going to affect financial and economic policies all that much - which is the main reason for the USD's fall from grace right now.

As someone else pointed out years ago (about Eric Trump, not known for his supermodel looks), there is an amount of wealth and influence where you don't have to look good, because everybody will treat you anyway as if you were the hottest person on the planet. Basically, you want to look ugly because it's a bizarre proof of wealth.

"Look at me, I am so rich, I can have all the supermodels, porn stars, and Hollywood actresses I want, and I don't even have to get plastic surgery or a personal trainer like a poor millionaire (ewww) on a budget."

I've heard it called, El Azkaban. Catchy.

They’re convinced everyone else in the world HAS to do business with us

That seems to be a widespread opinion amongst a lot of the international elite. Germany thought Putin was never going to risk war because it would kill his European fossil fuel revenue and destroy his economy.

Then Putin himself did the same thing, thinking he could starve Europe in a fossil fuel winter.

I think that's the key. We attribute to them special qualities because we like to think in terms of cause and effect. But they all seem to have just been there at the right time with the right people and the right thing.

They show us there is nothing special about them every time they try to do something new and miserably fail. Think the money Meta spent on VR, or the way Musk alienated users and advertisers on Twitter.

We are basically beholden to lottery winners.

Reminds me somewhat of when Paul Bremer, Bush Jr's "vice-roy" in Iraq, decided to disband the Iraqi Army overnight, leaving tens of thousands of heavily armed Iraqis stranded without a job or source of income. IIRC, that's how the Iraqi insurgency started.

I think that's what the Cybertruck is for, to appeal to Conservatives. I live on the edge between blue and red counties, and down in red territory the Cybertrucks are everywhere. (Meaning I saw at least four different ones.)

Please, consider donating to archive.org. They are under assault right now, and they are the only outfit that records everything that might get lost otherwise.

Sort of. A unilateral tariff generates a trade imbalance in favor of the economy imposing the tariff. By applying commensurate tariffs in the other direction, you keep the trade balance you had before the tariff was imposed.