Would bashing China solve all the problems of the United States

[ralfy + 55]

19 hours ago, Marcin2 said:

ralfy - diagnosis about origins of most problems from the list, Machiavellian idea that China bashing and isolationism could help cause US would re-emerge like phoenix from ashes After the short term demiseand the right conclusion that aristocracy/0.01%/Wall Street would not allow these reforms,

What allowed the U.S. to dominate other countries was the use of the dollar as a global reserve currency. But the country that is the source of the same currency also obviously faces trade deficits and will enforce neo-liberalism on other countries. At the same time it has to rely on alliances with some of the same countries in order to expand its military, which is also used to keep that dollar propped up.

That explains the ff.

- a very expensive military (with costs passed on to the U.S. public) needed to prevent other countries from moving away from the dollar (like Iraq, Libya, and even Iran through oil trade);

- allowing countries like Japan, the "tiger" economies, and even Russia and China to become more independent economically while using Japan, the Philippines, Poland, and others to set up military bases to surround Russia and China;

- continuous trade deficits, with U.S. companies outsourcing for many decades because the value of the dollar is too high, and increasing debt in order to pay for the military and both government and consumer spending (with the latter needed to prop up the middle class);

- plump, materialistic, and even narcissistic citizens who borrow and spend happily in exchange for working long hours in mostly white collar jobs.

By going against China, the U.S. ends up also going against its major trading partner (and the same of EU), plus make the dollar less attractive to BRICS and over forty emerging markets worldwide. Debts go down, but the middle class and the military weaken considerably because spending drops significantly.

In short, instead of rising like a phoenix, the U.S. actually ends up like China: protecting borders, controlling immigration, citizens returning to a working class existence through blue collar labor, and the military no longer used for projecting power worldwide but for controlling the U.S. public. The government becomes more powerful, and the U.S. rich become like Trump, focusing on real estate catering to the rich.

But the catch is that much of the wealth of the U.S. rich (i.e., Wall Street) consists of dollars, which would now be less valuable given a protectionist U.S. Businesses, citizens, the government, the military, etc., all rely on the same dollar, too. At the same time, even without the U.S. bashing China, China and many other countries have been moving away from the dollar, preferring to use different currencies and trading with each other.

 

 

[Eyes Wide Open + 3,539]

2 minutes ago, ralfy said:

What allowed the U.S. to dominate other countries was the use of the dollar as a global reserve currency. But the country that is the source of the same currency also obviously faces trade deficits and will enforce neo-liberalism on other countries. At the same time it has to rely on alliances with some of the same countries in order to expand its military, which is also used to keep that dollar propped up.

That explains the ff.

- a very expensive military (with costs passed on to the U.S. public) needed to prevent other countries from moving away from the dollar (like Iraq, Libya, and even Iran through oil trade);

- allowing countries like Japan, the "tiger" economies, and even Russia and China to become more independent economically while using Japan, the Philippines, Poland, and others to set up military bases to surround Russia and China;

- continuous trade deficits, with U.S. companies outsourcing for many decades because the value of the dollar is too high, and increasing debt in order to pay for the military and both government and consumer spending (with the latter needed to prop up the middle class);

- plump, materialistic, and even narcissistic citizens who borrow and spend happily in exchange for working long hours in mostly white collar jobs.

By going against China, the U.S. ends up also going against its major trading partner (and the same of EU), plus make the dollar less attractive to BRICS and over forty emerging markets worldwide. Debts go down, but the middle class and the military weaken considerably because spending drops significantly.

In short, instead of rising like a phoenix, the U.S. actually ends up like China: protecting borders, controlling immigration, citizens returning to a working class existence through blue collar labor, and the military no longer used for projecting power worldwide but for controlling the U.S. public. The government becomes more powerful, and the U.S. rich become like Trump, focusing on real estate catering to the rich.

But the catch is that much of the wealth of the U.S. rich (i.e., Wall Street) consists of dollars, which would now be less valuable given a protectionist U.S. Businesses, citizens, the government, the military, etc., all rely on the same dollar, too. At the same time, even without the U.S. bashing China, China and many other countries have been moving away from the dollar, preferring to use different currencies and trading with each other.

 

 

Here i give you a thought most business owners are having right now. One for me....two for you.

Game over next valued business partner.

[ralfy + 55]

7 hours ago, 0R0 said:

Had China been a democratic market economy, then things would never have developed as they had. Resources would not have been diverted to the creation of loss making industries who's only advantage is geopolitical, to hollow out their equivalents in the West. Had the CCP not been in power, the democratic driver would have gotten the other 75% of Chinese through high school rather than focusing on creating chimeral enhanced viruses in Wuhan.

Triffin's dilemma is  the mechanism by which China had done its deed, but it was done globally. Not just in the US, but in Europe and other SE Asian countries. The main driver was the subsidy and loss tolerant funding of the China industries. They lowered the product cost out of China to below the cost of inputs (both in China and abroad) not to speak of being unable to recover their capital investment.

 

Indeed, and similar took place even in non-Communist countries in the same region. It was called "the East Asian miracle" and essentially involved economic protectionism coupled with authoritarian and centralized government borrowed from nineteenth-century Prussian policies. Countries included Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. In contrast, countries that followed U.S. neoliberalism did poorly. One example is the Philippines.

About the Triffin dilemma, it refers to countries whose currencies are used as the global reserve currency. In this case, the U.S. That is, if the U.S. dollar is used as the global reserve currency, then that makes the U.S. stronger because it produces the same dollar that almost everyone else needs. However, U.S. businesses weaken in terms of exports because their costs, which are measured in dollars, also goes up. That's why from the early 1970s, the country began to experience trade deficits, and more U.S. businesses began to outsource labor, especially given the point that with more valuable dollars, U.S. workers were now opting for more lucrative pay in the service industry. Automation and other factors also didn't help as they lowered U.S. real wages during the same decade.

In short, the country whose money is used as the global reserve currency will have a lot of spending power but poor earning power because its goods and services measured in its own currency would become too expensive for other countries. In time, it will rely on earning by creating more dollars and then spending them. That's why from the early 1980s onward, U.S. debt and spending across the board rose significantly: lots of military hardware, cars, houses, etc., but also lots of debt.

As those debts keep rising, the dollar becomes less attractive, which is why not only China but even several EU members and various countries in Asia, South America, and the Middle East had been trading with their own currencies and investing in each other. In order to counter that, the U.S. has had to use its military and foreign policies to bully, if not attack, at least weaker countries.

 

 

 

 

[ralfy + 55]

3 hours ago, BradleyPNW said:

Ok guys, I've uncovered The TRUTH: the secret Chyna trade deal started with Richard Nixon in 1972. Bill Clinton was a deep state disciple of Tricky Dick recruited through agent Hillary who was recruited herself when she twerked on the Goldwater campaign. Hillary's final ascension was thwarted by MAGA before she could email 😉 Chyna the passwords to our global satellite defense shield from her private email server. 

Thank God for President Trump! 

(ps the fake news media is so unfair to our president, the greatest president ever in the 1,000 year history of America.)

 

The interesting thing about Trump is that several of his policies actually resemble those of China, e.g., controlling borders, immigration (even legal), and restricting trade.

 

[Eyes Wide Open + 3,539]

27 minutes ago, ralfy said:

The interesting thing about Trump is that several of his policies actually resemble those of China, e.g., controlling borders, immigration (even legal), and restricting trade.

 

Only trade that works one way...and only immigration that works one way. 

[Strangelovesurfing + 737]

4 hours ago, ralfy said:

What allowed the U.S. to dominate other countries was the use of the dollar as a global reserve currency. But the country that is the source of the same currency also obviously faces trade deficits and will enforce neo-liberalism on other countries. At the same time it has to rely on alliances with some of the same countries in order to expand its military, which is also used to keep that dollar propped up.

That explains the ff.

- a very expensive military (with costs passed on to the U.S. public) needed to prevent other countries from moving away from the dollar (like Iraq, Libya, and even Iran through oil trade);

- allowing countries like Japan, the "tiger" economies, and even Russia and China to become more independent economically while using Japan, the Philippines, Poland, and others to set up military bases to surround Russia and China;

- continuous trade deficits, with U.S. companies outsourcing for many decades because the value of the dollar is too high, and increasing debt in order to pay for the military and both government and consumer spending (with the latter needed to prop up the middle class);

- plump, materialistic, and even narcissistic citizens who borrow and spend happily in exchange for working long hours in mostly white collar jobs.

By going against China, the U.S. ends up also going against its major trading partner (and the same of EU), plus make the dollar less attractive to BRICS and over forty emerging markets worldwide. Debts go down, but the middle class and the military weaken considerably because spending drops significantly.

In short, instead of rising like a phoenix, the U.S. actually ends up like China: protecting borders, controlling immigration, citizens returning to a working class existence through blue collar labor, and the military no longer used for projecting power worldwide but for controlling the U.S. public. The government becomes more powerful, and the U.S. rich become like Trump, focusing on real estate catering to the rich.

But the catch is that much of the wealth of the U.S. rich (i.e., Wall Street) consists of dollars, which would now be less valuable given a protectionist U.S. Businesses, citizens, the government, the military, etc., all rely on the same dollar, too. At the same time, even without the U.S. bashing China, China and many other countries have been moving away from the dollar, preferring to use different currencies and trading with each other.

 

 

For decades the conventional wisdom is the Dollar is about to fall apart and woe to the world, yet it doesn't happen. Has it ever occurred to you that finance/money is a psychological construct? It's all an illusion man, says the Dude.

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

[Hotone + 412]

1 hour ago, Dan Warnick said:

This dude?  I think he is being a bit divisive in a time when people need to come together.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/29/tech/trump-twitter-minneapolis/index.html

If this goes on, people are really going to get shot and anger will escalate

Edited May 29, 2020 by Hotone

[0R0 + 6,251]

16 hours ago, Marcin2 said:

@SUZNV

”China bought all the neccessities ( masks etc) and later exported fake tests and masks.”

When epidemic in China started China bough about 2 billion masks around the world in January and February 2020.

BUT

At the same time in February and March they increased the masks production and similar equipment about 15-20 times, from 10-15 million on Feb 1 to 200-250 million a day in late March 2020.

And in March and April 2020 they already started massive exports when masks where needed not in China but outside of China.

In April 2020 China exported about 4 billion masks.

In 2019 China manufactured 5 billion masks, majority of world output.

Similar number of masks manufactured in April 2020.

The world was able to get required number of masks because of Chinese briliant fantastic entrepreneurship.

Suddenly in 60 days every Chinese and his mother were producing masks and later test kits. You had 100 new producers of PPE each day.

With such explosive growth it is natural that dishonest companies and inexperienced/faulty producers flourished.

There was such demand that nobody asked whever this or that company manufactured masks for a year or just since last Monday.

China could spend a few weeks or months to regulate PPE exports but how many more people would die without 80% of PPE global supply ? 100,000 ? 200,000 ?

With fake tests I do not have opinion cause No information is available. There is No journalism at present , it is extinct spiecies, so we cannot know whever established Chinese pharmaceutical companies made grave mistakes or it was just scam by companies outside of industry.

There was a government edict to supply all workers with masks before any business could start operation. Foxcon could not start production of iphones till it had masks available for workers. So they built a manufacturing plant within their campus of factories sufficient to supply all their employees and then some.

There is not a shred of entrepreneurial sails catching this wind. It is straight out edict and now they make more masks than they need, and at too low a quality to supply to the world. They are somewhat useful but not to spec.

[SUZNV + 1,197]

1 hour ago, Hotone said:

This dude?  I think he is being a bit divisive in a time when people need to come together.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/29/tech/trump-twitter-minneapolis/index.html

Dude, how can a country not be divisive if many professional politicians based their careers on capitalizing the divisiveness for political gain? Luther King was great because he was an activist for many rights African Americans didn't have back then. He still lives among his community.

In the case of Obama, his entire political career, from being accepted into Harvard to be POTUS and millionaire was based on capitalization the divisiveness of black and white. 

If all races come together, gay or no gay come together, people work hard to improve their situation rather than look at other pockets & assets, people take responsibility rather than compete for the fund for unlucky people money and share common values, all have jobs and working towards common goals... where do you think Dem, Progressive gain votes from? Do you think Obama would still be able to become POTUS? He even may not be accepted in Harvard in the first place, yet Trump would still be billionaire. Trump became POTUS because of the divisiveness created by politicians like Obama, or Dem, or GOP but before that, he has nothing to do with it.

Do Dem really want people come together while they didn't accept the election results in the first place. (Trump said he wouldn't but the same with the people said they would). What chance do Dem have? How can they persuade voter in the next election if US is doing  great and united?

Take the "white cop kills black" event in Minneapolis now. It the traditional way, the cop on camera would go to trail with strong evidence of abusing power, like many other criminals on the world. But no, people have to protest, then loot Target, Walmart ... and burn Auto zone in the name of "asking for justice" before anything can be done. Do these people really care about justice at all? Do they really want to unite or care their images with other communities with these behaviors?  And the circle of hatred  will keep go on and on. 

The trouble is the cop abused of power leaded to a death, but why assumed because the victim is  black? Any person or media cares about the victim skin color has their "racist" or "reverse racist" mind set in the first place, and that is the divisiveness.

Edited May 29, 2020 by SUZNV

[SERWIN + 749]

13 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

The dichotomy couldn't be clearer. You've got your eyes squeezed shut and @Eyes Wide Open obviously doesn't. And like the see-no-evil monkey, you've got your mouth wide open, spouting TDS nonsense. 

A Democratic Party President and staff illegally spied on the opposition candidate and you're seriously claiming there's nothing to see here folks, move along? Just how stupid do you have to be to believe this? Asking for a friend

When Nixon did not even 1% of what was done here he ended up leaving office, but the asshole that did all this is already out of office, so we won't get the pleasure of him having to resign. But, we can take away all his presidential perks. Retirement, free air travel on our dime, SS security. I would love nothing more than the SS packing up and leaving that asshole on his own. He's a millionaire now anyway(albeit illegally), he can afford his own security for him and his boy....

[SERWIN + 749]

1 hour ago, SERWIN said:

I would love nothing more than the SS packing up and leaving that asshole on his own. He's a millionaire now anyway(albeit illegally), he can afford his own security for him and his boy....

Best guess, he would be dead within a month....

[0R0 + 6,251]

10 hours ago, ralfy said:

Indeed, and similar took place even in non-Communist countries in the same region. It was called "the East Asian miracle" and essentially involved economic protectionism coupled with authoritarian and centralized government borrowed from nineteenth-century Prussian policies. Countries included Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. In contrast, countries that followed U.S. neoliberalism did poorly. One example is the Philippines.

About the Triffin dilemma, it refers to countries whose currencies are used as the global reserve currency. In this case, the U.S. That is, if the U.S. dollar is used as the global reserve currency, then that makes the U.S. stronger because it produces the same dollar that almost everyone else needs. However, U.S. businesses weaken in terms of exports because their costs, which are measured in dollars, also goes up. That's why from the early 1970s, the country began to experience trade deficits, and more U.S. businesses began to outsource labor, especially given the point that with more valuable dollars, U.S. workers were now opting for more lucrative pay in the service industry. Automation and other factors also didn't help as they lowered U.S. real wages during the same decade.

In short, the country whose money is used as the global reserve currency will have a lot of spending power but poor earning power because its goods and services measured in its own currency would become too expensive for other countries. In time, it will rely on earning by creating more dollars and then spending them. That's why from the early 1980s onward, U.S. debt and spending across the board rose significantly: lots of military hardware, cars, houses, etc., but also lots of debt.

As those debts keep rising, the dollar becomes less attractive, which is why not only China but even several EU members and various countries in Asia, South America, and the Middle East had been trading with their own currencies and investing in each other. In order to counter that, the U.S. has had to use its military and foreign policies to bully, if not attack, at least weaker countries.

You are almost getting it right, the US had acted against oil countries that tried to get out of the petrodollar deal. Even Russia. But that is not all that was going on. The dollar fell like a turd out of a steer after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange system and the drop of the gold exchange standard. The dollar did not strengthen in the 1970s it went from 300 yen to the dollar to 100, 4 Mark to the dollar to 2. 

But the dollar drop really had nothing to do with what was going on in the US financial system. It had everything to do with a wild west Eurodollar system which was expanding dollar credit by leaps and bounds in the 1970s and 1980s as Italy Japan Spain Korea and other inflators exported their inflation into the Eurodollar system and accumulated reserves.

Those reserves provided the country's banks with reserve access and thus liquidity, and therefore could lever that up in their Eurodollar operations. They used it to fund anything anywhere. The EM boom of the 1980s and 1990s, the FDI into China and its commodity suppliers. And US housing.

Reserve accumulation till 2000, the start of the China bubble in force.

The rates of Monetary inflation of key economies

And again, including the post 2000 China bubble period, we look at reserves. China (in blue) on the right scale along with Japan (deep red)

Those reserves operate in the Eurodollar system the same way as Fed reserves feed the US bank system. It is leveraged up and lent and then re-lent again. It flows into the highest risk adjusted yield targets in the Asian Tigers through the 1990s, into the commodity makers in the 1970s,and again in the 2000s, and into the US from the 1990s. Where flows from the export of inflation from central banks into the Eurodollar system caused large capital flows that overwhelmed the US financial system swamping domestic bank financing, they dropped to just intermediaries between US borrowers and Eurodollar lenders.

Part of this flow was the petrodollar flow from US imports which died in 2015, and US corporate unrepatriated non US profits, which reversed flow in 2018. Which were recirculated into the US to provide tier 1 capital for the dollar business of non US banks.

China has stopped accumulating reserves since it has suffered capital flight since before it opened its financial markets briefly 5 years ago. And it has not stopped, with exporters refusing to repatriate their dollar revenue. That is in part what is causing the dollar crunch on top of the factors above.

The entire system of the Eurodollar is unraveling due to a lack of cash and absence of tier 1 dollar collateral, Meaning a desperate need for dollar cash whether in direct accounts repos, and most of all in dollar Swaps, and treasuries and mortgage backeds. .

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

1 hour ago, 0R0 said:

You are almost getting it right, the US had acted against oil countries that tried to get out of the petrodollar deal. Even Russia. But that is not all that was going on. The dollar fell like a turd out of a steer after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange system and the drop of the gold exchange standard. The dollar did not strengthen in the 1970s it went from 300 yen to the dollar to 100, 4 Mark to the dollar to 2. 

But the dollar drop really had nothing to do with what was going on in the US financial system. It had everything to do with a wild west Eurodollar system which was expanding dollar credit by leaps and bounds in the 1970s and 1980s as Italy Japan Spain Korea and other inflators exported their inflation into the Eurodollar system and accumulated reserves.

Those reserves provided the country's banks with reserve access and thus liquidity, and therefore could lever that up in their Eurodollar operations. They used it to fund anything anywhere. The EM boom of the 1980s and 1990s, the FDI into China and its commodity suppliers. And US housing.

Reserve accumulation till 2000, the start of the China bubble in force.

 

The rates of Monetary inflation of key economies

 

And again, including the post 2000 China bubble period, we look at reserves. China (in blue) on the right scale along with Japan (deep red)

 

Those reserves operate in the Eurodollar system the same way as Fed reserves feed the US bank system. It is leveraged up and lent and then re-lent again. It flows into the highest risk adjusted yield targets in the Asian Tigers through the 1990s, into the commodity makers in the 1970s,and again in the 2000s, and into the US from the 1990s. Where flows from the export of inflation from central banks into the Eurodollar system caused large capital flows that overwhelmed the US financial system swamping domestic bank financing, they dropped to just intermediaries between US borrowers and Eurodollar lenders.

Part of this flow was the petrodollar flow from US imports which died in 2015, and US corporate unrepatriated non US profits, which reversed flow in 2018. Which were recirculated into the US to provide tier 1 capital for the dollar business of non US banks.

China has stopped accumulating reserves since it has suffered capital flight since before it opened its financial markets briefly 5 years ago. And it has not stopped, with exporters refusing to repatriate their dollar revenue. That is in part what is causing the dollar crunch on top of the factors above.

The entire system of the Eurodollar is unraveling due to a lack of cash and absence of tier 1 dollar collateral, Meaning a desperate need for dollar cash whether in direct accounts repos, and most of all in dollar Swaps, and treasuries and mortgage backeds. .

Notice in the two graphs I left, the cyclical nature of "recessions" in gray.  The argument used in the creation of the Federal Reserve was that only a Federal Reserve Bank could still the boom and bust cycles that had plagued the US economy for the past hundred years. Of course that was a lie, the cycles are on a decadal oscillation and interestingly, the Trump election and subsequent economic miracle ruined the planned for recession that was supposed to happen in 2018-19. 

My banking thread was meant to disabuse the notion people still have that the Fed and every Central Bank somehow exist to keep things on some even keel. Nothing could be further from the truth, the plan is, was and always will be for the owners of those banks (and they're all privately owned) to manipulate things so they get your valuable assets and you end up with their worthless paper. You get to find out just how worthless when they throw a recession your way. 

[BradleyPNW + 282]

19 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

The dichotomy couldn't be clearer. You've got your eyes squeezed shut and @Eyes Wide Open obviously doesn't. And like the see-no-evil monkey, you've got your mouth wide open, spouting TDS nonsense. 

A Democratic Party President and staff illegally spied on the opposition candidate and you're seriously claiming there's nothing to see here folks, move along? Just how stupid do you have to be to believe this? Asking for a friend

If that's true I want Attorney General Barr to get on that and prosecute Barack Obama and all his staff who participated. Now that Barack Obama is no longer president he is not protected by the office and subject to the same laws as all other citizens. 

waiting....waiting...waiting...(why is the prosecution of Barack Hussein Obama taking so long when he is so obviously guilty?)

[BradleyPNW + 282]

7 hours ago, Hotone said:

This dude?  I think he is being a bit divisive in a time when people need to come together.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/29/tech/trump-twitter-minneapolis/index.html

If this goes on, people are really going to get shot and anger will escalate

Ha ha, after 3+ years of on the job training Donald still doesn't know the limits of his office, "I will send the National Guard..." 😂

Governors police their states. End of story. There's laws and stuff that say so. Also, Baby Trump's reaction to getting spanked by Twitter is hilarious. 

Edited May 29, 2020 by BradleyPNW

[specinho + 440]

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

50 minutes ago, BradleyPNW said:

If that's true I want Attorney General Barr to get on that and prosecute Barack Obama and all his staff who participated. Now that Barack Obama is no longer president he is not protected by the office and subject to the same laws as all other citizens. 

waiting....waiting...waiting...(why is the prosecution of Barack Hussein Obama taking so long when he is so obviously guilty?)

This country has a 240 year tradition of not attacking prior presidents. Even guilty, Obama will most certainly get a pass so that no precedent gets established. The Demoncrats will be more than willing and able to concoct fraudulent charges against Trump once he's out of office, given they've already done that while he's in office!

But yeah, you've got TDS so bad you still believe the Russia hoax. No cure for stupidity

[BradleyPNW + 282]

26 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

This country has a 240 year tradition of not attacking prior presidents. Even guilty, Obama will most certainly get a pass so that no precedent gets established. The Demoncrats will be more than willing and able to concoct fraudulent charges against Trump once he's out of office, given they've already done that while he's in office!

But yeah, you've got TDS so bad you still believe the Russia hoax. No cure for stupidity

Nice cover. We wouldn't want your conspiracy theory to implode on such a basic point, after all. We'll go with, "Obama is totally guilty but won't be prosecuted because...stuff." 

However, dEmONcraTs will prosecute Donald on trumped up charges once they take over next January. Also, TDS!

Edited May 29, 2020 by BradleyPNW

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

5 minutes ago, BradleyPNW said:

Nice cover. We wouldn't want your conspiracy theory to implode on such a basic point, after all. We'll go with, "Obama is totally guilty but won't be prosecuted because...stuff." 

However, dEmONcraTs will prosecute Donald on trumped up charges once they take over next January. Also, TDS!

What is widely known, and what can be proven in court are two different things. For instance on unmasking everyone around Obama asked for Flynn to be unmasked, but of course Obama himself didn't. That gives him plausible deniability in any court of law when he pretends he knew nothing about it, like a bumbling Sergeant Schultz. 

Demoncrats have already prosecuted Trump, they failed miserably, they'll fail again. A person would have to be chronically stupid, or you, to believe the phone call with Ukraine constituted an impeachable offense. It was nothing more than political kabuki theater. Your spinning it doesn't change anything. Demoncrats voted the party line and republicans voted the facts in evidence (there was none) and Pelosi demanded the judges in the case (the Senate) continue the prosecution for her that she had so miserably muffed already. They were and are under no obligation to do her job, but that didn't stop her from posing for the cameras, pretending something untoward was going on, and counting on the utter ignorance of her audience about the rules and procedures of impeachment. Congrats, she knew you were ignorant, and she was right. 

[BradleyPNW + 282]

1 hour ago, Ward Smith said:

What is widely known, and what can be proven in court are two different things. For instance on unmasking everyone around Obama asked for Flynn to be unmasked, but of course Obama himself didn't. That gives him plausible deniability in any court of law when he pretends he knew nothing about it, like a bumbling Sergeant Schultz. 

Whoops, found another hole in your Obamagate conspiracy plot. Unmasking isn't illegal. Again, laws and stuff. Do you know what is illegal? Lying to the FBI during an investigation. Lying to the FBI is so illegal you can go to prison for it. 

Now, when the Obama officials asked "who is this guy we don't know because his name is blacked out in this report?" the answer happened to be the same guy who later wound up lying to the FBI (illegal, remember) about his contacts, plural, with a hostile foreign government. See how that works? You don't unmask Flynn. You unmask the name of the person blacked out in the report because you don't know who they are and you want to find out. 

So to recap: Obama & staff, not guilty; Flynn, guilty. 

[ralfy + 55]

18 hours ago, Strangelovesurfing said:

For decades the conventional wisdom is the Dollar is about to fall apart and woe to the world, yet it doesn't happen. Has it ever occurred to you that finance/money is a psychological construct? It's all an illusion man, says the Dude.

Actually, the conventional wisdom about the dollar is the opposite.

 

[ralfy + 55]

10 hours ago, 0R0 said:

You are almost getting it right, the US had acted against oil countries that tried to get out of the petrodollar deal. Even Russia. But that is not all that was going on. The dollar fell like a turd out of a steer after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange system and the drop of the gold exchange standard. The dollar did not strengthen in the 1970s it went from 300 yen to the dollar to 100, 4 Mark to the dollar to 2. 

But the dollar drop really had nothing to do with what was going on in the US financial system. It had everything to do with a wild west Eurodollar system which was expanding dollar credit by leaps and bounds in the 1970s and 1980s as Italy Japan Spain Korea and other inflators exported their inflation into the Eurodollar system and accumulated reserves.

Those reserves provided the country's banks with reserve access and thus liquidity, and therefore could lever that up in their Eurodollar operations. They used it to fund anything anywhere. The EM boom of the 1980s and 1990s, the FDI into China and its commodity suppliers. And US housing.

Reserve accumulation till 2000, the start of the China bubble in force.

The rates of Monetary inflation of key economies

And again, including the post 2000 China bubble period, we look at reserves. China (in blue) on the right scale along with Japan (deep red)

Those reserves operate in the Eurodollar system the same way as Fed reserves feed the US bank system. It is leveraged up and lent and then re-lent again. It flows into the highest risk adjusted yield targets in the Asian Tigers through the 1990s, into the commodity makers in the 1970s,and again in the 2000s, and into the US from the 1990s. Where flows from the export of inflation from central banks into the Eurodollar system caused large capital flows that overwhelmed the US financial system swamping domestic bank financing, they dropped to just intermediaries between US borrowers and Eurodollar lenders.

Part of this flow was the petrodollar flow from US imports which died in 2015, and US corporate unrepatriated non US profits, which reversed flow in 2018. Which were recirculated into the US to provide tier 1 capital for the dollar business of non US banks.

China has stopped accumulating reserves since it has suffered capital flight since before it opened its financial markets briefly 5 years ago. And it has not stopped, with exporters refusing to repatriate their dollar revenue. That is in part what is causing the dollar crunch on top of the factors above.

The entire system of the Eurodollar is unraveling due to a lack of cash and absence of tier 1 dollar collateral, Meaning a desperate need for dollar cash whether in direct accounts repos, and most of all in dollar Swaps, and treasuries and mortgage backeds. .

And behind all that are large amounts of credit (such as a global derivatives market with a notional value of over a quadrillion dollars) going against simple physics: peak oil and generally limits to growth.

 

[ralfy + 55]

8 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

Notice in the two graphs I left, the cyclical nature of "recessions" in gray.  The argument used in the creation of the Federal Reserve was that only a Federal Reserve Bank could still the boom and bust cycles that had plagued the US economy for the past hundred years. Of course that was a lie, the cycles are on a decadal oscillation and interestingly, the Trump election and subsequent economic miracle ruined the planned for recession that was supposed to happen in 2018-19. 

My banking thread was meant to disabuse the notion people still have that the Fed and every Central Bank somehow exist to keep things on some even keel. Nothing could be further from the truth, the plan is, was and always will be for the owners of those banks (and they're all privately owned) to manipulate things so they get your valuable assets and you end up with their worthless paper. You get to find out just how worthless when they throw a recession your way. 

Indeed, a Fed that's essentially a private consortium of Wall Street banks, and the global economy itself controlled by the same:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354-500-revealed-the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world/

 

[Strangelovesurfing + 737]

5 hours ago, ralfy said:

Actually, the conventional wisdom about the dollar is the opposite.

 

Not spent much time in the US have you? I’ve been hearing about hyper-inflation being just around the corner forever