291–300 of 308 posts
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But isn't sinking a civilian vessel itself an express path to war? The RMS Lusitania and the US's entry into WW1 spring to mind.
If the nations involved want it to be one, sure. There have been incidents of militaries shooting down passenger jets, which were all but swept under the rug.
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You are right. Forcing “non essential” small businesses to close, stopping all events, closing churches, parks, playgrounds, schools, making it illegal to walk on “the dry part of the sand”, disallowing dying people to have visitors, forcing hospitals to stop taking elective surgery, arresting people sitting on benches,etc… these all just ordinary things… right? Definitely not a “lockdown”, right? What is a lockdown…
A lockdown actually keeps you in your home. And as I explained to you above, nobody except you is in any form talking about lockdowns. Put the strawman down already, it's starting to get worn on the edges.
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If the nations involved want it to be one, sure. There have been incidents of militaries shooting down passenger jets, which were all but swept under the rug.
This sounds plausible but can you provide examples/links to wiki pages etc?
Korean air lines flight over Russia, us shooting down Iranian jet in the gulf, Russia shooting down Malaysian air over Ukraine, Iran shooting down a Ukrainian jet over itself.
I presume gp means Not swept under the rug in terms of information suppression, swept under the rug in terms of very little diplomatic fallout
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After I got turned on to Petar Zeihan the first thing I did was went back and watched his older talks, after all plenty of people can make good sounding predictions, first you want to see what he was saying before to see his track record. I found a talk form 2018 in which he said there are going to be 3 major bush wars of global import, Ukraine-Russia, Iran-Saudi Arabia, and China-Indian Ocean. So far Ukraine has pan…
He predicted the Iran-Saudi Arabia conflict thats been going on for decades? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Saudi_Arabia_pr...
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To safely park cash. Think government securities.
This is correct. If you have $100B, what are your options? 1) Risky return-yielding instruments, like stocks and bonds 2) Non-liquid assets, like land 3) A Scrooge McDuck giant vault full of cash 4) ... and so on. In many cases, a negative interest account works better than any of the above. Sweden was the first to employ them in 2009, with an interest rate of -0.25%. The world didn't implode, as people predicted. If…
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Correlation may not imply causality here. Many of the most successful free market economies embody the concept of "was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple." The United States and Canada had relatively easy access to territorial expansion, which offered them huge amounts of fertile, temperate land and almost any natural resource needed. They also started with a high-immigrant and relatively educated populati…
Russia has even more natural resources. Doesn't seem to help. > if you dropped (say) the American Founders in 1917 Moscow or 1948 Peking, would they do any better? Absolutely. See Hong Kong, Japan & Germany after WW2, Chile does better when they go free market, does worse when they veer back left, etc. South American countries have vast resources, but little prosperity. US immigration consisted of people in abject po…
The success was astounding. We're talking child mortality being halved and poverty rates dropping off a cliff, in only a few years. Of course, US businesses did not like it very much and US imperialism shut it down in violent fashion, and Guatemala has been an unstable and violent place ever since, with a long string of brutal dictators.
What is "funny" in a deeply grim and sad sense is that this was at once socialism (i.e. means of production to the people who work, rather than a separation between those who work and those who own), but also very much the American Dream: a plot of land which was your own, for you to work, and where you own the fruits of your labour. You, not a king, not a robber baron, you. That's why the violent stampdown by the US is especially disgusting and hypocritical.
As for Chile, it had a democratically elected left-wing government. Even if Pinochet's economic policy turned out better (which it by most measures did not), NOTHING can justify a violent operation to overthrow that government, to the tune of tens of thousands of tortures and deaths, to implant one that pursues your favoured brand of economics.
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This is correct. If you have $100B, what are your options? 1) Risky return-yielding instruments, like stocks and bonds 2) Non-liquid assets, like land 3) A Scrooge McDuck giant vault full of cash 4) ... and so on. In many cases, a negative interest account works better than any of the above. Sweden was the first to employ them in 2009, with an interest rate of -0.25%. The world didn't implode, as people predicted. If…
People also forget that banks are only FDIC insured up to a certain amount, generally. So if you have like $1b, though unlikely, there are many reasons to not keep it in cash.
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This is correct. If you have $100B, what are your options? 1) Risky return-yielding instruments, like stocks and bonds 2) Non-liquid assets, like land 3) A Scrooge McDuck giant vault full of cash 4) ... and so on. In many cases, a negative interest account works better than any of the above. Sweden was the first to employ them in 2009, with an interest rate of -0.25%. The world didn't implode, as people predicted. If…
> That's enough to push me to look for other places to stash my money Yep, you take your $100B and invest it in the US capital markets. Does nothing for Sweden's economy other than make it comparatively less competitive.
If I borrow $1M in USD to buy a 11M SEK property in Sweden, and the dollar goes up, I'm drowning underwater. If the dollar goes down, I'm sitting pretty.
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The allure of home ownership in America is the fixed mortgage rate among other things. (Rent goes up each year, without question). I purchased a home at the start of this mess with an 2.6%. Right now it's hovering around 6%. I would say I MASSIVELY lucked out. Does Canada not fix the rate? I am confused -
No, the US is the outlier with the 30 year fixed rates. Canada not only has variable rate mortgages, but instead of the rate just adjusting, they essentially have 5 year mortgages, with a balloon payment at the end. If you can't roll it over into a new load (say because your debt to income is now too high), you're screwed.
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This sounds plausible but can you provide examples/links to wiki pages etc?
Off the top of my head: Korean air lines flight over Russia, us shooting down Iranian jet in the gulf, Russia shooting down Malaysian air over Ukraine, Iran shooting down a Ukrainian jet over itself. I presume gp means Not swept under the rug in terms of information suppression, swept under the rug in terms of very little diplomatic fallout