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Deutsche Bank becomes first foreign yuan clearing bank in Europe

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Re: Deutsche Bank becomes first foreign yuan clearing bank in Europe

#443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the big difference is that China is not bombing anyone, and causing chaos to it's allies..

Except 1. Illegally occupying Tibet and cleansing the region 2. Occupying and cleansing several regions like Uyghur or Hong Kong 3. Wars with neighbors like India and conflicts with all neighbors except North Korea 4. indirectly arming Russia 5. Taiwan If China had a fraction of American power, they would be making life miserable for a lot of countries.

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Re: Deutsche Bank becomes first foreign yuan clearing bank in Europe

#444
post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstood something: that 5 "PE" I'm speaking of isn't gold, but the entire global reserves of USD. That has a tremendous impact on the economy of the world and is arguably the sole source of the US' economic power. The financialization is 'worth' many times more than 5PE, but it has very little connection to the "real economy."

Foreign USD reserve holdings have very little to do with the US' economic power. Where are you coming up with this nonsense? Even if every other country sold off their USD reserves we would still the same assets, same population, same intellectual capital, same natural resources, same legal system, etc.

The value of currencies when unbacked by anything is solely a product of supply and demand. The USD being used as a standard for trade drives significant demand which helps to stabilize the value of the dollar, and also aids in things like our ability to export our inflation (as well as threaten other nations with sanctions/etc). However that demand itself is not inherent, and only maintained with significant effort - and having the USD as the standard for settlement of trade has been a major part of this game.

Even the gradual decline in the dollar dominance is causing significant issues with exporting inflation, amongst other things we used to be able to take for granted. It's also the reason that long-term interest rates on government debt are now hovering around 5%. As demand for the dollar declines, the interest the government needs to offer to make US debt enticing grows. When paired with deficit spending you get a vicious cycle: you need more money because you're getting drowned in debt, but you now pay more for that money which means you need even more money.

So for instance you know the US budget, right? Those thousands of pages Congress agrees to spend each year? Education, military, infrastructure, and all of those things we typically associate with government spending? That's only discretionary spending. Lots of other things, like interest on the debt, is considered mandatory and spent automatically. We're now reaching the point where interest payments will soon be costing us more than the entire discretionary budget. And that's in the current situation where the USD still has quite high demand. You just hand-waving away everything that sustains that demand would cause a catastrophic and rapid collapse in the US economy.

Re: Deutsche Bank becomes first foreign yuan clearing bank in Europe

#445
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China with [EVs|Solar|BESS|Turbines] will replace all of the fossil fuel countries (US, middle-east, Russia) I dont agree with china having the same position as the FF exporters. Simply because with renewables, you export the means to produce energy rather than the energy itself. So in terms of monetary value, china will be selling alot less panels than the FF countries sell oil. And other countries can also manufa…

Coal in China has many applications beyond simply burning it to produce electricity. Coal 2025 report "China consumes 30% more coal than the rest of the world put together. It also produces more coal than all other countries combined, and it is the world’s largest importer. This dominance by a single country makes global coal markets very dependent on developments in China, notably those related to economic growth, g…

What this means is China can flatten the demand much faster as they have a way to create synthetic oil. They may continue to buy oil as long as prices are reasonable.

This reminds me of The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power Book by Daniel Yergin. Germany created synthetic oil but it was too expensive, resource-intensive, they couldn't make enough of it economically at the scale they needed. They had no choice but to go to war for fossil fuels which they don't have access to.

I wonder how the unit economics are working out for China.

Re: Deutsche Bank becomes first foreign yuan clearing bank in Europe

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mr. Sanjay Mehta, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were absolutely necessary. It was Japan who had attacked the US first in Pearl Harbor. Japan was not willing to surrender without both of these attacks. The attack against Iran was a necessary one. Iran was responsible for many US casualties in Iraq during the US-Iraq war. It was necessary to punish Iran for these terrorist actions. Iran is a terrorist country that funds terro…

Mr OutOfHere: I expected the pathetic excuse for the nuclear genocide of the two Japanese cities. The real reason was to frighten the Soviets. Not going to waste my time on this aspect any more: educating the wilfully ignorant and propagandised is not my job. The US triggered the Iraq/Iran war. Not just that, they supplied Saddam with precursors for chemical weapons. Later used the same as an excuse to depose him. Re…

The US is not unpredictable. It uses up its old weapons every decade so it can stock up new ones and keep defense contractors in business for modernization purposes. It's very predictable. You just don't want to be on the receiving end. The Middle East is a source of endless wars. Maybe next time it can be against the Houthis in Yemen which too are terrorists.

Re: Deutsche Bank becomes first foreign yuan clearing bank in Europe

#447
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK was a declining power that had been absolutely gutted by war and owed huge debts to the US that it had accrued to fund the war. I believe Thucydides Trap is more about the situation we have now with the US and China where both are moving from strength to strength.

I'm not really seeing the USA moving from strength to strength lately TBH. Iran is a disaster, the Navy now has 3 (or 4, depending how you count) failed warship projects in a row, economic growth outside the AI/datacenter boom has dropped to near zero and the internal political climate is polarized to the point of inactivity. Most of its traditional allies have been moving to distance themselves from the USA and worl…

AI is revolutionizing millions of white collar tasks - billions and billions of $$$$ labor requiring years of training, and making those workers wildly more productive. And its impact on robotics hasn't even started.

US is also taking leadership in space, which has deep military implications, telecomm and (maybe?) natural resources.

Lastly, it's a big mistake to write-off the US labor force and consumers, who react very quickly to change.

Re: Deutsche Bank becomes first foreign yuan clearing bank in Europe

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One consequence of the transition to renewable energy and electrified transport, is that oil imports will start to decline. And the dollar is of course the currency of choice for that. The US economy and other countries that export fossil fuels will feel the impact over the next decade or so. The energy transition might go a lot quicker than people seem to expect. Currently about 20% of global car sales is electric.…

I'll be surprised if renewables overtakes oil for energy production anytime soon. I could see nuclear doing that, but I never can get past the challenges of maintenance and replacement costs for solar panels, turbines, and especially for storage. I will be very happy to be proven wrong here over time though. New battery technology could make a big improvement. And I keep hearing that AI will give us answers to all ou…

> but I never can get past the challenges of maintenance and replacement costs for solar panels

Maintenance? Compared to fossil fuels that require a complex global supply chain just to burn the damn thing you spent so much effort digging up? And large, complex power plants with a large number of moving pieces and complex machinery? Which also require big water supplies?

Solar is the most modular, easy to install, scalable, and cheapest energy source on the planet. And dare I say most reliable, because it practically doesn’t need any major scheduled or non-scheduled maintenance over several decades, other than cleaning it like a window. And get this, once it’s installed, what are the operating costs? They just sit there, on land (which could be taken from ethanol production), any give you free electricity for 30+ years.

Other power sources seem and overly complex in comparison, and it especially seems crazy to use anything that relies on finding, digging up, shipping, and then burning fuel, when such an alternative exists.

Current battery technology is very solid, increasingly cheaper (solar+battery already cheaper than most others), and only getting better.

Re: Deutsche Bank becomes first foreign yuan clearing bank in Europe

#449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should learn about chimpanzee wars and how dolphins treat tortoises, and about the enslaving ants

> how dolphins treat tortoises Do you mean porpoises? Dolphins are not known for mistreating tortoises but porpoises.

Yes, I messed that up based on phonetic recall I think. Thanks for correcting

Re: Deutsche Bank becomes first foreign yuan clearing bank in Europe

#450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In game theory, cooperation is a dominant strategy and evolves consistently. Slave owners and other injustice committing humans often invoke "human nature" out of trying to cope with their knowledge that it is wrong but whatever trauma or other thing makes them do it anyway, to absolve themselves of agency. (To be clear, not targeting you personally here, but targeting the rhetoric and fallacy)

Cooperation is an unstable strategy. If everyone else is cooperating and not punishing defectors much, defecting is vastly better for you. If everyone else is defecting and you can cooperate with a few people, that's slightly better for you. Hence we have high-trust and low-trust societies, gatekeeping, etc.

Sure, and now compare polities which manage to keep defection to a minimum or structure the process of "defecting" to serve the polities purpose instead of being truly adversarial. Bruce Bueno de Mesquitas "the logic of political survival" and various works by daron acemogolu have the data on how much better these polities do.

If there's no pure play dominant strategy, you will always get a fraction of defectors willing to try their luck. But coopération still emerges, and the polities that manage to cooperate more still tend to survive and thrive more.

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