271–280 of 280 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
China has large coal reserves, enough for many decades. "China, the world’s largest coal consumer, has domestic reserves of coal to last the next 50 years, according to annual reserves data from the Ministry of Natural Resources cited by Bloomberg. At current rates of domestic production, China also has crude oil reserves that could last for at least 18 more years, according to the ministry" https://oilprice.com/Late…
Wow. Only enough reserves to be measured in decades? Once it's gone it's gone. Genuine Carboniferous coal, one day a thousand years from now, might be a rare museum item! I have a habit of thinking about history in very long terms, and that just does not sit right with me. That kind of thinking (oh we have enough for decades, let it rip!) happens, and the decades pass, and time inevitably is less kind to the descenda…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
China has large coal reserves, enough for many decades. "China, the world’s largest coal consumer, has domestic reserves of coal to last the next 50 years, according to annual reserves data from the Ministry of Natural Resources cited by Bloomberg. At current rates of domestic production, China also has crude oil reserves that could last for at least 18 more years, according to the ministry" https://oilprice.com/Late…
Wow. Only enough reserves to be measured in decades? Once it's gone it's gone. Genuine Carboniferous coal, one day a thousand years from now, might be a rare museum item! I have a habit of thinking about history in very long terms, and that just does not sit right with me. That kind of thinking (oh we have enough for decades, let it rip!) happens, and the decades pass, and time inevitably is less kind to the descenda…
In historical terms, it took about 60 milion years to form this coal layers. Humanity will burn them in few centuries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous
From the point of view of energy. The conversion of solar energy into coal is very inefficient, tree need energy to reproduce, only a part of plant is converted into coal, other organisms consuming plant matter, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That 40T$s will never be repaid. So what kind of monetary reset are we looking at? nonlinear as Luke says or gradual as Lyn says in the following video "We're Past The Point Of No Return" | Luke Gromen and Lyn Alden https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoAuuJyBg6E
> That 40T$s will never be repaid. Yes, and? A while ago the UK government refinanced bonds from WW1, the South Sea Bubble, Napoleonic and Crimean wars: * https://www.theguardian.com/business/blog/2014/oct/31/paying... Has the UK really experienced any issues related to not ever paying back its debt? (IMHO, most of the UK's problems can probably be sourced back to Thatcherism and more recently Brexit.) The only way f…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes iran is a murderous regime, but thats not a get out of jail free for either failing to do logistics, plan for the enemy you face, or failing to properly vet your targets in a war of choice. > And no, Trump can’t and isn’t dumb enough to start seizing assets of another country. I mean Maduro would like a word. He literally kidnapped a world leader to gain access to a country's oil system. Then there is the agitati…
> Yes iran is a murderous regime, but thats not a get out of jail free for either failing to do logistics, plan for the enemy you face, or failing to properly vet your targets in a war of choice. Sure, but it’s brought up as though the US is going around arbitrarily bombing children and schools and it’s simply false. In wars, mistakes happen. In the case of the US it was a mistake and we owned up to it on someways (w…
yes he is. but since when has US led regime change been positive for the country?
Also trump is also a convicted criminal, so is he ripe for extradition? Thats the point right, it creates a precedent. Rules mean shit all, might is right.
> Read more about European bonds then.
The European countries are not trying to bring up the value of the Yen, or buyback longterm bonds with homeopathic amounts of shortterm bonds. The treasury cannot work against the fed, because the fed has way more control over the money supply.
> We would lose far more than a whatever the Dutch gold is worth
The iran war has already lost far more than the Dutch gold is worth.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
True, except you're being way too easy on those other currencies. Currencies need to be issued by groups able to guarantee international trade, otherwise there's no point. RMB - maybe, but nobody sane trusts China to not immediately change priorities on a dime EUR - imho (much) less chance than RMB, but they're using a hack: of EUR is a massive entity and internally there's no choice. Literally not allowed (due to ta…
Pretty confident it’s going to be EUR, note how they dealt with Trump tariff’s shenanigans. Took it slowly, and decidedly, sure let the countries say words and what not, but at the end of the day it’s decided by the EU. Just one persons opinion.
Given the history of economic sanctions (what the EU is doing) ... of course people don't know that history, but the TLDR is that nearly always economic sanctions are a prelude to war. They don't just not work. In many cases they cause wars. WW1 was caused by economic sanctions (and the scale of EU economic sanctions is 100x bigger than what caused WW1), and often the economic sanctions on Germany after WW1 are generally thought to be the big reason for WW2. It makes sense from a game theory perspective: if a government, whose power is fundamentally based on force, lets economic sanctions convince them, they will be attacked by their own people. So they simply cannot give in, and historically that's what you indeed mostly see: when a country is targeted by economic sanctions, it's government usually decides to attack.
The EUR is imposing very large scale sanctions on ... essentially everyone. Russia and China most obviously of course, but sanctions are so widely used by the EU you can literally say it's being used against everyone from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, or geographically from Paraguay to North Korea. And why is the EU doing this? Exactly the reason Trump is doing it: sanctions are "power without needing parliament to approve the budget for anything".
The fear is: the historically most likely outcome of what the EU is doing, what EUR is being used for, is another very large scale war.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
China's government is "very stable" until it's not. As a society, China has a long history but the central government has essentially collapsed or experienced violent revolution in 1976, 1969, 1949, 1927, 1911, 1850, 1796, 1644, etc. Perhaps we have reached "the end of history" and the Chinese Communist Party will now maintain stable control forever. Or maybe it will all fall apart again in a few decades due to resou…
The loss of a succession strategy with an elderly leader at the helm seems like a major issue.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
California alone grows about half of the US's nuts, fruits, and vegetables. Both the West Coast and rest of the country could reconfigure production to serve themselves if desired.
Californian here. I live in hope.
That way, we can get to keep our beaches, and continue to hire migrant labor from the rest of America to help during harvest season.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Switzerland has 4 of the 15 biggest gold refineries in the world in 2026 https://vinodvsharma.com/top-15-biggest-gold-refineries-in-t...
Yeah, I know most of the gold that goes to Europe from the US usually gets refined in Switzerland. I have no idea what portion of the total cost that is to move gold from US to Switzerland. I imagine it’s less than the insured carrier service.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. Gold is fungible only within the same custodian. Many people buy (normally small) gold bars only to discover that they can't sell them back by the same price.
That is the spread which the gold dealers have to make a profit. But bullion is bullion anywhere you turn and no matter to who you sell. No gold dealer will turn down investment grade gold.
For sure. As long as you pay the laboratory fee up front to prove that the thing you have is investment grade...