How did it take that long after everything the US has done in the last 20 years. In what exactly is/was the US a world leader? Making money? It sure wasn't justice, Healthcare, infrastructure, human rights, poverty, homelessness etc. List goes on and on.
You’re clearly not following USA network news. I cringe every time I hear (on center left leaning MSNBC) “American exceptionalism”, “leader of the free world”, “the most powerful man/country in the world”, or “the greatest nation in the world”. They clearly don’t get how far their idea of the USA is from that of the rest of the world of them. If it wasn’t for Hollywood propaganda, it’d be even worse.
Europeans' trust in US as world leader collapses during pandemic
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Re: Europeans' trust in US as world leader collapses during pandemic
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re clearly not following USA network news. I cringe every time I hear (on center left leaning MSNBC) “American exceptionalism”, “leader of the free world”, “the most powerful man/country in the world”, or “the greatest nation in the world”. They clearly don’t get how far their idea of the USA is from that of the rest of the world of them. If it wasn’t for Hollywood propaganda, it’d be even worse.
I’ll bet that the news in the USSR was uniformly optimistic right up to the end. When it all falls apart, it will happen quickly. I don’t watch network tv but it sounds like there are going to be a lot of very surprised boomers out there.
Re: Europeans' trust in US as world leader collapses during pandemic
#13I think it would be better to compare opinions now to already-surveyed opinions before the pandemic; it's easy to say that you lost trust during the pandemic even if you had low trust before it started.
Re: Europeans' trust in US as world leader collapses during pandemic
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ll bet that the news in the USSR was uniformly optimistic right up to the end. When it all falls apart, it will happen quickly. I don’t watch network tv but it sounds like there are going to be a lot of very surprised boomers out there.
I think it’s the clash with reality that might be transformative. For good or bad.
They regularly spend over an hour discussing news with the goal of, in essence, being upset about whatever story is making the US look bad today. They normally split Democrat and Republican, but as of now they want to rally behind Trump, because they really want to believe he did the right thing in the pandemic - despite also being worried to death over the virus, keeping up with the science, and avoiding as much contact as they can. They blame the news for trying far too hard to make Trump look bad. The BLM protesters are likewise characterized as "violent looters" with whatever the newspaper reports being swallowed up(despite also not trusting the paper with respect to discussing Trump). The comparisons to "Russia and China"(essentially one word) are immediate when it comes to toppling monuments - "next antifa will start saying they are in power" etc. In essence, they started working overtime to excuse the system rather than try to move with the times. They're feeling marginalized and foreign with many of these topics and that scares them even more.
I mostly stay quiet because otherwise it would be a 2v1 discussion and the time and energy they spend on this stuff vastly exceeds what I'm going to bother with. I don't think they are healthy with it, but I can't drag them away from it either. Hopefully things go well and they simply have to change their outlook to a puzzled "who ever would have known that it might get better after this?"
Re: Europeans' trust in US as world leader collapses during pandemic
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it’s the clash with reality that might be transformative. For good or bad.
Being able to observe my own boomer parents firsthand, they really want to buy whatever story makes the country look good. They look online but only within a certain set of conservative commentators and more recently a bit of foreign news(Sky Australia). But they have a definite kind of answer they're seeking. They regularly spend over an hour discussing news with the goal of, in essence, being upset about whatever s…
Re: Europeans' trust in US as world leader collapses during pandemic
#16How did it take that long after everything the US has done in the last 20 years. In what exactly is/was the US a world leader? Making money? It sure wasn't justice, Healthcare, infrastructure, human rights, poverty, homelessness etc. List goes on and on.
Also, most of the issues you mention are domestic issues, so many Europeans don't really see how badly the US handles them. But internationally, the US has strongly supported Europe over the past 75 years, and also acted as a kind of world police in a way that rarely hurt European countries, and when it did, it was on an issue where the US was correct.
Until the Iraq war. That was the big betrayal. But then Obama was elected, and Europeans felt like Bush was just a fluke, and things would be normal again from then on.
And then Trump was elected.
Maybe Europeans are a bit slow in accepting inconvenient reality, but it's finally hit home.
Re: Europeans' trust in US as world leader collapses during pandemic
#17Before coronavirus I thought that the dominance of the United States internationally would last another 20 or 30 years, but now it seems that it might all fall apart much sooner. It wouldn’t surprise me if the US dollar lost its position as the world reserve currency as the result of all this, especially given that the fed is directly propping up the whole financial system with trillions of dollars out of thin air. T…
Technically it was directly the result of our government not wanting to deal with the issue and making it political rather than scientific. Trump could have easily said wear a mask, follow the guidelines, let's take our time to reopen, let's make sure that we pump additional money into the system sooner rather than later, because if we will end up pumping it anyway, but this way we avoid foreclosures, rent evictions, homelessness, and all of that will lead to poverty and increased lawlessness.
There's plenty that could have been done to contain the virus. Yes America is much larger in geography and population than Europe, but Italy, Spain, Germany, all have shown that you can contain the virus.
If our leadership actually united around what was best for America rather than fighting each other, we could have certainly improved where we are today. By the end of this week we will be hitting 75k new cases and we are full bore into the second wave.
Yet, the President still won't put on a mask in public, won't call people out on it, it's gotten so bad that even his lackey VP Pence has finally said it's a good idea to put the mask on.
America has become extremely divided and it is because of the media. On both sides. You have FoxNews that paints a narrative that ignores all science, and you have the left media that is all too happy to jump on any little issue that makes Trump look bad and heighten it out of proportion and then as a result the right fights back even harder.
Re: Europeans' trust in US as world leader collapses during pandemic
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it’s the clash with reality that might be transformative. For good or bad.
Being able to observe my own boomer parents firsthand, they really want to buy whatever story makes the country look good. They look online but only within a certain set of conservative commentators and more recently a bit of foreign news(Sky Australia). But they have a definite kind of answer they're seeking. They regularly spend over an hour discussing news with the goal of, in essence, being upset about whatever s…
Re: Europeans' trust in US as world leader collapses during pandemic
#19Before coronavirus I thought that the dominance of the United States internationally would last another 20 or 30 years, but now it seems that it might all fall apart much sooner. It wouldn’t surprise me if the US dollar lost its position as the world reserve currency as the result of all this, especially given that the fed is directly propping up the whole financial system with trillions of dollars out of thin air. T…
When people think of currency, they tend to focus on the supply side (monetary policy) and forget to look at the demand side (necessary liquidity).
There is as much dollar-denominated debt outside the US as there is within. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, the crisis is creating more demand for US dollars, not less. This is why the Fed expanded the "dollar swap line" program. The "eurodollar" system is often overlooked, yet one of the most important drivers of the global economy.
Compare the policy of the Federal Reserve with the ECB (Eurozone) and the PBOC (China). And you will see why not only will the US dollar not collapse, in the coming years it may get so strong it could lead to a new Plaza Accord.
The Central Bank of Norway had to restart intervention in foreign exchange markets for the first time in decades. Norway, the #1 most developed nation in the world, experienced a dose of monetary reality on the 22nd of March (look up NOKUSD).
The so-called "rising power" of China is as marketable as it is absurd. Every other quarter there is a story of the PBOC injecting liquidity and lowering the capitalization requirement for banks. Needless to say, the Yuan still pegs to the US dollar for a reason.
Public opinion and mainstream media are divorced from financial reality, and we don't know if this is due to hysteria or sheer incompetence.
The surprise comes with the realization that the noisy political infighting of the American political class is orthogonal to almost everything.
The US may be a disaster, and simultaneously be the best in the world. Trump may be an idiot, and simultaneously be the smartest in DC.
Moral posturing isn't a substitute for good banking.
Re: Europeans' trust in US as world leader collapses during pandemic
#20The EU should put on their big boy pants and forge their own path independent of the US .. WW2 and the cold war are relics of the past.