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Mystery jump in oil trading ahead of Trump post draws scrutiny

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191–200 of 419 posts

Re: Mystery jump in oil trading ahead of Trump post draws scrutiny

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't even need to trade oil, trading gulf country assets also works well. And rebuilding the gulf should be quite profitable if Iran blows it up and the assets will be available cheap.

> And rebuilding the gulf should be quite profitable Wait. I've heard this story before. Let's ask any of the recently "liberated" countries how that worked out for them...

Germany?

Re: Mystery jump in oil trading ahead of Trump post draws scrutiny

#192
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re just seeing the logic of US defense by offense, and the reason why the excursion was launched as it was three weeks ago. If you step back, in 1979 Iran launched a revolution that had an avowed goal of “death to America”. If the Iranians play the kinetic scenario to the bitter end, they simply are demonstrating this was not mere poetry and there never was any other off-ramp, just tactically deciding at…

The Iraq-Iran war, in the eighties....who had Iran lining up a million soldiers in battle, for eight years, has shown Iran is ready for a level of endurance, the US cant even imagine.

The same scenario played out in Vietnam. The US could never succeed because:

- the enemy was intermingled with the "friendly" civilians, and they couldn't be told apart, leading to everyone being treated brutally and potential friends becoming enemies

- the enemy was prepared to fight to the death, for years if need be, and knew they could outlast US public opinion

- the enemy knew they could prevail because of centuries of history defeating much larger opponents (in Vietnam's case, of them previously defeating France and China).

All of these same conditions would be present in a ground war in Iran, with some religious fanaticism thrown in on top.

Re: Mystery jump in oil trading ahead of Trump post draws scrutiny

#194
post #73

1. By a show of hands, who was surprised that the cataclysmic warnings of the weekend subsided into talk of diplomacy on Monday? 2. Let’s hypothesize the US gov’t or allies did pre-release this info to traders as a policy tool, inviting them to sell oil profitably, shaping the later price action . In a practical sense they may have brought more speculators to the short side than otherwise would have been there; is th…

If you run the numbers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47504505 You will see, that anything else other than a ground invasion, is guaranteed to give Iran a war victory.

Iran can block the Strait of Hormuz indefinitely. They are demanding war reparations from the United States. Since Trump won't do that, the best case scenario seems to be that one or more third parties - Europe, India, Japan, Saudi Arabia, etc. - offer(s) Iran a package of financial incentives and security assurances which convince Iran to end the war.

If only Muad'dib were here. He could find a way through.

Re: Mystery jump in oil trading ahead of Trump post draws scrutiny

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if a ground invasion goes they will destroy oil trade and everyone is screwed. The war should not be won. it should be ended before everyone loses.

and the parties that initiated it know that. they actually have no interest in geo-strategic goals. they are interested only in selfish commercial ones. The US is an oil exporting country and the people pulling the puppet strings of the dominant party in power directly benefit from high oil prices. Further, oligarchical political-economic structures also benefit from "chaos is a ladder" scenarios where their privileg…

I don't think so. I think Trump just thought it would be easy and with no repercussions.

Re: Mystery jump in oil trading ahead of Trump post draws scrutiny

#196
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that complicated. Elect a Democrat in 2028 who will nominate a strong AG, not a useless ditherer like Garland. What a disgraceful tenure he had. If he was going to take so long to bring charges he should have just avoided it. Instead he takes 3 years to bring all these charges which naturally look like election interference and as such are paused until they choke the election away and the new justice departm…

> Elect a Democrat in 2028 Does everyone still believe this will be possible/happen/allowed by the current regime?

Does poly market have a bet on if trump is president in 2029?

Re: Mystery jump in oil trading ahead of Trump post draws scrutiny

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because the dollar collapses and the property rights that enforce the wealth they gained from these transactions disappear as the government is toppled. sorry but this is such a coping mechanism, or doomsday talking. Neither is dollar collapsing nor US government is collapsing, as there has been no evidence whatsoever of any of that even moving towards happening, at least on any meaningfully predictable timescale (…

> What is the evidence of US government being "toppled" with layers and layers and layers of diverse (financial, legal, military, political, social, you name it) protections in place? I mean. Do you read the news? these protections are not working very well these days. the administration is getting away with _so much_ criminality in plain view.

Adjacent question, does the transformation of the U.S. government into a fascist regime quality as a collapse?

Re: Mystery jump in oil trading ahead of Trump post draws scrutiny

#198

I'm not sure if this is parody or not, but someone admitted to it. These days it wouldn't surprise me if it were this brazen. https://x.com/gothburz/status/2036413487530831899

That reads like it was generated by Claude. Seems like parody but I dunno.

Re: Mystery jump in oil trading ahead of Trump post draws scrutiny

#199
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most likely outcome is that they make huge paper profits that are then absolutely worthless because the dollar collapses Seems like it'd be pretty easy to diversify into inflation-protected assets after taking big profits. But I also don't see the dollar collapsing any time soon. The dollar's strength is built on the US economy, and the US economy is still one of the strongest in the world, with high productivity p…

One of the reasons behind the dollar strength is that the US has a huge population. Even if the central bank might does a bad job and make a mess of the economy, the activity of 350 million people is hard to ignore. Is it enough to _fully_ sustain the US dollar? Who knows, but at least there is a floor, even if everybody stopped using US dollars for international trade.

I mean sure but... How much do you want to hold the Yuan? China has always had a huge population but nobody considered the Yuan the same way.

Nobody thinks of the Indian rupee this way today.

Re: Mystery jump in oil trading ahead of Trump post draws scrutiny

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For starters, you're not alone in this feeling. A lot of us are very hungry for justice, and a lot of the Trump administrations current tactics are openly grappling with the reality of jailtime and restitution if they lose power. These are unusual times, and so people who are not usually inclined toward retribution are hungry for it. That said, it's hard to reconcile that with the fact that Democrats continue to be t…

>the fact that Democrats continue to be the opposition party, and failed to even imprison Trump over four years for the things he'd done I'd like to point out it was NOT the Democrats who failed us , it was Republicans in congress who failed us. I'm really not sure how you can suggest Democrats failed us, when they had 2 successful impeachments against trump, but it was Senate Republicans that voted to not remove him…

Thanks for this. It’s amazing how quickly people are trying to rewrite history.
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