561–570 of 913 posts
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Venezuela would like a word
Well, that's just it. America has not so brazenly claimed territory for such selfish reasons in well over 100 years. Which is proof enough that America is pulling up the ladder on Pax Americana.
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Interestingly, there seems to be more good will and amiable vibes between EU nationalities than within the US even. Even being enemies for a thousand years, I don't doubt that Swedish and Danish men would go to war for one another, or French and German. It's complicated yes, but the continent is more unified in spirit than it may seem to an outsider.
German here: I'd go to war (and likely will, with how it's looking currently) for any country that shares our values and is an ally or friend, that's being attacked by an evil force such as russia. And that of course includes my french brothers to the west.
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The number of Trump apologists lunatics who do not seem to understand what MAD was about is staggering. Industrial scale warfare isn't some secret forgotten by accident. The current American power-trip fantasy delusion is rightfully scaring the shit out of people, and the scary thing is the people who aren't scared. It's reaching the point that I think the best thing is for Germany to detonate a nuke between the US a…
Germany is a non-nuclear-weapon state. Our bombs are there yes, but if you use one of our bombs without our approval there will be hell to pay. An invasion of Greenland will be all but guaranteed. Whether Germany will retain its military the next day is questionable.
Why exactly do you think Germany is a non-nuclear weapon state?
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Retailers don't accept crypto not because of the technology so much as the fact it is a capital gains event every time you transfer crypto, which means both the buyer and seller are now forced to keep a log of their gains/losses against the dollar everytime they buy a pack of gum. Obviously that's extremely impractical and at best you're hiring a 3rd party to streamline that for you. It's a clusterfuck at tax time (e…
You do not need to report a $0 capital gain when using stablecoins. Sure crypto can seem like the wild West with CPAs having different opinions on what little official guidance is out there but that one is simply absurd.
You are required to report capital gains and losses from stablecoins on your tax return (though it’s likely that your gain will be close to 0).
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As time goes on, fewer people are alive that predate the EU and more people will perceive it as a lasting institution. Additionally, we've now seen the EU survive the departure of a major economic power (the UK). More people are certainly willing to believe in the stability of the EU now. Another major currency is the Yuan, and some countries may be as willing to trade in Yuan to improve relations with China, so perh…
The major benefit of the US Dollar is that you can do things with it. Between export controls, currency controls, laws on foreign ownership, etc, china can pay me all the RMB in the world. I still can’t do a whole lot with it.
If you are in a country or area with a large Chinese population, you can usually pay easily in RMB with Alipay.
If you use Visa and Mastercard, you are subject to US regulations, sanctions, and embargoes. Many alternative payment processor exist, PIX in Brazil, UPI in India, etc.
There are several systems in the EU: Wero, Bizum, BLIK It is urgent that Europeans coordinate to ensure the interoperability of these systems and reduce the influence of Visa and Mastercard.
In the event of conflict, this will be the first service to be cut in order to disrupt European countries.
The US already use it for coercing European politicians : https://www.courthousenews.com/eu-strongly-condemns-us-sanct...
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I don’t think that’s feasible because China’s capital markets aren’t secure for foreign investors and never will be unless China changes the very thing that they want to be. They’d have to open their markets, be open to direct foreign investment, no more China-only ownership of companies, and no more artificial devaluation of the Yuan. Also the US capital market is huge. Surprisingly huge, even, and there is very lit…
> no more China-only ownership of companies They already allow this somewhat. Tesla's Gigafactory in Shanghai is fully owned by Tesla, and is the first wholly foreign-owned car manufacturing plant in China, operating without a required local joint venture partner.
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I partially agree. But the EU is in a pretty unstable state as incomplete government structure over a collection of peers. "Unstable" does not mean it's going to fall apart. It means it's going to fall apart or coalesce into a single thing (a new country). Or maybe a little of both (a new country with some fringe members leaving). It might not be in 5 or 10 years but it's inevitable. It's not going to operate like th…
I wouldn't describe integrating further to the point of becoming more like the US as "unstable". And that's the most likely outcome, which should make the EU more trustworthy as a partner, not less. EDIT: by "like the US" I mean federalization. This video explains it well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnarX3HPruA
Also, when the colonies united, the government they agreed on was by today's standards extremely small and decentralized and there was absolutely no welfare state. Revenue was mostly from tariffs on imports with zero income tax. Merging modern European governments would be a massive undertaking in comparison. And the wealth levels between countries are so lopsided that any such merger would mean massive transfer payments out of the rich countries to the poor. And what about tax rates? Low tax countries will not like this one bit. When the US colonies merged under the constitution, you could very truthfully go to the average citizen of any colony and say "basically you won't even notice any changes." Whereas for the EU, you have to say to the voters "your taxes will go up and we will now be sending $100 billion Euros per year to people in other countries."
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German here: I'd go to war (and likely will, with how it's looking currently) for any country that shares our values and is an ally or friend, that's being attacked by an evil force such as russia. And that of course includes my french brothers to the west.
Finnish reservist here in Germany. Ready to go. Prost!
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What does it mean that the Federal Reserve is "independent within the government"? The Federal Reserve, like many other central banks, is an independent government agency The federal reserve calls themselves "within the government" and a government agency. Isn't it fraud (and indeed wire fraud) to falsely represent yourself as a government agency to induce a financial transaction? https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/…
> Isn't it fraud (and indeed wire fraud) to falsely represent yourself as a government agency to induce a financial transaction? Hmm what transaction it induces? You'll need to check the law that created the Fed. Maybe it makes sure that doing whatever the fed needs to do the job is not a crime
So either you are lying, or the fed is lying, and if the latter your position is that they need to lie to do their job (per your dismissive quip) -- much of which involves transactions of banks drawing on master accounts which are held in part in full faith that they are doing business with a government agency.
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> I believe that the near-term de-dollarization isn't as much trust erosion as it is a tool to provide monetary penalty for behaving in unpredictable ways. How is that different from trust erosion?
The difference is emotionally based retaliation vs. reassessing risk. And it's about money, so it's for sure not about emotions. The financial world isn't run on anger and emotions, like the White House.
Finance is as rational under the hood as the Vatican's books.