861–870 of 913 posts
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Spanish here: I wouldn't go to war even for my own country, imagine for the likes of France or Germany.
80 years ago we were the bad guys, and far more brave people than me, from other countries, stepped up to curb the evil. This time us Germans need to be on the right side.
Your country is the second largest weapons exporter to Israel.
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Your linked page doesn't actually appear to render any sort of compelling argument for this. In fact - the entire argument seems to more accurately hinge the conditional left off the main saying, so the full description is: "Bad money drives out good if they exchange for the same price." But that requires a legal structure that enforces the disparity, and the summary of the whole thing basically boils down to: --- If…
In practice, everyone wants to spend their dollars, not their gold, or their bitcoin, or their Euros, and so dollars it will be. What else is there that anyone both with pay with and will be accepted by the other party?
No one cares that everyone wants to spend their dollars. They care whether the seller takes them, and is forced to take them at the same value as more cherished coin.
There is no functional mechanism to enforce this internationally - we already see the value of the dollar declining.
It's entrenched, so I expect the withdrawal to be relatively slow for the same reason you don't rip the bandaid off - you avoid a lot of pain. But there is nothing stopping the bandaid from coming off.
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80 years ago we were the bad guys, and far more brave people than me, from other countries, stepped up to curb the evil. This time us Germans need to be on the right side.
> This time us Germans need to be on the right side Your country is the second largest weapons exporter to Israel.
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From Article 1, Section 8: Powers of Congress: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; To borrow Money on the credit of the United States ; To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the s…
There's no serious argument that a central bank is unconstitutional facially is not the same as There's no serious argument that the Federal Reserve is unconstitutional as applied. The latter is certainly debatable, especially insofar as the fed (in their own words) claims to operate independently when in fact the constitution delegates the powers you cited to congress and the execution of powers of congress to the e…
The president appoints the board. The board has a clear charter mandated by congress. It’s a common, functional and well accepted governance methodology.
The point of having a long tenured Federal Reserve board is similar to why Senators have long terms. You don’t want a failing presidency to compel politically expedient actions that damage the nation.
We formed the federal reserve because of the long history of disastrous political interventions and responses in the 19th century, most notable the Andrew Jackson’s (a DJT favorite) panic of 1837 (and Van Buren’s bungled responses, Grant’s Panic of 1873 and Grover Cleveland’s panic of 1893.
The madmen calling the shots here are well aware of this and are purposefully trying to drive the US and world economy off a cliff, which will enrich themselves and their patrons.
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When societies can't solve their internal problems internally they tend to turn outward for solutions. Everybody could see the long string of preventable phenomena leading up to this: financial deregulation, decline of civic institutions, high levels of deaths of despair, rampant individualism, unchecked commerce, rising internal violence, rising inequality, rotten media landscape, open political corruption (not in t…
How often has a decaying empire been reset without either war or violent revolution?
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What the guy below said - the UK would have become more like switzerland, much richer, not had a lot of its historic architecture destroyed and two generations of young men slaughtered. I think it's actually really difficult to make the case for entering either war
What makes you think that the UK would fare like Switzerland and not like Norway, who also tried staying neutral? What makes you think a Europe with, for example, Nazi Germany as hegemon would be safer for the UK, or that the UK would have a choice in fighting or not? My point is that projecting some future based on choices not taken is purely historical fiction and there is no reason to believe anything would go the…
Hitler was very willing to cut a deal with Britain in 1939 and in fact supposedly was extremely upset when Britain declared war (as he should have been, it was a bad scenario for him as well).
Now could he have been trusted? Perhaps not, but bear in mind the UK in 1939 still had the world's most powerful navy and as an island would have been very difficult to invade.
I would argue that the British elite's obsession with playing Risk and thinking they have a divine right to decide the political makeup of continental europe was and is pure hubris, narcissism and stupidity.
Leave it up to france, germany and russia to sort out who runs the north european plain, that's none of our business
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Hopes or morality do not strictly dictate power as much as we might wish it to be true.
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…
As pointed out you have built your worldview of drastically misunderstood table stakes.
I do agree Europe should become first mover but they are stuck in a world where they were a dependent and weakened non player for so long now they forgot how.
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When societies can't solve their internal problems internally they tend to turn outward for solutions. Everybody could see the long string of preventable phenomena leading up to this: financial deregulation, decline of civic institutions, high levels of deaths of despair, rampant individualism, unchecked commerce, rising internal violence, rising inequality, rotten media landscape, open political corruption (not in t…
How often has a decaying empire been reset without either war or violent revolution?
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I guess because gold isn't created by decree?
Supply is only one half of value. The demand for gold is almost entirely speculative, whereas dollars can be directly used for almost anything.
[1] -(Let's exclude intentional market manipulations like if a world leader were to buy a bunch of gold and then saber rattle to drive up fear).
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In practice, everyone wants to spend their dollars, not their gold, or their bitcoin, or their Euros, and so dollars it will be. What else is there that anyone both with pay with and will be accepted by the other party?
Again - you skip the full statement of the economic principle at hand. No one cares that everyone wants to spend their dollars. They care whether the seller takes them, and is forced to take them at the same value as more cherished coin. There is no functional mechanism to enforce this internationally - we already see the value of the dollar declining. It's entrenched, so I expect the withdrawal to be relatively slow…
Hence "In practice".
To the meat of your argument: sure, there's no mechanism to coerce it internationally, but it's self-perpetuating. Everybody could quit using dollars tomorrow. But they won't.
> we already see the value of the dollar declining.
This is not clearly the case. Its value relative to other currencies (as of this month), while subject to cyclical fluctuations, is on par for the post-Covid cycles and higher than pre-2020 levels [0].