Lurker > Tom_Joad

I feel ive experienced both, but thanks to external circumstances needing to pee is far more common.

The trump Latino voter thinks only violent/criminal undocumented people will be deported

Would martial law mean that Id get to work from home? >___________>

Theyre learning, whats wrong with that.

Would you prefer that their support for him went up or something?

The thing about Europe, the sneerers say, is that it is over-regulated. Mounds of red tape and punitive taxes mean there are no trillion-dollar entrepreneurial ventures in France or Germany to match Amazon, Google or Tesla. But that is not all Europe is lacking. Also absent from the continent are the broligarchs who sit atop such behemoths, some of whom have a tighter grip on power than on reality. There are thus no European Rasputins pumping untold millions into political campaigns, getting pride of place at leaders inaugurations or their own new-minted government departments to run. There are few unicorns in Europe, alas, and too little innovation. That said, there are absolutely no tech executives boasting on social media of spending their weekends feeding bits of the state into the wood chipper.

The thing about Europe is that it is indecisive, too slow to act. Every crisis requires multiple summits of the European Unions national leaders, often quibbling late into the night. The boring processes of rule by consensus can slow the EU to a crawl: it took four days and four nights of haggling to agree on the blocs latest seven-year budget, in 2020. Then again, the European state apparatus does not arbitrarily shut down every few years when political agreement over funding proves elusive, leaving millions of public employees on furlough and basic services unavailable for days or weeks. Consensus rule also means that the petulant policy tweets of one misguided politician125% tariffs on China, anyone?do not result in global stockmarkets being sent into a tailspin. The EUs top brass are unelected and sometimes unaccountable. Still, they would not dare be photographed playing a round of golf after having wiped out the savings of millions of their compatriots.

The thing about Europe is it freeloads on defence, not spending enough on its armed forces to single-handedly fend off threats. This will continue to be true for a long time, even as defence budgets are hiked across most of the continent. But it also reflects a different understanding of what defence means. For one, nobody in Europeoutside Russia, at leastis even casually implying they will invade other countries. There is no Brussels quip about turning an unwilling neighbour into our 28th state (on the contrary, many of the EUs neighbours are desperate to join the club). Nor do European vice-presidents fly uninvited to places they are seeking to annex, on the pretext that their spouse wants to watch a sledge race. Europe may have scrimped on intelligence-gathering, but its various leaders do know the identity of the aggressor who initiated the fighting in Ukraine (hint: it is not Ukraine). Many foresaw the pitfalls of invading Iraq a while back.

The thing about Europe is that it lacks an absolutist attachment to free speech. See how judges in Romania and France derailed the careers of hard-right politicians, who have convinced themselves (with little evidence) that it was their ideology rather than their lawbreaking that got them in trouble. Yet to many Europeans the idea that free expression is under threat seems odd. Europeans can say almost anything they want, both in theory and in practice. Europes universities never became hotbeds of speech-policing by one breed of culture warrior or the other. You can express a controversial view on any European campus (outside Hungary, at least) without fear of losing your tenure or your grant. No detention centres await foreign students who hold the wrong views on Gaza; news outfits are not sued for interviewing opposition politicians. Law firms are not compelled to kow-tow to presidents as penance for having worked for their political foes.

The thing about Europe is that it is facing a demographic crisis. It is staving off a sharp decline in population only by shoring up its workforce with immigrants, some of whom have integrated poorly. Such immigration shows the appeal of the European way of life; for those who come seeking refuge from war, it shows Europeans generosity (sometimes misguided). And while Europeans occasionally make a show of cracking down on illegal migrants, they generally rely on legal ones to pick their crops.

The thing about Europe is its economy is permanently stuck in the doldrums, a global cautionary tale. And no wonder. Europeans enjoy August off, retire in their prime and spend more time eating and socialising with their families than inhabitants of any other region. Oddly, surveys show people in countries both rich and poor value such leisure time; somehow Europeans managed to squeeze their employers into giving them more of it. Even as they were depressing GDP by wasting time playing with their kids, the denizens of Europe also managed to keep inequality relatively low while it ballooned elsewhere in the past 20 years. Nobody in Europe has spent the past week looking at their stock portfolio, wondering if they could still afford to send their kids to university. Europeans have no idea what medical bankruptcy is. Oh, and no EU leader has ever launched their own cryptocurrency.

Huddled masses: have you considered Europe?

The thing about Europe is it is naive, the only global trading bloc attached to moral norms. It insists on complying with the edicts of the World Trade Organisation, say, or doing its part to cut carbon emissions. It is not a place that demands allies come crawling to it begging for favours on tariffs.

The thing about Europe is that it is like an open-air museum, yesterdays continent. Is its model even sustainable? A good questionone that presupposes the European model is worth defending. It is a place blessed with walkable cities, long life expectancies and vaccinated kids who do not need to be trained to dodge school shooters. Charlemagnes realm is a place of many flaws, lots of them enduring. But in their own plodding way, Europeans have created a place where they are guaranteed rights to what others yearn for: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The sad part is if you were 18 in this election and could vote for the first time, you were 11? If my math is correct when Trump ran and 12 when he won. There is a real chance some of these kids paid no attention to round 1 being so young, and when they could vote finally they night have tried to look up info and were met with right wing dude bro Podcasters and misinformation.

Let's hope if they grant us fair elections in 2026 and pr 2028, people figure it the fuck out as in "we're not doing this again" but I cannot say the next time another fucker comes in singing a monorail song they'll be drooling and enticed again.

No horny.

so upon reaching the thought someone may not have been schooled, u freak out?

why are you asking this with such emphatic shock

Isn't "is" a preposition?

Why Is The Topic Title Written In All Caps?

Thats not gonna work. Arm-twisting other nations into devaluing the dollar would completely destabilize the world economic order, throwing the entire system into chaos until international diplomacy settled on a new, trusted reserve-currency alternative. Also, the bullying wouldnt be effective. China has already been dealing with belligerent trade policy from Bidens term and Trumps first go-round, and the East Asian giant is now far better equipped to withstand an aggressive trade war with the U.S. than anyone in the Trump administration realizes.

Truly, there are no adults in the room now. Cabinet members are pretending everything is fine; the House of Representatives just passed a massive, ill-advised tax cut; the Project 2025 goons whove been guiding this administration have already written that they want to return to the ruinous gold standard.

Per various insider reports, it was the yippy bond-market freakouts that led Trump to back off on his higher reciprocal tariffs, even as he raised duties against China and kept other, lower universal tariffs in place. Still, Treasury holders are clearly not assuaged, and theyve been antsy for years at this point. Should the U.S. dollar lose its potency, this country would face an unprecedented financial crisis. If you thought recent inflation was bad, just wait until you have to deal with a system where no one wants to even touch the dollar because theres no global faith left, plunging it into near-worthlessness. No gold stashes or governmental cryptocurrency reserves would save us.

Were not there yet. Hopefully we never will get there. But Ill leave the last word to Adam Tooze: For life to continue anything like normally, this narrative must remain, to a degree, a fear rather than a reality.

For decades, American consumers, global investors, and international traders could interact productively in a shared economic order thanks to their mutual trust in one powerful instrument: the United States dollar. In the aftermath of the Great Depression, when nations wisely stopped backing their currencies with gold and the U.S. cemented its position as the globes economic steward, the dollar became the worlds reserve currency, a sturdy venue for value storage, for trade, for the circulation of cash. Anyone could buy U.S. debt through long- and short-term bonds issued by the Treasury Department, with reasonable assurance that such investments were safe and guaranteed. In turn, the States benefited from this hegemony, which granted it economic power over other nations. In spite of diplomatic conflicts, in spite of whipsawing interest rates, in spite of U.S.-born economic crises that wracked the entire world, the stability of the dollar remained the core engine of commerce, the determinant of the New World Order. And, for the most part, it was good (for us).

Now, thanks to President Donald Trump, the dollars reliability and world-leading position are no longer sacrosanct. And the consequences of this possible shift are staggeringpotentially catastrophic.

When the stock market began plunging last week in response to Trumps eye-watering Liberation Day tariffs, economist Adam Tooze warned that the right charts to follow werent those trading indices, but the bond markets. Throughout the month, you could spot a grim indicator there: Tariff announcements usually boost the value of the dollar, because higher import taxes (priced in dollars) tend to weaken other countries currency valuations and spending power. But this time, it was the dollar that weakened in the aftermath of Liberation Day. Normally, traders would attempt to preserve their money by selling off their stocks at a good pricehence, the market crashand then put that revenue into safer, longer-term investments, like Treasury bonds (i.e., U.S. dollars). This time, however, traders were also selling off their Treasury holdings, a sign that they were nervous about the U.S. economy. Yields from 10-year bonds reached their highest level in years, something that only tends to happen in moments of economic crisis. At a time of already high interest rates, elevated yields make so many parts of the everyday economybank loans, mortgages, personal credit, insuranceso much more cost-prohibitive than theyd already been.

Peeking behind the trading desks, the Financial Times noted that international hedge funds and asset managers have been selling off their Treasury holdings in order to reduce their exposure to riskand, in some cases, pivoting to physical cash holdings instead. And, despite widespread speculation, countries like Japan have not been dumping their Treasury holdings en massewhich is a relief, since its one of the single biggest foreign holders of U.S. dollars. Had that been the case, panic would have been warranted.

Nevertheless, concerns remain. The overall selloff in both 10- and 30-year Treasurys has continued well into this week, persisting in its worst rout since the pandemic crash. (Although, to be very clear, it is not anywhere near as bad as that moment.) The 30-year Treasury yield reached levels it hadnt seen since the late-1980s stock market crash; the 10-year yield is at levels unseen since the Great Recession. Plus, Japan has been reducing some of its Treasury holdings throughout the year, albeit graduallynot with the type of sudden overnight dumps we saw this week. And China (the single largest foreign Treasurys holder) recently directed state-level banks to hold off on purchasing more dollars, according to Reuters. With the continued yield rise weve seen this Friday morning, theres no reason to believe basis traders are done offloading their Treasurys.

On a broader scale, theres investor skittishness over any U.S.-linked assets and securities. The dollar no longer commands the overwhelming share of global reserves that it did just two decades ago; the shift from public Treasury stashes toward more privatized holdings (like hedge funds) opens up the entire enterprise to more market volatility. Foreign currencies are faring better than U.S. Treasurys and may become more attractive investment options, as European, Chinese, Japanese, and Australian currencies earn bullish forecasts. Deutsche Bank warned in an investment note on Wednesday that various financial entities and banks are divesting from U.S. dollars, paving a path toward uncharted territory.

There have been hints at global dollar bearishness for a few years now. As I noted late last year, the economic shock of the COVID recession led various nations to stock up on gold reserves in their central banks as a hedge against the dollar. That international gold rush persisted in the aftermath of Donald Trumps reelection, as trading partners (very reasonably, it turns out!) looked to safe havens that were not the U.S. dollar. Considering the diplomatic chaos of Trumps last term, and the campaign-trail rhetoric that showed he clearly didnt understand anything about tariffs, there was no reason for anyone, anywhere, to believe that the U.S. would remain a stable area for long-term investment.

And it wasnt just tariffs that the world had to worry aboutit was a bit of everything. Economic relations with the U.S. have now grown increasingly unstable, unreliable, and unappealing, as Trumps diplomatic and financial policy leaves everyone uncertain of where they stand. It doesnt help that Trump prematurely canceled all that international aid, completely undermining any trust remaining in basic American contracts.

By February, asset managers were telling the Bank of America that they would much rather turn to internationally based companies and gold bars instead of American stocks. Continentwide stock bullishness made European stocks a good deal, and widespread hostility toward the U.S. inspired Goldman Sachs to compile a thorough report on how boycotts of American brands were spreading far beyond just Canada. One popular Dutch researcher even told European business owners to stop storing their virtual data in American cloud servers.

Whats even more terrifying is that the Trump administrations actions come across to Deutsche Bank and other analysts as a purposeful tanking of the dollar. The attacks on the Federal Reserves independence and threats to replace Jerome Powell are scary enoughthe prospect of the mad king let loose with the central bank. But in a report from last month, Bloomberg noted a maddening contradiction within Trumps campaign statements: Trump has said he wants to maintain the dollars central role globally, once threatening to retaliate against any country that tries to decouple its trade from the US currency. At the same time, during his campaign he indicated hed welcome a weaker dollar because it would make US products more competitive.

And then theres the infamous Mar-a-Lago Accord. Stephen Miran, a crypto-friendly asset manager who now heads Trumps Council of Economic Advisers, wrote a paper last November that advocated for purposefully weakening the dollar and using the threat of tariffs to get other countries to spend more on American factories and outputs, at a lower cost, over the long haul. (He recently doubled down on this.)

Rates will reach the 80's highs at this rate

You know what's really unfucking real?
Having selective amnesia that Biden allowed and supported Israel's GENOCIDE * and has no repercussions, and even glorified by people like you

*You people avoid to call it that somehow

We'll welcome some blue states up in Canada, but you're going to have to switch up your colours, add 'u' to words like colour, think km instead of miles, Celsius instead of Fahrenheit, and pronounce it 'zed' instead of 'zee'.

But you'll love the health care, gun control, cheaper post-secondary education, and not being a part of Dumpy's America.

That was a good mix of tech still feeling advanced without having it invade every part of your life.

The downside to some of that period is not having the internet for downtime at an office job sounds absolutely miserable.

He's also adding exemptions for specific companies who pay him the appropriate bribe money

https://tech.yahoo.com/articles/trump-administration-backs-off-nvidias-170237761.html

I'm so tired of how he speaks like an abuser.

That's why the rich are quietly opening European bank accounts