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Re: World Politics
Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2021 1:47 pm
by 3rdside
Everything was going swimmingly in Australia other than the fact that we bungled our procurement of vaccines, but it didn't really matter as there was no virus in the country.
Then the much more contagious delta variant snuck through, an outbreak is picking up steam and now everyone here in Sydney is in lockdown which will probably stay until the end of winter I'd guess.
Re: World Politics
Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2021 1:50 pm
by Indy
Indy wrote: ↑Mon Jul 12, 2021 9:37 am
virtual9mm wrote: ↑Mon Jul 12, 2021 8:16 am
Indy wrote: ↑Sat Jul 10, 2021 10:29 pm
virtual9mm wrote: ↑Sat Jul 10, 2021 10:00 pm
All sorts of stuff is going go go down. Take a look at hegemonic stability theory.
What should I sell and what should I buy, v9?
If I knew, I wouldn't have lost 5% of my portfolio over the past 6 weeks based on Delta wreaking havoc on the potential for the tourism industry's return!
But if HST is correct, the US dollar cannot continue to stand. US diplomats have been concerned about the USD maintaining reserve currency status for nearly a decade now. If the USD loses reserve currency status, the US ceases to be able to finance imports by borrowing money overseas. At that point, you're looking at a 15% decline in the US standard of living effective immediately.
Wait, what did Delta do?
omfg. I just realized you were talking about the Delta variant and in my mind we were talking about stocks and I was thinking Delta Airlines (because I put a good chunk of cash into about 2 months into the pandemic and it is doing really well).
Re: World Politics
Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2021 2:29 pm
by 3rdside
virtual9mm wrote: ↑Mon Jul 12, 2021 8:16 am
Indy wrote: ↑Sat Jul 10, 2021 10:29 pm
virtual9mm wrote: ↑Sat Jul 10, 2021 10:00 pm
All sorts of stuff is going go go down. Take a look at hegemonic stability theory.
What should I sell and what should I buy, v9?
If I knew, I wouldn't have lost 5% of my portfolio over the past 6 weeks based on Delta wreaking havoc on the potential for the tourism industry's return!
But if HST is correct, the US dollar cannot continue to stand. US diplomats have been concerned about the USD maintaining reserve currency status for nearly a decade now. If the USD loses reserve currency status, the US ceases to be able to finance imports by borrowing money overseas. At that point, you're looking at a 15% decline in the US standard of living effective immediately.
Ray Dalio - The Changing World Order (via his Linkedin profile):
https://www.linkedin.com/in/raydalio/
The financial crisis, printing money to bail out the country that meant asset prices shot up (the rich got richer), Trump's tax cuts that benefitted the rich, the virus leading to more printing of money and further asset price rises and the rich getting richer again, an upstart country in China with a point to prove and nationalism based, in part, on previous national humiliations.. to a tee this is a text book script for a changing world order and loss of reserve currency status for the USA.
But ..
The future is never written, and established doctrines can change.
If you read it, you get a sense that America is right on the precipice, but with Biden there's a chance of success .. with Trump it was all over.
Re: World Politics
Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2021 2:45 pm
by 3rdside
China isn't perfect either - it has a massive demographic problem, and there's plenty of talk about China never overtaking the USA as the world's largest economy ..
China’s median age will soon overtake America’s
Demography may be the Chinese economy’s biggest challenge
The Economist
Oct 31st 2019
SHANGHAI
Give this article
Shortly after 9am the neighbourhood care centre for the elderly shuffles to life. One man belts out a folk song. A centenarian sits by his Chinese chessboard, awaiting an opponent. A virtual-reality machine, which lets users experience such exotic adventures as grocery shopping and taking the subway, sits unused in the corner. A bigger attraction is the morning exercise routine—a couple of dozen people limbering up their creaky joints. They are the leading edge of China’s rapid ageing, a trend that is already starting to constrain its economic potential.
Since the care centre opened half a year ago in Changning, in central Shanghai, more than 12,000 elderly people from the area have passed through its doors. The city launched these centres in 2014, combining health clinics, drop-in facilities and old-people’s homes. It plans to have 400 by 2022. “We can’t wait. We’ve got to do everything in our ability to build these now,” says Peng Yanli, a community organiser.
The pressure on China is mounting. The coming year will see an inauspicious milestone. The median age of Chinese citizens will overtake that of Americans in 2020, according to un projections (see chart). Yet China is still far poorer, its median income barely a quarter of America’s. A much-discussed fear—that China will get old before it gets rich—is no longer a theoretical possibility but fast becoming reality.
According to un projections, during the next 25 years the percentage of China’s population over the age of 65 will more than double, from 12% to 25%. By contrast America is on track to take nearly a century, and Europe to take more than 60 years, to make the same shift. China’s pace is similar to Japan’s and a touch slower than South Korea’s, but both those countries began ageing rapidly when they were roughly three times as wealthy per person.
Seen in one light, the greying of China is successful development. A Chinese person born in 1960 could expect to live 44 years, a shorter span than a Ghanaian born the same year. Life expectancy for Chinese babies born today is 76 years, just short of that in America. But it is also a consequence of China’s notorious population-control strategy. In 1973, when the government started limiting births, Chinese women averaged 4.6 children each. Today they have only 1.6, and some scholars say even that estimate is too high.
Fertility was bound to decline as China got wealthier, but the one-child policy made the fall steeper. Even though the country shifted to a two-child policy in 2016 and may soon scrap limits altogether, the relaxation came too late. The working-age population, which began to shrink in 2012, will decline for decades to come. By the middle of the century it will be nearly a fifth smaller than it is now. China will have gone from nine working-age adults per retired person in 2000 to just two by 2050.
The economic impact is being felt in two main ways. The most obvious is the need to look after all the old people. Pension payouts to retired people overtook contributions by workers in 2014. According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the national pension fund could run out of money by 2035. The finance ministry is taking small steps to shore the system up: in September it transferred 10% of its stakes in four giant state-owned financial firms to the fund. But far more is needed. Government spending on pensions and health care is about a tenth of gdp, just over half the level usual in older, wealthier countries, which themselves will have to spend more as they get even older.
The second impact is on growth. Some Chinese economists—notably Justin Lin of Peking University—maintain that ageing need not slow the country down, in part thanks to technological advances. But another camp, led by Cai Fang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, has been winning the argument so far. A shrinking labour pool is pushing up wages and, as firms spend more on technology to replace workers, pushing down returns on capital investment. The upshot, Mr Cai calculates, is that China’s potential growth rate has fallen to about 6.2%—almost exactly where it is today. The labour shortage is hitting not just companies but entire cities. From Xi’an in the north to Shenzhen in the south, municipalities have made it easier for university graduates to move in, hoping thereby to attract skilled young workers.
China could, in theory, mitigate the downside from its ageing by boosting both labour-force participation and productivity—that is, getting more people into work and more out of them. Neither is easy. Retirement ages are very low in China (in many jobs, 60 for men and 50 for women), but the government has resisted raising them for fear of a backlash. And a return to state-led growth under Xi Jinping appears to be hurting productivity. As George Magnus, an economist, writes in “Red Flags: Why Xi’s China is in Jeopardy”, demography is not destiny, and China has time to change course. “The bad news, though, is that the time that is available is passing by rapidly,” he says.
One piece of good news is that China is thinking creatively about how to look after the swelling ranks of pensioners. Traditionally, children have been expected to care for their elderly parents, which helps explain why public investment in old-age homes has been minimal. But most families now have just one child, and that child is working. Suzhou, a wealthy city near Shanghai, shows how China can take advantage of its scale. In 2007 Lu Zhong, an entrepreneur, founded Jujiale as a “virtual retirement home”, dispatching helpers to private homes on demand. It now has 1,800 employees serving 130,000 retired people. Mr Lu says that it needs to grow by about 15% a year to keep up with demand.
Yet that is a silver lining in a grey-haired cloud. On October 1st China celebrated the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic. By the centenary in 2049, Mr Xi has vowed, China will have developed to the point that its strength is plain for the world to see. But as Ren Zeping, a prominent economist, tartly noted in a recent report, the median age in China in 2050 will be nearly 50, compared with 42 in America and just 38 in India. That, he wrote, raised a question: “Can we rely on this kind of demographic structure to achieve national rejuvenation?”
Re: World Politics
Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2021 10:27 pm
by Nodack
Interesting.
Re: World Politics
Posted: Tue Jul 13, 2021 5:27 pm
by 3rdside
I should add that Dalio tries to avoid discussing his personal political view points at all times - he even mentions how risky it would be to do that considering the politicised environment in the US right now - and definitely does not say he's either pro-Biden or anti-Trump, but it's clear based on the incontrovertible evidence he uses which way he sees things in that regard.
Re: World Politics
Posted: Sat Jul 17, 2021 3:58 pm
by Nodack
Here’s the stuff Russia puts out.
Who wants to burn in nuclear hell for Ukraine?
Читайте больше на
https://english.pravda.ru/world/99059-nuclear_hell/
Ukraine and NATO: Final preparations to strike Russia
According to military expert Colonel Vladimir Popov, Russia needs to treat this threat seriously.
"Neptune is a Soviet development based on the X-35 anti-ship missile. Russia should think of defence. The fact that Ukraine has taken all this to the border is not surprising at all. The Ukrainian authorities still advertise their plans to "liberate" both Crimea and Donbass. The Russian military need to take this perspective into consideration," the expert believes.
Lieutenant General Yuri Netkachev believes that Ukraine and NATO already wage the hybrid war against Russia. Sea Breeze 2021 naval exercise near Russian borders comes as a clear demonstration of this.
Re: World Politics
Posted: Sat Jul 17, 2021 4:02 pm
by Nodack
European Parliament calls to terminate relations with Russia once and for all
Читайте больше на
https://english.pravda.ru/world/119837- ... arliament/
"MEPs believe that the EU should be ready not to recognize the Russian parliament if the parliamentary elections in 2021 are held in violation of democratic principles and international law," the European Parliament said in a statement released after the vote.
Is the United States behind the assassination of the President of Haiti?
Читайте больше на
https://english.pravda.ru/world/13602-h ... ssination/
Re: World Politics
Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2021 10:16 am
by Nodack
China threatens to nuke Japan if country intervenes in Taiwan conflict
https://www.news.com.au/technology/inno ... b4c77629e1
“We will use nuclear bombs first. We will use nuclear bombs continuously. We will do this until Japan declares unconditional surrender for the second time,” a threatening video circulated among official Chinese Communist Party channels warns.
“When we liberate Taiwan, if Japan dares to intervene by force – even if it only deploys one soldier, one plane or one ship – we will not only return fire but also wage full-scale war against Japan itself.”
CCP sanctioned video threatens China will nuke Japan in a 'full-scale war'
https://www.skynews.com.au/world-news/c ... b5c3d23803
CCP channel reposts video threatening to nuke Japan if it defends Taiwan
Video calls for 'Japan Exception Theory' for first use of nukes if Japan comes to Taiwan's aid during Chinese invasion
https://www.newsweek.com/china-official ... ry-1609586
China Officials Share Viral Video Calling for Atomic Bombing of Japan
BY JOHN FENG ON
2656
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4250097
In the second video, the narrator focuses on the numerical superiority and fighting will of PLA forces compared to their Japanese opponents. The video also claims that after Japan is defeated, China will break up its four main islands into independent countries under the "supervision" of China and Russia, which will both establish military garrisons there.
The narrator adds that Okinawa will be broken off from Japan and either be managed by China or made into an independent country. The video concludes with a vow to punish Japan Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, and Deputy Prime Minister Aso Taro and force the Liberal Democratic Party and Japanese right-wing parties and organizations to pay "heavy war reparations."
Re: World Politics
Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2021 11:40 am
by Nodack
Biggest US Navy war games in 40 years to prepare for WW3 across 17 times zones amid tensions with Russia, China and Iran
https://www.the-sun.com/news/3410018/bi ... war-three/
THOUSANDS of Marines and sailors are taking part in the US Navy's largest war games in 40 years as Washington "prepares" for a future world war amid rising tensions with Russia and China.
Fleets began the Large Scale Exercise on Tuesday and the drills across 17 time zones will continue until August 16. But it remains unknown if China and Russia will “pay attention” to the wargames or if they will be interpreted as an act of aggression.
American officials fear that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is “closer than we think”. Beijing continues to stage war games off the coast of the island in what is widely seen as a dress rehearsal for an invasion.
Meanwhile, Russian leader Vladimir Putin continues to boast that his hypersonic missiles can deliver an “unpreventable strike” against Moscow's enemies. Last week, Moscow warned of an “inadvertent conflict” if the US pushed ahead with the deployment of long-range hypersonic rockets in Europe.
Re: World Politics
Posted: Sun Aug 15, 2021 11:42 am
by Nodack
I don’t know if anyone has noticed or not but, Biden has decided to end our mission/war in Afghanistan. As we have pulled out the Taliban has wasted no time in capturing everything. I don’t think there was much doubt that the Taliban would rise up and recapture the country. The speed at which they have done it has been astonishing. The remaining Afghan troops that were supposed to defend their country have fled the scene and the Taliban have captured all that nice US military hardware. Same thing happened in Iraq when we left. Biden said there would be no Saigon moments of helicopters rescuing embassy staff off the top of the embassy as the enemy closed in. CNN just posted on their headline a picture of a Chinook helicopter rescuing people off the top of a building. I don’t know if that was just a picture of Saigon or a fresh Saigon picture in Kabul.
My feelings on this are all over the place. We have been there for two decades. We went there to get Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda friends who attacked us on 9/11. The Taliban ran Afghanistan and when we asked them to turn over Bin Laden they refused. The US decided to go to Afghanistan and get Bin Laden by force and in the process declared war on the Taliban. It seems to me the Taliban weren’t even on our radar aside from hosting Bin Laden. The US went in and twenty years later Bin Laden has been killed, lots of terrorists were killed, lots of Taliban were killed and the Taliban no longer controlled anything and were in hiding.
We got Bin Laden and then decided we would save Afghanistan from the brutal Taliban ways. We helped them form a democracy and they elected their own leaders. We formed an Afghan military, trained them and gave them military equipment and air support. We rebuilt infrastructure. The country was functioning as a Democracy. Unfortunately the leaders turned out to be as corrupt as you might expect. The whole democracy thing hinged on the US military enforcing that democracy. I am pretty sure just about everyone on planet earth knew the second we pulled out that democracy would crumble.
So there lies the problem. Wars cost money. We have spent almost a trillion dollars on Afghanistan in those 20 years there. To hold that democracy the US military has to stay. What does that say about that democracy? We left and those Afghan troops scattered like roaches along with their elected leaders. That tells me Afghanistan’s democracy was just a puppet government propped up by the US and the people of Afghanistan had no interest in fighting for their own democracy. I am ok with that and feel if they aren’t willing to fight for democracy that maybe they aren’t that interested in it as a whole.
What makes me sad is knowing how bad the women of Afghanistan will be treated. All those interpreters and their families who risked their lives helping the US are in mortal danger. We talked about getting them out and it seems like the red tape associated with that bogged down and took forever. A lot of those people will be killed and that isn’t right. Now the Taliban are already taking Kabul and it’s too late.
We couldn’t stay there forever and had to leave at some point. Obama wanted to leave Afghanistan but was talked out of it. Trump said he would leave Afghanistan and was talked out of it. Biden decided to do it and is taking the heat for it. I don’t blame his decision to pull out. I am disappointed with the way he did it. We should have planned for getting those people out before announcing the exit. Talk with our allies about the logistics before announcing the exit. There is nothing we can do now for the women of Afghanistan after we pull out.
Afghanistan will go back to the way it was 20 years ago almost overnight. The Russians tried. The Americans tried. Now the Chinese maybe want a crack at Afghanistan? We abandoned our embassy. Russia says it has no need to abandon their embassy. China and Russia cashing in on our exit already and making deals with the Taliban. We will see how that goes.
After this have we learned anything? It was Saigon all over again. Nation building does not work. They have to want what you are selling. You can’t force it on them. I doubt if we learned anything. We will do it all over again probably in the not too distant future.
Biden will take all of the heat on this and I think he is OK with that. Someone had to pull the plug at some point and he did. He deserves some scorn for the handling of it and deserves some credit for having the stones to do it.
Re: World Politics
Posted: Sun Aug 15, 2021 12:32 pm
by Superbone
Good post, Dack. It's a very sad situation. Especially for the women of the country.
Re: World Politics
Posted: Sun Aug 15, 2021 1:14 pm
by Nodack
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-47391821
Since the war against the Taliban began in 2001, there have been more than 3,500 coalition deaths, of which more than 2,300 have been US soldiers.
More than 450 UK troops have died.
A further 20,660 US soldiers have been injured in action.
But these casualty figures are dwarfed by the loss of life among Afghan security forces and civilians.
President Ghani said in 2019 that more than 45,000 members of the Afghan security forces had been killed since he became president five years earlier.
Brown University's research in 2019 estimated the loss of life amongst the national military and police in Afghanistan to be more than 64,100 since October 2001, when the war began.
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/cos ... ans/afghan
About 241,000 people have been killed in the Afghanistan and Pakistan war zone since 2001. More than 71,000 of those killed have been civilians.
The war has also inflicted invisible wounds. In 2009, the Afghan Ministry of Public Health reported that fully two-thirds of Afghans suffer from mental health problems.
The CIA has armed Afghan militia groups to fight Islamist militants and these militias are responsible for serious human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings of civilians.
On 9/11 some terrorists from Saudi Arabia attacked our country. In retaliation we attacked Iraq , Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Americans killed on 9/11- 3000
US service members killed post 9/11 in war - 7000
US service members and veterans who committed suicide post 9/11 - 30,000
Allies killed post 9/11 in war - 177,000
Iraqi civilians killed in Iraq war - 200,00
Contractors killed in Iraq - 3900
Afghan, Pakistan civilians killed in Afghanistan war - 71,000
Afghan police military killed in Afghanistan war - 73,000
Taliban killed (est) - 51,000+
I think we have to ask ourselves. Was our reaction to 9/11 worth it? I don’t think so.
Re: World Politic
Posted: Sun Aug 15, 2021 1:55 pm
by Nodack
If you could be President Bush right after 9/11 knowing what you know now what would you do?
If I was sitting on the throne and know what I know now I think I would handle it differently. Investigate 9/11 and make sure you know who you are dealing with. It wasn’t Iraq. There were virtually no terrorists in Iraq at the time. IMO attacking Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, Bin Laden or terrorism. That was just the excuse given to settle an old score and finish what dad started.
Afghanistan is where Bin Laden was living and training terrorists as a guest of the Taliban. I wouldn’t send in tens of thousands of troops and try to take over the country. If you take over the country you are responsible for taking care of it’s population and have to fight pissed off insurgents on the ground. A lose lose situation.
Terrorism is a movement not a country. We spent a trillion dollars fighting those wars? Ouch! Our best protection is security back home. How did we get Bin Laden?
American intelligence officials discovered the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden by tracking one of his couriers. Information was collected from Guantánamo Bay detainees, who gave intelligence officers the courier's pseudonym as Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.[3] In 2009, U.S. officials discovered that al-Kuwaiti lived in Abbottābad, Pakistan.[4] CIA paramilitary operatives located al-Kuwaiti in August 2010 and followed him back to the Abbottabad compound, which led them to speculate it was bin Laden's location.[5]
On May 1, 2011, United States Navy SEALs of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DevGru) carried out an assault on the compound on orders from U.S. President Barack Obama. During a 40-minute raid, bin Laden was killed by one bullet above the left eye and another to the chest.[6] The SEALs overpowered the compound's remaining residents, killing several, and extracted bin Laden's body (which was subsequently buried at sea) as well as computer hard drives, documents, and other material.
So I guess we captured some terrorists, “interrogated” them, got info on Bin Laden’s courier and somehow tracked him down to a Pakistan address and sure enough, Bin Laden was hiding there. We sent in the SEALs and they took care of the rest.
It seems we could have accomplished that without declaring war on two countries and sending in tens of thousands of troops to take over those countries. A trillion dollars would buy enough drones to blanket Afghanistan in drones. Find their camp, send in the A-Team and capture some “interrogate” them and maybe you find Bin Laden’s courier without a half a million people being killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan in retaliation for 3000 being killed by a few guys from Saudi Arabia.
Re: World Politics
Posted: Sun Aug 15, 2021 2:34 pm
by Superbone
War...What is it good for?
Re: World Politics
Posted: Sun Aug 15, 2021 3:28 pm
by 3rdside
More like $2.5t ‘dack..
This is pretty good account of why USA got it so wrong, again, by John Hulsman, the global political risk expert:
https://johnhulsman.substack.com/p/lawr ... ource=copy
Re: World Politic
Posted: Sun Aug 15, 2021 4:52 pm
by Indy
Nodack wrote: ↑Sun Aug 15, 2021 1:55 pm
If you could be President Bush right after 9/11 knowing what you know now what would you do?
Umm, he did know most of what we know now. His dad watched it all happen with Russia.
And Biden didn't decide to pull our troops out. Trump did that and gave a deadline of May. Biden pushed it back a bit.
But honestly, we never should have been there, and all we did was cost innocent lives and trillions of dollars and created at least two more generations of people in the region that can't trust anything the West does or says.
Re: World Politics
Posted: Sun Aug 15, 2021 5:01 pm
by Nodack
Biden could have stopped the pullout if he wanted. Not that I think he should have. It does look like they didn’t think things through logistically on the pullout and they certainly didn’t anticipate the Taliban rising up like the Phoenix and taking control so fast. That said, we shouldn’t be there. It’s almost as if we violated the Prime Directive.
In the fictional universe of Star Trek, the Prime Directive (also known as "Starfleet General Order 1", "General Order 1", and the "non-interference directive") is a guiding principle of Starfleet, prohibiting its members from interfering with the internal and natural development of alien civilizations.[1] The Prime Directive applies particularly to civilizations which are below a certain threshold of technological, scientific and cultural development; preventing starship crews from using their superior technology to impose their own values or ideals on them.
World Politics
Posted: Sun Aug 15, 2021 6:11 pm
by 3rdside
If this result was inevitable then it’s possibly better to look at it in terms of a political move, that he’s just carried out a Trump policy, giving the GOP crazies one less thing to shout about.
Could have been handled better I’m sure, but the genesis of fault is the Bush administration, with one bad decision following the other from there from all subsequent administrations.
Trump’s role in the current fiasco sounds pretty damning but again, this is all on Bush.
Re: World Politics
Posted: Sun Aug 15, 2021 6:26 pm
by Nodack
I forgot it was a Trump order. Biden could have reversed it if he wanted to I believe. I think America is done with that war. The political games and blame will dominate the news now. I am not really interested in all that anymore. No matter who was President or in control the fact remains we are a country and we all get the blame. Time to move on and maybe learn from our repeated mistakes.
Thinking of the future. Like Indy said, Bush knew what he was doing. I really wonder how much power the military complex/lobbyists have over our politicians during times when there is an escalation of hostilities between us and whomever. That’s a conspiracy theory sort of..