• 86 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • That doesn’t seem unlikely to me, since Trump has destroyed the basis of trust with his allies and is thus doing considerable damage to one of the few US industries that is still functioning well, namely the arms industry.

    Perhaps he somehow thought that Europe would buy the weapons needed to equip itself because he has unilaterally terminated NATO protection from US companies. Maybe a few that you can’t get anywhere else, but the EU would be incredibly stupid to buy from a nation that is now hostile to it.

    So other buyers will probably have to be found - although Russia has its own arms industry and is also on good terms with China. Moreover, unlike Trump, Putin really isn’t an idiot.

    But hey, maybe the EU can negotiate a billion-euro arms deal with Russia to get better conditions for Ukraine.

    It would hardly be any different from buying weapons from the US.




  • Oh, absolutely. I am totally convinced that Trump’s main goal is to line his own pockets and those of his criminal friends.

    I was merely trying to reflect what Trump’s official plan is - especially in light of the fact that the US economy actually does have some problems. These include among other things steadily rising interest payments to creditors and the strong dollar, which has very obviously been at odds with weakening industrial production for quite some time.

    However, the Mar-a-Lago Accord (not an accord yet by the way but merely a strategy paper) was drawn up by his main economist, Miran. This guy is apparently convinced that the problems that the US economy has could be solved in this way.

    But still: even if Trump wasn’t a criminal who is only interested in his own advantage, I still don’t think his economist’s plan could work. Even without Trump, this would be pretty absurd. But with Trump I think it is impossible, because this moron even makes it worse - for example by not introducing the tariffs gradually as planned, but immediately at the maximum percentage (prolly to make more on insider trading). This is disastrous even in the context of this already crazy plan.

    So in short, Trump’s economists want to fundamentally reshape the global economy (by pure force) with a pretty absurd plan - but Trump’s greed and stupidity makes it even less likely that this could ever work.

    Oh, and: In any case, all of this is very much at the expense of US citizens - except for the usual 1 percent, of course.

    Edit: Probably a misunderstanding: I didn’t mean that you were wrong about Trump jeopardizing the long-term prosperity of the US economy - I completely agree with you. I just wanted to say that the US economy was indeed already fragile before him, but that’s not because of Biden, but because of a long-term development that led there.


  • I think you’re wrong: the problem in the US is that the dollar is far too strong in relation to industrial output. The reason for this is that it is bought by other nations as a reserve currency through US government bonds.

    This is a major problem for the US industry, which is nowhere near as strong as the strength of the currency would suggest. The problem is that a disproportionately strong dollar makes US products so expensive on the global market that they are barely competitive.

    Trump’s plan (described in the so-called “Mar-a-Lago Accord”) now envisages forcing the partner states in particular, all of which are creditors of the USA, to suspend their claims (basically as if it were a national bankruptcy).

    The only two explanations for this behavior I can come up with are: Either the US is actually bankrupt and Trump is trying to forestall the inevitable, or he is trying to impose an economic system on the world that favors the US even more than it already does, in an excess of hubris.

    Either way: I believe that neither of the “solutions” for these two scenarios are realistically feasible with this plan. And I also don’t think that the Fed will go along with this, without which Trump cannot implement this plan - but he can’t force the Fed to play along either because he has no direct control over this institution as it is independent of the state administration.





  • Was it not this so-called Supreme Court that has already granted the president more rights than a king? How is that supposed to be constitutional in a democratic country?

    It seems to me that the constitutional crisis has long since occurred.

    I don’t really understand why anyone should appeal to the corrupt judges who are responsible for this. It’s a waste of time, because the outcome of all such attempts is already known in advance.

    Or is the plan to buy Thomas & Co. another nice house - or maybe a new boat, or yet another luxurious vacation?