infdifference is much worse than hate. hate requires importance, and a connection, to even be able to care about that thing that person/entity did.
"I have previously worked as a Special Security Officer for the American Foreign Ministry in Berlin, where I gained valuable experience in armed security operations.''
Literal LinkedIn post of the German in Belarus looking for a new job in the US. While organizing anti-givernment operations in belarus, with known terrorist groups.
The "kidnapped" lady sent intelligence out of the country and was arrested while visiting.
You can think of Belarus what you want, but any country would arrest you for that sort of thing.
it's held IN Luxemburg, not BY Luxemburg.
Luxemburg has long been a tax haven within the EU. EU citizens can open accounts in any EU country, with certain tax benefits. So people with high net worth have Luxemburg accounts.
I support this.
Not totally unrelated story, in the street I grew up in, there was an old lady living alone in a decrepit house who was known to be seen begging in the streets at times. When she died, they found the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash in her house, where nobody would have expedted as much as a solid plate.
Some bitcoiners strike me this way, the "if you have a frame for your mattress, you're short bitcoin!" types. While you're starting out stacking, fine. but later.. what the hell is wrong with these people? What good is it to hold on to everything and die with a stack worth a million in fiat while living off of crumbs? I would agree that's it a bad idea to spend ALL your bitcoin, but there's a line you should be comfortable to draw down to.
You can view it as thanking yourself for making some really good decisions a few yeras back, and also a way to fight the anxiety that "you might need it ALL tomorrow!"
this is one of those "because the west is doing it that way, it can't understand anyone not doing it that way"- thing. Like, the US acts as a world hegemon that sees other countries as its servants and members in common "blocs" as recipients of US orders, so it can't comprehend a system that is not built hat way - which BRICS isn't. For that reason, there's no one country that will, or even wants to, impose its currency on the group.
The common BRICS inter-trade currency will be something new, not used in the member countries (neiuther before nor after - it's not a Euro). It'll be a bookkeeping unit built on commodities to back it, with a central institution that doesn't control the member currencies or monetary politics, but acts solely to bookkeep and to interchange the currencies with the common counting unit used as an intermediary. That's literall all there is to it.
nice connection between the chart and your name. Also one of my things. I's never ever pay any money for something like this. Also, i fcking hate weddings.
Of course the US number is crazy. but so is the Colombian number - in both countries, that´s about 3/4 of a year's salary. imagine that. You work for 9 months just to blow it on one night that's all ritual, and a tedious one at that.
how old are all of you? 😅
Maniac Mansion. (I know it's on steam, but it doesn't feel the same!)
Pen and paper games.
and just the other day someone commenting on here was trying to mark de-dollarization as a "conspiracy theory"...
Of course the dollar depends 100% on the US' hegemony status, and worldwise use of the dollar has gone from an effect of the US' economic strength to open, naked military coercion as the economy no longer produces actual things, which coincidentally was an effect of dollarization to begin with... it got its own tail. As military buildup also depends on the ability to spend (and depends on material production supply lines outside the US.....), this snake again got its own tail there. When the gig is up, this ouroboro will vanish in a puff of smoke.
"The VDMA urges European policymakers to protect the EU market from these competitive imbalances while adhering to WTO rules."
this is how you know Western globalization-driven "free market" advocacy was never that. It was "as long as I win, get out the way. Once I start to lose, PROTECT ME"
What did happen, as I gather, is that they repeately asked for extended protection and were denied.
The most plausible explanation about the ignored warnings I heard was that they were given to local cops, who thought the guy on the roof was secret service, or that people at rallies have a tendency to say things and the self-presumed "professionals" are arrogantly dismissing the plebs as a matter of routine.
"ah, shucks, there's a truck speeding twards the stage, i can see it, but it's half a mile out. We wait"
sounds fairly strange tbh :D
No chance of hyperinflation -as long as- the dollar easily dissolves in every corner of the world. This is my point: this won't last forever.
Reserve currencies have cycles, and they eventually fail; and thatusually goes along with a rebellion against the hyperexploitation that goes along with being forced into a reserve currency which, as I said, provides the issuer with a free lunch - but that's only true IF that reserve currency is a fiat currency.
That's obviously different with gold, or bitcoin, which is important to keep in mind for the future.
this is only half the story. What people fail to understand is that hyperinflation, where it happened, was never a result of internal policy failures or just of money printing; it was always a result of having debt and other liabilities in another currency they CAN'T print. This was German hyperinflation, which had reparations debt in gold mark and physical goods. this is Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Argentina. The currency they CAN print doesn't serve to buy goods on the world market or pay their external debts.
The US, however, can do that - UNTIL NOW - because the currency the US prints just drains away in the coffers of the world, in world reserves for international trade, as countries buy up dollars to circulate them, often among themselves, to pay for all sorts of goods and resources. (this is the US' free lunch, it produces dollars for nothing and gets all the world's good back; you could also call it a robbery, as it does it by threat of physical force).
The problem isn't the debt service, or the money printing, by itself. It's those things, combined with the fact that the qworld has had enough of being robbed by 850 worldwide bases, jet fighters and aircraft carriers, through their buying of US rtreasuries and denominating goods in dollars. That's the part that will make the currency hyperinflate: the debt and printing PLUS the fact that this printed paper can no longer be dumped on the world for free goods.
"which was never designed to catch fraud anyway." Exactly. This isn't a good system that got off the rails; it was always a gatekeeper system that ensured that new insights had to stay in line with current orthodoxy.
When I submit something for peer review, there are two options: I get youg reviewers (who want the exposure and the glory), or I get old reviewers who have the reputation and like to engage in "field control". The young ones are usually dogmatic and eager to prove their worthiness; they will tear you apart over BS to prove how much they've read to the journal editors. The old ones have a legacy to defend, and want to make sure that "what they found out" is not abandoned by snotty youth. Either way, if your paper goes against orthodoxy,. it has a hard time. Worse if it tries to use insights from one side of the subject to augment another side of the subject, because in all likelihood, the Old Ones have mad a career of trashing that other side. The editors will likely send the article to one "representative" of each side, each one of which will trash the half of the paper you're trying to adapt to their field. Worse if you're challenging a "basic understanding" in that field; then, all of them will trash you.
This is old news, of course. Read Kuhn about the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, still unmatched, about how science is generational and political to defend given orthodoxies; though he's optimistic about how revolutions arise when generations change.