This level stuff is wildly over my head, thanks for outlining it @jimo
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man as much as iâm not a big friend of the US this is a silly take. their bloated medical insurance system that screws over the majority of their population gives the world some fantastic advances in medical research. the tech sector there is top of the world in a lot of sectors. their research universities are fantastic
like it or not, music, film, pop culture etc. SKATEBOARDING. all comes from the US
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Ok, so while I knew little bits and also assumed The US has many countries under the cosh, itâs actually worse than that?
But like I said, itâs all posturing and pretty much bullying.
Shame alot of countries wouldnât be able to say no to them if they are tied up.
Of course, not devaluing the advances that people/companies make over there, there is undoubted evidence that the US has contributed massively in many industries. But right now, given that Trump is threatening everyone with trade, in the short term surely people should say no, not playing. Of course itâs not so simple as that.
Trump doesnât want to be a quiet nation thatâs self sufficient, keeping themselves to themselves, he will fuck himself over if everyone renders his cards useless, even temporarily.
This convo is reminding me of the Life of Brian sketch âwhat have the Romans ever done for us?â
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Ha, I know iâm sounding stupid, I donât mind that, iâm not understating what the US is, Iâm just bemused to why and how the world is in this situation and how do you stop some maniac child in his tracks.
Hopefully a McDonaldâs related heart attack.
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All of this international politics is ultimately just national self interest. He seems to be remarkably short sighted, though. He also canât seem to comprehend scenarios where both parties can win. Was reading something by the person who wrote his Art of the Deal book for him, he said that he tends to see everything as a zero sum game.
Exactly! he has one strategy and it should be easy to not play his game, thatâs why I wanted to know how entangled we all are in order to be forced to play.
I am quite interested in the BRICS vs G7 stuff. The war in Ukraine and the Israel/Palestine situation, both are actually driven by BRICS vs G7 because all the money to fight these wars is coming from those countries.
Most worrying is that Russia has been sharing nuclear weapons information with North Korea, and North Korea is well positioned to launch a nuclear attack on the USA. You will see today that the news reports USA stepping up military presence in the South Korea sea.
If Trump can broker a deal with Putin/Zelensky it might avoid North Korea launching nukes at the USA. I feel they just need to agree to provide a US âbackstopâ to ensure Putin canât just move on Ukraine again, and thatâs gonna have to be paid for. Stakes are high. Itâs a mad one.
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This is also the reason why the West soured on Gaddafi and eventually funded the coup that saw him killed. He was trying to form an alliance that would move oil money away from the dollar. He wanted to set up âThe Gold Dinarâ which would beat the global reserve currency by having a new currency backed by the value of gold.
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Yeah man the Hilary Clinton emails! Gaddafi is fascinating, he could potentially have unified Africa like the EU with its own currency and a lucrative EU contract to prevent migration!
I mean, going on Africaâs recent record it would probably have ended in disaster, but at least it would have been a disaster of their own making!
I thought the dollar was backed by gold?
Actually, chatgpt says this:
No, the U.S. dollar is not backed by gold. It used to be, but that changed in 1971 when President Nixon took the U.S. off the gold standard.
Before that, every dollar could be exchanged for a fixed amount of gold. Now, the dollar is a fiat currency, meaning itâs only backed by the U.S. governmentâs promise and the trust people have in its value.
This gives the government more flexibility to manage the economy but also means the value of the dollar depends on supply and demand, interest rates, and economic stabilityânot a physical reserve of gold.
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Yeah the dollar hasnât been backed by gold for a long time.
The Bretton Woods agreement that established the IMF was a plan to rebuild the world with loans backed by USD, which was always intended to be convertible to goldâŚthereby removing any ability for the USA to inflate/deflate the value of the loans.
Nixon took the USD off the gold standard. Lets have a look at what happened to the value of the debt since then shall we?
Much of the US debt is loaned or sold to other countries. They hold the debt and receive interest on it. The US issues treasury bills, bonds and other debt instruments which are sold to other countries to raise cash for things like military expenditure and stuff.
The US can issue debt forever. You might remember a debt celing crisis a year or two ago? Biden simply raised the debt ceiling to avoid US defaults on payments.
Essentially itâs a big con. It also puts all the balls in the USAâs court. Thatâs why BRICS countries want to de-dollarize. It also explains the growth in the price of gold, because banks want to hold it as a hedge against dollar value debasement and in bitcoin because it is deflationary by design and should be a useful hedge against inflation.
All the above is massively oversimplified and misses important stuff, but yolo.
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By the look of it Trump is going to crash the America economy at this rate and probably start a war to distract the American public from it!
Itâs been fun knowing you all!
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Madman theory.
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Yeah, I think it used to be - same in this country.
Looks like Trump is getting what he wanted? Ukrainian minerals and a peace âdealâ? A deal would mean both Ukraine and Russia agreeing, so ultimately Ukraine giving up territory?
Bring on the Nobel prize 
Absolutely. He ended a war! Nothing to do with bullying a nation into being raped and stripped of all value for the foreseeable future.
