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Pax Americana vs Pax Sinica vs Multipolar World


Strannik

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12 hours ago, Josh said:


how specifically has production been hamstrung?

 

https://www.axios.com/2022/01/12/oil-production-surge-biden-gas

That's not an example of good surging, that's brownout and surging. Look at that sharp spike in 2020. A precipitous drop in production and then repeated surges and drops, that's not good. Volatility like that is not something to toot your horn about. 

Think that's not idea, hey, let me put some power systems on your home's power feed so you get surges and brown outs. Guess what you'll have? Busted electronics and motors. 

 

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2 hours ago, rmgill said:

That's not an example of good surging, that's brownout and surging. Look at that sharp spike in 2020. A precipitous drop in production and then repeated surges and drops, that's not good. Volatility like that is not something to toot your horn about. 

Think that's not idea, hey, let me put some power systems on your home's power feed so you get surges and brown outs. Guess what you'll have? Busted electronics and motors. 

 

The boom/bust cycle seems to be more a symptom of fracking being at the edge of profitability. Sudden surges up or down in Brent have an outsized effect. I read an article just a few days ago that fracking companies are slowing their rates of expansion in the last year, primarily because of the demands of share holders, but I don't know how true that is. Broadly speaking it doesn't seem like the oil industry has really suffered under Biden, and in fact the progressive wing of the Democratic party feels rather betrayed by him. The ups and downs of oil prices seem more driven by market forces than any fundamental policy changes. The drop in Chinese demand in particular seems to be forcing prices to plateau even in the face of the KSA unilateral cut (which had a surprisingly small impact on price, to my mind).

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On 6/12/2023 at 10:51 AM, Josh said:

You mean when Trump was president?

Also I think it is pretty likely the drop at that moment represented COVID and not due anything political.

So why not a sudden recovery? A spike in prices and demand should see a corresponding spike in US production as demand goes up. But if the brakes are applied by the feds, then you don’t see it. 

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Not quite sure why people think that a declining percentage of GDP being in manufacturing means that manufacturing is in decline.

It's perfectly possible for the value of manufacturing to increase in real terms whilst losing share - the service sector rate of increase is simply higher in this case.

Of course, this would be solved by showing the inflation adjusted GDP figures for each sector, rather than the percentage charts chosen.

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On 6/16/2023 at 10:44 AM, Strannik said:

BRICS Is Evolving from China-Russia Dream to Potential U.S. Nightmare

"The main drivers are to do with an overall belief that the United States has become both unreliable and overbearing in its foreign policy"

https://www.newsweek.com/how-brics-evolving-china-russia-dream-us-defying-reality-1804844

In the end we come back to what currency are you going to use instead? And Yuan is still not a suitable answer without major tectonic changes in PRC currency policy. There will be a slide away from dollar as an exchange currency as a result of a number of trends and the recent Russian sanctions have accelerated the trend. But in the long run there doesn’t seem to be a suitable replacement currency, which ultimately caps how far that trend can go. In addition, US allies include the EU a lot of major Pacific economies that have no interest in adopting a financial system that empowers China. That will always put a hard floor to international transactions use dollars.


https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-bank-china-backed-to-challenge-the-dollar-now-needs-the-dollar-d9dc27ee

 

Someone mentioned BRICS was going to attempt to create a new currency independent of BRICS currency-I guess that could work, though I think the devil is in the details.

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On 6/16/2023 at 12:15 PM, glenn239 said:

Western media is still too reluctant to place the blame for this and a list of other foreign policy gaffs where it belongs - squarely on the shoulders of Joe Biden.

The dedollarization effort definitely picked up speed after the unprecedented sanctions and asset freezes against Russia. IMO, a price worth paying. It hasn’t had any substantial effect on US finances and most likely never will for the reasons I posted above.

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The seizure of Russian foreign exchange reserves—a policy that will likely go down, together with Churchill’s return to the gold standard in the 1920s, as one of the worst economic decisions in history—has greatly accelerated the process, but this does not mean impending apocalypse.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-dollar-at-the-end-of-history/

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  • 2 weeks later...

The economic reckoning comes for Germany as a price of US vassalage (something about monkeys come to mind):

Forbes: German Economy Shrinks Faster Than Expected

FT: German inflation surges more than expected to 6.8%

Reuters: German recession will be sharper than expected

Reuters: Drop in German business morale points to longer recession

Multiple papers:  German economy bids goodbye to years of plenty

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I wonder how would Germany be doing without the gigantic surplus in their trade with the US for decades. I guess the US should've been smarter a long time ago and threaten the trade relations, maybe they wouldn't have forgotten their place. 

 

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3 minutes ago, urbanoid said:

I wonder how would Germany be doing without the gigantic surplus in their trade with the US for decades. I guess the US should've been smarter a long time ago and threaten the trade relations, maybe they wouldn't have forgotten their place. 

 

And soon you will find out.

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Yes, probably indirectly, as our economy is very much tied to the German one. Still, I believe that in the long run the things will balance themselves out. The West in general should have never allowed the situation where its wellbeing is dependent on entities it can't largely control, at least indirectly. To me geopolitics trump the economy every time. 

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2 minutes ago, urbanoid said:

To me geopolitics trump the economy every time. 

That is a very, very interesting point that, even, could undermine free trade economics, for instance.

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2 minutes ago, sunday said:

That is a very, very interesting point that, even, could undermine free trade economics, for instance.

I have no problem if it does. I believe that the West shouldn't overly depend on anyone, while I welcome the reverse situation. Western supremacy > free trade. That the West sucks more and more is another matter altogether, we should sort our internal matters later while making sure that the supremacy remains unchallenged, by bitchslapping proper behaviour into the would-be challengers if necessary.

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3 minutes ago, urbanoid said:

I have no problem if it does. I believe that the West shouldn't overly depend on anyone, while I welcome the reverse situation. Western supremacy > free trade. That the West sucks more and more is another matter altogether, we should sort our internal matters later while making sure that the supremacy remains unchallenged, by bitchslapping proper behaviour into the would-be challengers if necessary.

Indeed. Most of the global empires started with a country mostly self-sufficient in manufactured goods.

Insularity is also a desirable feature in a country that wants to expand itself.

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I don't want to tell others how to live, I don't have fantasies of conquering and 'reeducating' the Chinese, Russians or Iranians into proper behaviour, at the same time I admit that I wouldn't wish the reeducation performed by the 'current West' on anyone. And if we were the 'correct' West of the 1950s or so? Still no, pearls, swines and all that. 

I believe that we suck, the problem is that our enemies suck more. The main problem is that they have incorrect ideas about the relations of the ruling and the ruled in the first place (even the theoretical ones, ours are correct but the practice sucks), whether it's some mandate of heaven/allah or whatever else. I don't really care what they do internally, they can establish cannibalism as a national pastime for all I care, but when they try to undermine the Western position - for example by denying their neighbouring countries their direct or indirect associations with the West, they should be bitchslapped. I don't care if it's Ukraine or Taiwan or several countries that the Iranians are subverting, they should learn their place and it should hurt, pour encourager les autres. 

In short - they are allowed to live how they want in their own countries, but anti-Western empires are verboten.

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