@jusderaisingroy @giantgio Is the conjecture here that individuals callously profiting from famine is a novel phenomenon? Or do you find the myriad ways to do so objectionable due to the greater sophistication of modern financial markets?
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Seymour Buttes
667 posts
Shorting wheat is end of civilisation shit. People will struggle to afford to eat whilst others speculate on its financial derivatives for their portfolios. In the Black Death no one had the luxury of “shorting wheat” because they could see a labour shortage coming.
DROUGHT FARMER@bigwehrm
$880 Urea. That's it. That's the tweet. Won't be any wheat topdressed this summer. And guys that haven't bought yet will be shorting the wheat crop on N.
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Seymour Buttes retweetledi
Seymour Buttes retweetledi
Petrodollar is one of those phrases that lets you know you’re dealing with a rube
Doug Stokes@ProfessorStokes
The petrodollar thesis is a zombie argument. The $ dominance rests on the depth and liquidity of US capital markets, the enforceability of US contract law, the openness of the US capital account, and the absence of any credible alternative that offers all three simultaneously.
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Seymour Buttes retweetledi
The coercion thesis on $ hegemony confuses US geopolitical interventions with the mechanism of dollar dominance. These are not the same thing. Nobody is holding a gun to the head of Norges Bank or Japanese pension funds.
Every major central bank prints money. Why does the $ retain primacy despite this? Mainly because of the structural factors I identified: deep capital markets, enforceable contract law, and open capital account. No rival offers all three.
The strongest test is China: a great power the US cannot coerce, which has actively tried to displace the dollar for fifteen years and largely failed. Why? Because Beijing won't open its capital account or accept independent legal adjudication. The coercion model can't explain voluntary demand from actors beyond American reach.
Like it or not, the dollar will remain the global reserve currency. We are in a period of shallow multipolarity, as I have argued elsewhere.
Prophet of Doom@Mahboiii
Completely idiotic argument. The $ dominance rests on the constant threats of the GAE upon its vassals. The "depth and liquidity" only exists because the GAE can print Dollars to infinity and make its vassals bear the price of inflation. The "absence of any credible alternative" required decades of propaganda from lying Americans who love to act as if their money printing skills are some sort of magic power only they can succeed at. Any financial place that would accepted as the replacement to the USA if it could show that it can protect the general security of the world well enough. London can't do that, Hong Kong can't either. Every time someone stepped up to try and show a better system than "feed Fatistan even more", America attacked them to show that they were the only ones that could establish security. Iran in 76 wants oil independence? Shah gets coup'd with CIA backing for the islamists. In 78 the Islamists show they want the same thing? 10 years of war between Saddam and Iran with the US backing Saddam. Later Saddam attacks Kuwait? Gets destroyed by the GAE. Later yet Saddam gets tired of being used like a tool and sells his oil in Euro? Invented WMD stories lead to the war in Iraq and his murder. Russia is an independent oil seller? Pressures and threats are yielded on Germany to only buy in Dollar and never in Euro. Eventually the pressures and threats only got bigger with the expansion of NATO and then they did the Maidan CIA coup to plunge Ukraine into an american-controlled government in 2014 and pushed against Russian minorities all the way to 2022 when the Russian state openly attacked. All the GAE relies on is constant violence to threaten and destroy its "partners". Fuck this tall tale of "$ depth", the only "depth" is the depth of the thefts. Forcing everyone to keep buying Dollar debt and Dollar assets even as the Dollar gets debased to infinity with the endless money printing they've been doing since 1971.
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Seymour Buttes retweetledi
The petrodollar thesis is a zombie argument. The $ dominance rests on the depth and liquidity of US capital markets, the enforceability of US contract law, the openness of the US capital account, and the absence of any credible alternative that offers all three simultaneously.
Joan Larroumec@larroumecj
This is exactly what I mean when I say Americans have no idea how their own empire works and believe their own propaganda. You think you are the only empire in human history that owes its dominance to some kind of intrinsic superiority rather than coercion. This naivety is staggering. People buy dollars because it is the only way to buy oil, and it is the only way to buy oil because the United States imposes this on the Middle East. The day — coming soon — when the United States no longer guarantees the protection of the Middle East, demand for dollars collapses. Europe buys American weapons because it is mandatory under NATO. Notably, countries that are not required to buy them tend not to. Europe has been trying for years to ban Big Tech, and the United States threatens to withdraw from NATO if Europe does so. It is therefore by force that American tech giants maintain their position. When China banned them, within 24 months it had produced equivalents. It would be the same thing in Europe. But in truth I am very happy that what is obvious to the entire world and to the older generation of Americans from the Greatest Generation has become totally incomprehensible to the new generation of Americans. Thank you for scuttling NATO. It frees us from the chains placed around our necks when we destroyed ourselves in 1945.
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Seymour Buttes retweetledi
@RacePopeIII The annoying thing about it is they would’ve proclaimed the pilot’s capture as a catostrophic defeat and embarrassment for the US, while now that we saved him, they proclaim the loss of materiel in doing so as a waste and as evidence of the operation’s failure.
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Various groups of people ranging from Leftists to Islamists to certain kinds of Right-Wingers (we all know the type) would have been happy if we let our pilot be strung up by Basij militiamen.
Frankly, they can go fuck themselves.
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@AutismalKV @AcademicAgent_X What would the cost to the United States have been, from either a financial or morale perspective from the IRGC getting to parade an American hostage around? Would not those hostile to America and the war not criticize us as much or more for failing to retrieve him?
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@AcademicAgent_X Even if you accept the American story, it's all those vehicles and more, sacrificed for saving 1 life. Completely unsustainable.
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Because your feed may be different from mine, you have to understand that MAGAtards are trying to 4D chess this out into some massive win.
BRICS News@BRICSinfo
JUST IN: 🇺🇸🇮🇷 Footage shows wreckage of US Black Hawk helicopters and C-130 military transport aircraft destroyed by US forces before departing Iran.
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@JTrinci65452 @AcademicAgent_X Scrolling through your page, one imagines Dostoevsky’s “Underground Man” on the other side of the screen.
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British Empire built bridges, US empire bombs bridges
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@lurker788228216 @DanTalks1 In the cases of Iran and Russia I’d say it’s justified.
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@SeymourButtesIX @DanTalks1 That's true, the dollar system is pretty seductive.
But that doesn't change that we are forcing very large and significant parts of the world out of it.
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Guy who doesn't know Iran has been under US dollar sanctions for years and years.
They do everything they can to get dollars, they take massive haircuts on their oil revenues just to convert through front companies.
Third worldist propaganda is truly something else.
Crypto Rover@cryptorover
💥BREAKING: Iran is ditching the Dollar. 🇮🇷 Iran demands ships transiting through the Strait of Hormuz to pay fees in Crypto or Chinese yuan. The Petrodollar is under Threat.
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@lurker788228216 @DanTalks1 Russia was forced to engage in international barter a couple of years ago lmao. Life outside the dollar system is simply worse than life in it
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@DanTalks1 They've been settling trade outside dollars for years. Russia too.
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@ChromeBarracuda But the latter already have nukes, so it’s not like we have a choice between the two options here
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Nuclear proliferation doctrine:
Shiite clerics with the ability to conventionally crash the global economy at will 😱🤬❌
Actively genocidal Kahanists backed by growing religious fundamentalist demography 🥰😇✅
Marco Rubio@marcorubio
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@Dljokl It’s hard not to see the last decade of middle eastern politics as a tremendous success for Israel and that our current predicament is downstream of an Iranian Hail Mary via proxy on Oct 7th to prevent a new middle eastern paradigm of Arab-Israeli normalization.
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@Dljokl I find myself more convinced by Bret Stephens’ writing on the war and find it at least a little surprising that he currently finds himself so far outside the mainstream on the topic.
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The attached commentary is hyperbolic, but still worth reading Kagan's comments.
Teortaxes▶️ (DeepSeek 推特🐋铁粉 2023 – ∞)@teortaxesTex
holy fucking shit. the Special Combat Operation is going so well that *Robert Kagan*, the Iraq war hawk, is talking like some Antisemitic groyper 30 seconds away from citing USS Liberty.
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@PegasusFund To be clear, not defending the rally or the admin. The petrodollar meme is just tiresome
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@PegasusFund If anything sustained higher oil prices would lead to an increased need for gulf states to engage in petrodollar recycling, which has dropped significantly since 2022. Also, the oil trade is a drop in the bucket relative to the total global trade that occurs in dollars so nbd.
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- Strait is closed
- Petrodollar system has taken irreparable damage
- UER was expanding anyways & going to worsen now with sustained higher crude
- GPU buyers going to have more difficult access to financing with higher real rates & worse GDP/ ad sales
Not sold on the rally
Paul Cerro@paulcerro
In English, why are we rallying? Even if we leave the straight and it's not open, that still doesn't solve anything economically. Everyone else still screwed with higher gas prices. I understand the sentiment was for trying to rally into anything but the problem won't be solved.
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@jusderaisingroy I think it’s a bit of a fool’s errand to predict what Trump will do in the spheres of war and foreign policy more generally by following what he says in the press or on truth social. He clearly values strategic ambiguity at the expense of selling the war at home or to allies.
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The thing which tells me trump probably won’t do boots on the ground or anything about Hormuz is literally every time the topic comes up it’s offloaded to other countries.
The White House@WhiteHouse
“All of those countries that can’t get jet fuel because of the Strait of Hormuz, like the United Kingdom, which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, I have a suggestion for you…” - President Donald J. Trump
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@sibune_lnz @RacePopeIII If the new deal and the great society were at least in part responses to the USSR, its hard not to consider that the phenomenon you are referring to is largely a response to China and would have occurred eventually regardless of the party in power.
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@RacePopeIII Taking partial stakes of public companies like the Trump administration has done is an excellent half-measure between state influence and nationalization. A new economic center is forming in both parties: Dirigisme.
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A key part of my economic ideal is exemplified when, in 1953, Charles Wilson (who at the time was President of General Motors) was asked at his SecDef confirmation hearing if he would be able to make a decision adverse to the interests of GM.
He would answer that he could, but that he also could not conceive of such a situation. Why?
“Because for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa.”
I wouldn’t say that I want to use the State to constantly attack American businesses, but I want genuine cooperation between State and Capital in pursuit of the National Interest.
Now, because I want to avoid things like nationalization at all costs (except maybe in certain sectors) I think the best way to begin pursuing this course is to begin emphasizing the importance of patriotic values among the business class, and for our corporations to not see themselves as “global enterprises” but as “American companies with global reach”. Another good term would be “National Champions” I suppose.
I could emphasize further, but I’ll leave it there for now.
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Seymour Buttes retweetledi
@m_takewaka The Michelin Guide contains 58 BBQ restaurants, 31 are in Texas. Texas has 19 of the 33 with a Bib Gourmand recommendation, and all 4 BBQ restaurants in the world with a Michelin star are in Texas. The BBQ war is over, Texas won.
guide.michelin.com/en/us/restaura…
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