International Events VII- Afghan Catastrophe

[Zorral]

So far, my tea leaves are unhelpful.

Is the China government going to allow Evergrande to default / bankrupt?

Some insist that China will not, cannot, allow a Lehman event.  Others insist yes.

Guess I'll make another pot of tea.

[DireWolfSpirit]

41 minutes ago, Zorral said:

So far, my tea leaves are unhelpful.

Is the China government going to allow Evergrande to default / bankrupt?

Some insist that China will not, cannot, allow a Lehman event.  Others insist yes.

Guess I'll make another pot of tea.

Another interesting China development is going on with the government actively investigating tighter controls over the big licensed casino operators over on Macau.

This could portend big financial haircuts for Western operators like Steve Wynn and Sands holdings.

They are in China's crosshairs for being big Trump donors. Couldn't be happening to a nicer bunch of operators imo, reap what ye sow and what not, hehehe.

[Zorral]

3 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Another interesting China development is going on  ... Sands holdings.

Is that the successor holders of Las Vegas Sands' Sheldon Adelston big tRumpist, major campaign donor player re Israel and the gops?

[DireWolfSpirit]

5 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Is that the successor holders of Las Vegas Sands' Sheldon Adelston big tRumpist, major campaign donor player re Israel and the gops?

Yes it was already a big holding company Sheldon controlled before he passed. Both Wynn and Adelson have been reaping major profits from their Macau operations for years now. Something the Chinese govt is eyeing getting a fist( not fingers) into.

[The Anti-Targ]

I imagine the one thing you can surmise from the Evergrande situation, given China is a command and control economy, if the govt lets it go bust it will have decided there is a strategic benefit to it that outweighs the damage that it will cause to China. Perhaps somewhat akin to an economic suicide bomb.

[Fragile Bird]

I just got caught up in this thread, wanting to post something about China, and was surprised at the turn finally made in these last couple of posts!

The stock market bulls just crushed the bears this week, the initial drop being pushed back all week. But now China has announced cryptocurrency is “illegal”. There was speculation that China was going to set up up it’s own cryptocurrency with a view to undermining Bitcoin but also to undermine the US currency. Why anyone would buy a Chinese-controlled virtual currency is beyond me, and maybe the Chinese have realized they have a problem there. Months ago they started by shutting down crypto miners, saying they used too much energy.
 

But, in any event, the Chinese crackdown on business has been fascinating. They don’t really give a shit about the enormous damage they’ve done to their publicly traded companies. It seems to be an effort to reign in the growing power of Chinese billionaires who might become (and in fact were becoming) forces strong enough to influence the government. At the same time crushing those companies has done harm to American mutual funds, ETFs and pension plans that invested in China. Billions have been wiped out in valuations. Bonus win!

[Proudfeet]

4 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

But now China has announced cryptocurrency is “illegal”. There was speculation that China was going to set up up it’s own cryptocurrency with a view to undermining Bitcoin but also to undermine the US currency. Why anyone would buy a Chinese-controlled virtual currency is beyond me, and maybe the Chinese have realized they have a problem there. Months ago they started by shutting down crypto miners, saying they used too much energy.

Hopefully other governments follow suit. Blockchain technology and cryptocurrency might be the future, but Bitcoin is not a currency. It is a speculative instrument backed by nothing except its own inertia and maybe El Salvador, with the bonus of being an ecological disaster. No thanks. And if its too big to fail now, it'll only become worse as it gets bigger.

[Zorral]

3 hours ago, Proudfeet said:

El Salvador, with the bonus of being an ecological disaster

El Salvador's people know it too -- they've been out there protesting hard against the 'government's' decision.  So much for economic naiveté of the poor, right?

~~~~~~~~~

Money, always newsworthy!

"Europe Tightens Purse Strings to Try to Pressure Poland and Hungary
Frustrations over rule of law violations in the two countries have prompted the European Union to block payments in an effort to bolster legal action."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/world/europe/hungary-poland-eu.html

Quote

 

....The two countries have now been hit by increased financial pressure from the executive arm of the European Union, the European Commission, which has long been frustrated by their repeated stymying of its legal efforts to counter their rule of law violations, particularly with regard to judicial system changes, press freedom and minority rights, over the past six years.

The European Commission acknowledged this month that it was withholding $42 billion in payments to Poland from an $857 billion coronavirus recovery fund because of that country’s challenges to the supremacy of E.U. law. The commission also said that it might cut more funding to Polish regions that have declared themselves “L.G.B.T-free zones.”

Payments of $8.4 billion from the virus fund to Hungary have also been frozen after the European Commission said that Budapest had not done enough to address corruption.

And both countries are at risk of losing even more money because of a mechanism agreed upon in December that ties all E.U. funds to rule of law standards like independence of the judiciary and anticorruption measures. The rules are already in force, but Hungary and Poland have challenged the mechanism in the European Court of Justice....

 

 

[DireWolfSpirit]

4 hours ago, Proudfeet said:

Hopefully other governments follow suit. Blockchain technology and cryptocurrency might be the future, but Bitcoin is not a currency. It is a speculative instrument backed by nothing except its own inertia and maybe El Salvador, with the bonus of being an ecological disaster. No thanks. And if its too big to fail now, it'll only become worse as it gets bigger.

This is scary, perhaps even displacing Evergrande as the next looming economic time bomb.

[Gorn]

These real estate bubbles keep getting ever grander, don't they?

I'll see myself out.

[maarsen]

2 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

This is scary, perhaps even displacing Evergrande as the next looming economic time bomb.

I have never put a penny into either Chinese companies or Bitcoin as both seemed to be built on foundations of sand. And yes when it all comes crashing down, I suspect that I will have some collateral damage. My consolation is that the greedy fuckers who did invest big will be hurt way way more than me.

[The Anti-Targ]

11 hours ago, Proudfeet said:

Hopefully other governments follow suit. Blockchain technology and cryptocurrency might be the future, but Bitcoin is not a currency. It is a speculative instrument backed by nothing except its own inertia and maybe El Salvador, with the bonus of being an ecological disaster. No thanks. And if its too big to fail now, it'll only become worse as it gets bigger.

"Cryptocurrency" can never be the future because it will always and only be "virtual gold" with the exception that real gold actually has practical uses as well as being a somewhat less speculative store of wealth. However digital money can be the future. Digital money is the same as money in that the government is the monopoly issuer and you can pay your taxes with it. That means the energy drain component of cryptos (the "mining") does not feature since the government can issue digital money by simply typing a number into a spreadsheet. We pretty much have digital money in most countries already, since the amount of paper money in circulation is considerably less than the money that is actively exchanged in transactions and available on call in transaction accounts. So the question is with the benefits that still exist in paper money (absolute anonymity in transactions, which is handy for people selling things illegally, being able to buy stuff when the digital system goes offline, like in a natural disaster) is there a strong case to be made for going fully digital?

[Proudfeet]

7 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

"Cryptocurrency" can never be the future because it will always and only be "virtual gold" with the exception that real gold actually has practical uses as well as being a somewhat less speculative store of wealth. However digital money can be the future. Digital money is the same as money in that the government is the monopoly issuer and you can pay your taxes with it. That means the energy drain component of cryptos (the "mining") does not feature since the government can issue digital money by simply typing a number into a spreadsheet. We pretty much have digital money in most countries already, since the amount of paper money in circulation is considerably less than the money that is actively exchanged in transactions and available on call in transaction accounts. So the question is with the benefits that still exist in paper money (absolute anonymity in transactions, which is handy for people selling things illegally, being able to buy stuff when the digital system goes offline, like in a natural disaster) is there a strong case to be made for going fully digital?

Pretty sure that mining does not necessarily need to be a component of cryptocurrency. Its the ledger technology which is supposedly more secure and verifiable, and could possibly be incorporated into our current digital payment system. 

Separately, credit is a different concept and has been around way before digital currency.

[DireWolfSpirit]

The Taliban is busy hanging bodies in the square and set to cut off hands and resume hardline tactics with criminals according to this article today- https://news.yahoo.com/witness-said-taliban-hung-body-154342999.html

"No one will tell us what our laws should be. We will follow Islam and we will make our laws on the Quran."

Not going to be a comfortable place for any freedom from religion.

[Zorral]

Everything old is new again.  Transhumance returns -- and not for the first time as response to climate change.  (Though we've never had  a climate change like this before.)

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210923-the-revival-of-spains-epic-pastoral-migration

 

[DireWolfSpirit]

^^^ Sort of brings to mind how Utah has put into place some interesting overpasses for their animal migration. Everything from bighorn sheep, bear, moose, mule deer, cougar and more can safely cross their big North/South expressways without having to dodge the car traffic now.

It's simple highway overpass but they have landscaped it with boulders logs and natural scape that the animal took right to as if it was there for thousands of years.

[Zorral]

3 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

It's simple highway overpass but they have landscaped it with boulders logs and natural scape that the animal took right to as if it was there for thousands of years.

I seen videos of that.  The night times ones were particularly amazing.

[Zorral]

Now this is some effed up shyte all right, wrought by we-know-who.  (They Sayers Bolsonaro is going to lose the election to the figure who was imprisoned so he couldn't run for president.)

"Some Bolsonaro supporters have called for a military takeover of Brazil. Why do they wave the American flag?"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/09/27/brazil-bolsonaro-american-flag/

Quote

 

SÃO PAULO — On the day when Brazilians celebrated the nation’s independence, when thousands of protesters this month called on President Jair Bolsonaro to lead a military takeover of the country, a middle-aged man set out onto the streets of Brazil’s largest city, cloaked in the flag.

The American flag.

Wilson Gomes, 56, strutted down streets thronged by thousands of Bolsonaro supporters, the Stars and Stripes draped across his right shoulder, demanding radical change in Latin America’s largest nation. The time had come to do away with the Brazilian supreme court, which he said had been corrupted by a kleptocratic left and was unfairly targeting Bolsonaro and his supporters. The only way to save the constitution, he said, was to suspend it.

“They want to plant communism and socialism,” he said. “How can we live in such a country?”

In recent months, as Brazil has grown ever more polarized by Bolsonaro, blamed by many Brazilians for the country’s disastrous coronavirus response, an overt American iconography is emerging. But it’s not being deployed in defense of democracy. It’s being wielded by those who would set Brazil’s constitution aside to bolster Bolsonaro’s power.

At far-right rallies all over the country, where many have called for supreme court judges and opposition lawmakers to be removed, the American flag is now a staple. Supporters wear cowboy hats and belt buckles emblazoned with Texas longhorns. One man in Brasilia this month shaded himself with an American flag baseball hat. Another strode down São Paulo’s Avenida Paulista dressed as a U.S. country sheriff. A viral meme among supporters shows Bolsonaro, clad in a green-and-gold version of Captain America’s uniform with the words that open the U.S. Constitution: “WE THE PEOPLE!”

In a country that has more traditionally viewed the United States and its intentions with suspicion, the sudden appropriation of American symbols has exposed a political paradox at the heart of the Bolsonarista movement. A group that many here believe want to subvert, if not overthrow, Brazilian democracy has chosen as one of its banners the flag of the world’s oldest democracy. . . .

 

This is even more disturbing than seeing photos and vids of the CSA battle flag flown in places like Germany and the UK.  

[HoodedCrow]

I read Stephen Miller( Trump fascist consultant) went to have a talk with Bolsonaro. ( true)He had a copy of fascism for dummies with him.(metaphorical) 

[maarsen]

40 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Now this is some effed up shyte all right, wrought by we-know-who.  (They Sayers Bolsonaro is going to lose the election to the figure who was imprisoned so he couldn't run for president.)

"Some Bolsonaro supporters have called for a military takeover of Brazil. Why do they wave the American flag?"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/09/27/brazil-bolsonaro-american-flag/

This is even more disturbing than seeing photos and vids of the CSA battle flag flown in places like Germany and the UK.  

I could never understand the urge to pick up and wave the flag of ignorant losers. But then I meet people who take pride in there ignorance.