America a Failed State and a Rogue State to the rest of the World

wayneL said:

Here is a link detailing the ranking of countries by economic complexity.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/countries-ranked-by-their-economic-complexity/

We are languishing down in 93rd place.

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Great perspective wayneL, when looking at who we are next to...

noirua said:

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That's because Nixon confiscated all the Gold from the US citizens.

China's Gold is with the citizens and the total would be quite substantial compared to what is shown as known Govt reserves. Same with India.

As a side note, it saddens me that we are not on the list since we are one of the biggest Gold producers in the world. We are selling everything including the kitchen sink !

wayneL said:

You're seriously comparing Venezuela to the USA?

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In saying "Venezuela" I think he was responding to the question "Who is broke and stupid?"

“The one thing that the pandemic has taught us is that I was right.” In a New York Post interview, Trump said he thinks Americans are “starting to feel good now.” (Vox)

I think he is the greatest leader since Pol Pot

kahuna1 said:

Sigh ... if you dont understand economics or currencies ... maybe dont comment. USA is not printing money, if it did so, its currency would implode. It is yes expanding the money supply, by issuing bonds and then buying them back, but, to create money out of thin air would cause a currency collapse, not a crash a collapse.

Eventually one day ... the bonds its bought will either be sold and the trade reversed, or they will mature .... or they will default and that's more likely ,.... given the leaders.

MMT or modern monetary theory is ... well ... a game of shells which works, till it really really doesn't. Usually no one buys their bonds .... or is willing to lend at any interest rate followed by a currency collapse.

Argentina ... most South American nations .... German collapse post 1920 and currency went from 4/1 USD to 10 billion to 1 USD.

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Tomayto tomahto. They're constantly increasing the supply of American dollars.

Obviously if they were to suddenly create a huge extra supply of American dollars it would radically devalue the American dollar, but they could use any number of strategies to mitigate this. Obviously they're extraordinarily unlikely to ever suddenly do this, but just conceptually, they could say American citizens can convert their wealth (in whatever way they come up with) into new American buckeroo pound rupee credits, and foreigners left holding American dollars (or American debt) are now holding pretty much nothing. The new American buckeroo pound rupee credits are backed by a gold standard.

Again, obviously nothing so extreme is at all likely to happen, but a milder and drawn out version can be applied. The comical thing is that the USA's debt is in American dollars, which is not backed by a gold standard, and the value is controlled by the entity with the debt. It's the same as you lending me Sdaji dollars which I can use to buy and do things, and I control the value of the Sdaji dollar. If you're stupid enough to keep giving me Sdaji dollars and I'm spending decades spending them and buying myself assets and enjoying myself, and I'm also buying up a pile of powerful, scary weapons and stuff which you find intimidating enough to ensure you don't want to stop playing this game and lending me more Sdaji dollars, and you just keep doing this... who is the stupid one?

Consider who is actually paying for the American military, the world's largest.

Tell me again who is stupid.

Sdajii said:

Tell me again who is stupid.

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That would be rude.

Sdajii said:

Tomayto tomahto. They're constantly increasing the supply of American dollars.

Obviously if they were to suddenly create a huge extra supply of American dollars it would radically devalue the American dollar, but they could use any number of strategies to mitigate this. Obviously they're extraordinarily unlikely to ever suddenly do this, but just conceptually, they could say American citizens can convert their wealth (in whatever way they come up with) into new American buckeroo pound rupee credits, and foreigners left holding American dollars (or American debt) are now holding pretty much nothing. The new American buckeroo pound rupee credits are backed by a gold standard.

Again, obviously nothing so extreme is at all likely to happen, but a milder and drawn out version can be applied. The comical thing is that the USA's debt is in American dollars, which is not backed by a gold standard, and the value is controlled by the entity with the debt. It's the same as you lending me Sdaji dollars which I can use to buy and do things, and I control the value of the Sdaji dollar. If you're stupid enough to keep giving me Sdaji dollars and I'm spending decades spending them and buying myself assets and enjoying myself, and I'm also buying up a pile of powerful, scary weapons and stuff which you find intimidating enough to ensure you don't want to stop playing this game and lending me more Sdaji dollars, and you just keep doing this... who is the stupid one?

Consider who is actually paying for the American military, the world's largest.

Tell me again who is stupid.

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I have plenty of satan $ to share around if your interested in a trade.

kahuna1 said:

Americas policy is far worse than Sweden ...

Just to show how Trump ... Gates ... Buffet ... Bezos and the rest really care !!

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Sweden doing worse than their other scandi cousins also correlates to the amount of politicizing they have been doing.

I disagree Gates and Buffet can be compared to the likes of Trump. They donate their money to charities fighting corona and raising awareness. Gates especially raised a lot of awareness about the impact of deadly viruses and tried to bring people together to fight it together with the help of science and logic.

Trump is just a liar and idiot. He's a living joke out of a dystopian comedy movie.

Interesting @noirua , does th US figure include the gold own overseas but stored in the US like when the german gold that Germany tried unsuccessfully from memory to bring home.likewise the domestic gold.
But it indeed keep things in perspective.
The US remains the key wealth and global superpower but it is indeed in the situation France and the UK were at the early 1900's.a waning superpower.
investment wise, i still look at NYSE indicators and do not even bother looking at the Chinese or HK ones to trade.
it says it all as does the hysteria around Trump we do not see replicated against the Chinese leader.just my opinion..

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The Chinese government is an oligarchy. It is not a great system. Their actions in the South China Seas have been controversial. They have also imprisoned some Uyghurs who were involved in terrorist attacks.

But the meme level repetitive anti-China agenda is perplexing. People act like the US government is monumentally more civil and benign. In what way? They started a huge war not that long time ago justified by an incredible lie there they found WMDs. And Bush's centrist America was far more peaceful than Trump's ultra-right is.

Not to mention countless regime change operations to meddle and screw with the political stability in other countries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change

joeno said:

I disagree Gates and Buffet can be compared to the likes of Trump.

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Fair enough .... neither has paid tax ... avoids it ...
charity ... favorite is planned parenthood and its links and founder Sanger is illuminating.

Its window dressing .... Gates since becoming a charity has doubled his net worth.
When faced with say a tax the rich ... or just them paying tax at say 35% like someone on 100k ... something they had claimed to back, BOTH ... went troppo on Warren then Sanders ... along with their papers.

Buffett and there ilk ... play gods whilst the masses crumble ... he gave to one very rich hospital in NY whilst well most crumbled ... Bloomberg gave massive amounts to curry political favor and his old university ... 1 billion to get elected as Zombie President ...

It is of course theirs to give as they like. FMG guy Andrew Forrest ... does his best .... BUT pays tax ... massively so ... Gina Rhinehart is the backer of Australia's climate denial group ... for person ends and her coal mines.

What they do with their money if they pay tax ... similar to the rest of us is their business, in the case of the USA ones ... well they pay at 10% if that ... verses most on 35%. Bezos ... has not paid tax ... ever to anyone.

Something wrong with this ... quite obviously very wrong with the worlds richest man never having paid tax or the company ever paid a dividend.

USA sponsors ... protects ... and encourages ... global tax theft from other nations.

Australia still is loosing upwards of 30 billion a year via these mainly USA based cretins.

Very good articles on this ... here ...
https://www.michaelwest.com.au/top-40-tax-dodgers-2019/

Meanwhile ... virus keeps on ticking.
Stay safe and hoping for a few zero days .... followed by 14 then 28 days of them.
NZ sadly got a single case .... we had a blip ...

USA just ... well ... sent everyone back to work with the new Virus strain that spreads more easily and appears likely ... you can get it again and again.

joeno said:

Sweden doing worse than their other scandi cousins also correlates to the amount of politicizing they have been doing.

I disagree Gates and Buffet can be compared to the likes of Trump. They donate their money to charities fighting corona and raising awareness. Gates especially raised a lot of awareness about the impact of deadly viruses and tried to bring people together to fight it together with the help of science and logic.

Trump is just a liar and idiot. He's a living joke out of a dystopian comedy movie.

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I would agree.

Trump is a joke.

Gates, Buffett, Twiggy and Gina are just doing what I would do if I were in their situation. Minimising their tax as the government don't spend it too wisely to paraphrase Kerry Packer.

Being a person of means gives me an advantage over many others.

I can post in ASF and influence an extraordinary class of people, literate, numerate, wise, humorous and fecund. Even the one-eyed such as @kahuna1

gg

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “We don’t know” where the coronavirus began, but “the weight of evidence is that it was natural and not man-made” and “that it was probably not intentional[ly]” released from a Chinese lab. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, however, insisted that “there is significant evidence that this came from the laboratory,” but conceded that “We don’t have certainty […] We’re all trying to figure out the right answer.” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. intelligence community, and the “Five Eyes” international intelligence alliance have all said that the coronavirus “was not manmade or genetically modified,” suggesting that it “evolved in nature,” and likely originated in a Chinese wet market as a result of “natural human and animal interaction.” (The Hill / Politico / CNN)

Dr. Anthony Fauci, contradicting both Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, said the best scientific evidence shows that the coronavirus did not originate in a Chinese laboratory. “If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what’s out there now,” Fauci said, the scientific evidence “is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated.” Fauci added that he doesn’t subscribe to the theory that someone found the virus in the wild, brought it into a lab, and then allowed it to escape and spread to the rest of the world, saying “Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species.” (National Geographic)


Job interviews for new judges below !!



I like the guy with the tattoo ... new chief justice ? He seems sane ... compared to Trump.

I am not ultra tech so forgive for my bumbling but what I find interesting is

https://www.epainassist.com/infections/which-countries-have-malaria

Compared to

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

but I am probably wrong

bux2000 said:

I am not ultra tech so forgive for my bumbling but what I find interesting is

https://www.epainassist.com/infections/which-countries-have-malaria

Compared to

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

but I am probably wrong

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You mean interesting in what way?

Interesting news from NYC funeral directors:

"Michael Lanza, funeral director at Colonial Funeral Home:

To be honest with you, all of the death certificates, they’re writing COVID on all the death certificates whether they had a positive test, whether they didn’t. "

https://www.dailywire.com/news/watc...directors-skeptical-about-coronavirus-numbers

Oldest trick in the book.

If you dont want to have truthful figures muddy the waters with
misinformation.

There are agendas everywhere.
Meanwhile the equivalent of the deaths
in the twin tours occurs each and every day.

tech/a said:

Meanwhile the equivalent of the deaths in the twin tours occurs each and every day.

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Tour de France, and Giro d'Italia?
I blame those drivers on the wrong side of the road .

kahuna1 said:

Sigh ... if you dont understand economics or currencies ... maybe dont comment. USA is not printing money, if it did so, its currency would implode. It is yes expanding the money supply, by issuing bonds and then buying them back, but, to create money out of thin air would cause a currency collapse, not a crash a collapse.

Eventually one day ... the bonds its bought will either be sold and the trade reversed, or they will mature .... or they will default and that's more likely ,.... given the leaders.

MMT or modern monetary theory is ... well ... a game of shells which works, till it really really doesn't. Usually no one buys their bonds .... or is willing to lend at any interest rate followed by a currency collapse.

Argentina ... most South American nations .... German collapse post 1920 and currency went from 4/1 USD to 10 billion to 1 USD.

Click to expand...

Actually sdajii is correct.



Defined as:

The currency component of M1, sometimes called "money stock currency," is defined as currency in circulation outside the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve Banks. Data on total currency in circulation are obtained weekly from balance sheets of the Federal Reserve Banks and from the U.S. Treasury. Weekly currency in circulation data are published each week on the Federal Reserve Board's H.4.1 statistical release "Factors Affecting Reserve Balances of Depository Institutions and Condition Statement of Federal Reserve Banks." Vault cash is reported on the FR 2900 and subtracted from total currency in circulation. For institutions that do not file the FR 2900, vault cash is estimated using data reported on the Call Reports.

The H.4.1 data:



Clearly seen is the increase in (hand-held) currency.

The 'reason' that the US dollar doesn't blow up in a hyper-inflationary scenario is that it is currently the 'Reserve Currency' and thereby serves the same purpose as gold did prior to Bretton Woods in 1947 and Nixon in August 1971. Of course, that could change...

jog on
duc

ducati916 said:

Actually sdajii is correct.

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Also sadly broke ...

I better trade in my multiple masters degrees and 38 years in finance ....

Sigh. More pain.

Fed buys bonds .... fed buys bonds with paper it issues .... its effect is to drive down bond prices and influence the longer end of the yield curve.

So Fed buys IBM bond and gives a piece of paper equal value for that ... bond. Same thing .... one is a debit ... one is a credit ...yes it looks as though the money supply has expanded ... so too has debits and credits all over the place depending on what your looking at .... but the SUM total is ZERO .... one goes up .... one goes down ... US fed holding of bonds goes UP .... US fed issue of notes or promises to pay others goes up .... one is an asset on the feds books and the other a liability.

Fed in the USA is a private company .... it however is supported by treasury.

Any central bank can only control the cash rate or the exchange rate. USA does not have a fixed rate of exchange.

Cash rate as in overnight cash rate.
It sets a target and then act to make this occur.

This MMT and QE1.2.3.4.5. ... buying securities to support the long term financing of the nation and banks and now basically any corporate is ... a shell game.

The Fed by doing this ... essentially takes on the risk. Of course .... in a rising yield curve environment this works. Or if the yield of the bonds it buys, sometimes 30 year ones ... remains below the rate they purchased.

Not so many years ago ... post GFC the Fed on paper was broke. Of course the USA goverment and treasury will support them. Post GFC they added 3.5 trillion in assets to their balance sheet, they purchased the bonds .... and then gave a piece of paper to whom they purchased it from. NOT PRINTING MONEY .... one purchase ... ONE SALE .... net zero. What it did do, and was designed to do was to make the asset price go UP and the YIELD down .... it worked,

Now they are doing it again without ever having gotten rid of the 3.5 trillion and expect to add 4.5 trillion the leveraged up rescue package and then on top of that the USA rescue package and revenue falling in a heap ... tax ... need to borrow 3 trillion in the next 3 months and likely USA expects this pile of poo to hold together when its likely to be say 6 trillion govt side plus 4.5 trillion via bailing out Wall Street. Basically an increase of 10 trillion in borrowings or well ... 50% more. Not quite ... as corporate s not able to borrow normally ... need the support of the govt backing them. Even if they dont have a viable business as is the case with most oil companies below $60- oil ....

I dont know how this ends, but .... likely in tears with the USA fed ... run yet again by an investment banker ... has no limit to the stuff they will pull to support Wall Street. It may be the USA fed balance sheet trying to keep the long end down goes from 3.5 trillion to 8 trillion .... not a good thing.

Not a good look. Not something the rest of the world will be amused about as time goes on.

But NO ... it is not printing money ... one debit and one credit ... of equal size make ZERO.

SO nope .... this is how it works ... sorry to pop your bubble.

kahuna1 said:

But NO ... it is not printing money ... one debit and one credit ... of equal size make ZERO.

SO nope .... this is how it works ... sorry to pop your bubble.

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Anyone can go and listen to last weeks MacroVoices interview with Dr Lacy Hunt (one of the worlds most successful bond investors and storied economists) to understand this.

Or people can continue to just play along with the Central Bank perception management game, they want you to think they are printing, because they are completely and utterly neutered in their ability to operate in the modern financial world where "money" is actually bank balance sheet capacity to generate offshore funding in Eurodollars.

Dr Hunt describes it very aptly as a duration swap. The Fed takes a long duration asset onto its balance sheet and places a very short duration asset (bank reserve) onto the balance sheet of a commercial bank.

Anyone can go and read Jeffrey Sniders blog on the Alhambra Partners website, or listen to his many podcast interviews on MacroVoices, to understand that not only is it a duration swap, but it is a duration swap where the commercial bank gets an essentially inert and useless asset that they can't even really loan against, because the Fed and other CBs have no idea how the modern financial system operates.