the main practitioners of post-materialist politics are a few heads of state, who are making territorial conquest great again because they are bored of stable maps and miss the glory of conquest.
@realcaseyrollins it is current foreign exchange prices. but it’s weird that it should rise if the expectation is it’s to decline because inflation. (that said, there are some “overshoot” models of FX pricing that might actually be consistent with rise-to-fall. i need to look those up, it’s been a long time.)
@BenRossTransit i guess we need the East American and West American Oceans.
wouldn’t it be more bigly to go for the American Ocean?
@realcaseyrollins the USD is really strong. usually that suggests low inflation expectations, people don’t want to buy or hold a currency expected to depreciate relative to other currencies, which a higher inflation rate than in other countries should provoke. 1/
@realcaseyrollins at the same time, long-term bond yields are rising sharply, despite the Fed cutting short-term rates. that suggests over time the market expects the Fed will be forced to re-raise rates pretty sharply, which suggests a prediction of inflation pressures. 2/
@realcaseyrollins so, these things are hard to reconcile. dollar strength can be explained as a preaction to tariffs, but if so that should mute any price effect of the tariffs. something is missing from my understanding or analysis, something doesn’t add up. /fin
it’s just hard to reconcile the FX market and the bond market right now.
if the yield curve is foreseeing a US-specific Trump inflation while the dollar is sharply strengthening, that’s predicting a heck of a strengthening in the “real exchange rate”, US wages and salaries super high in FX terms, not so great for reindustrialization. 1/
i’m not sure i buy it though. i guess i explain dollar strength as a preaction to expected tariffs, so i don’t expect so sharp an import price change let aline inflation, but then i can’t explain the yield curve. /fin
i wonder what the chatter is like among servicemen and attachés stationed abroad, working among allies in NATO roles.
a remake of “Occupied” except with the United States and Greenland.
@Arianity oh, i think Gensler did not do so well on crypto. when he started, it was clear he meant to aggressively reign in crypto. he ended up basically forced by lawsuits to normalize crypto, to approve crypto ETFs. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/11/secs-gensler-gives-in-to-a-bitcoin-etf-but-the-hostility-is-still-there.html
At a basic level, the USD's special status has been anchored by a security arrangement. Allied governments (except sometimes France) don't try to diversify out of it in part because it finances the US military umbrella. Change the arrangement, and others might become curious about say what the BRICs are up to.
"The ultimate function of the entrepreneurial ethic was (and is) to reconcile workers to precarity." #BeccaRothfeld (@heideggirl?) reviewing #ErikBaker's "Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America" https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/01/03/make-your-own-job-entrepreneurial-work-ethic-erik-baker-review/ ht @SteveRoth
the genius move would be to use the anti-Denmark animus he is ginning up to justify compulsory licensing of Ozempic / Wegovy at generic prices. he'd become the most popular President in history.
@susannah@octodon.social @Tarnport ☹️
i'd be more positively disposed if the plan was to divide Canada into states, each with the population of Wyoming. Republicans like small states, right?
@Nichol not at all clear! they only come in packages of two, i think!
@carolannie like California!
@realcaseyrollins agreed. i'd like him to stop threatening our friends and allies too. it's enough that he threatens us.
people act like Trump is trying to strong-arm Canada or something, but actually he's offering them a sweetheart deal with two whole senators.