Honestly, Hillary could not have been much worse than Trump has been on foreign policy. I'm sure she would have tried, though.
Trump's foreign policy sux pretty bad but I still think Hillary would have been worse. There's no natural opposition when a Democrat goes on the war-path its usually more like "oh so-and-so should have been tougher" from the Republicans. There would be little holding her back from retalliation against Russian "interference" in the election.
"Defense Secretary James Mattis offered a disturbing assessment Tuesday of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, its longest running war. "We have entered a strategy-free time," he told Congress, sobering words given the 8,400 U.S. troops at risk there and Mattis' further acknowledgement that the U.S. and its Afghan and coalition allies are "not winning.""
US signs deal to supply F-15 jets to Qatar after Trump terror claims The US has signed a $12bn deal to supply dozens of F-15 jets to Qatar, despite recent high-profile claims by President Donald Trump alleging Qatar’s “high-level funding” of terrorism.
From a a Facebook friend... "I'm reporting myself Safe in the daily 93-million massacre. Why hasn't biased Facebook set up a Safe Check for this tragedy?"
Canada to increase military spending. It's still a low percentage of it's GDP, but Trudeau campaigned against war so he's another liar. https://www.yahoo.com/news/canada-increase-military-spending-70-percent-10-years-174134649.html
Nicky, as an Austrian are you in principle in favour of a Gold Standard? I say in principle because you're an anarchist and so understand that it might be slightly different for you in practise. I ask because I'm researching and learning about Modern Monetary Theory and as always am curious about different economic systems and how they might work.
I'm just against standards altogether, tbh. I enjoy economics a lot but I realize it's just a dumb fantasy and that governments would never limit themselves again like that. No matter, we won't need them for our money soon enough. The Bahraini guy on your board, his username escapes me, introduced me to MMT. It seems a lot more compatible with modern nation-states than a gold standard does.
Germany opposes America's Russia sanctions. "Germany threatened on Friday to retaliate against the United States if new sanctions on Russia being proposed by the U.S. Senate end up penalizing German firms. The Senate bill, approved on Thursday by a margin of 98-2, includes new sanctions against Russia and Iran. Crucially, it foresees punitive measures against entities that provide material support to Russia in building energy export pipelines. Berlin fears that could pave the way for fines against German and European firms involved in Nord Stream 2, a project to build a pipeline carrying Russian gas across the Baltic" Austria also slammed the new sanctions. Hungary, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, and Greece already opposed Russian sanctions.
Here's a good vid of Austrian v MMT if you're so inclined and have a spare couple of hours: I'm a bit more optimistic than you. I believe that our ability to understand things as a society often depends on our need to understand. For example global Keynesian policies (more similar than different to MMT) implemented after WWII delivered the most prolonged period of shared economic growth in Global/American History. But it took the devastation of WWII rooted in economic causes and so we'll probably get there again but only after a lot of death and devastation on a global scale.
haha Yeah, that's the video @Salmeen10 told me to watch. I'm not really a Murphy guy even if he can be very entertaining at times. He definitely can't debate for shizz, it seems. And I'm not sure how your it's-going-to-take-a-lot-of-death-and-destruction scenario makes you more optimistic than me and my free-market-alternatives-will-simply-out-compete-governments scenario, but...
One of the interesting things about the video is that at the end the bond/FX traders in the room were all siding with the MMT guy and against the Austrian "free market" guy. He did say people would disown him if he lost. You really think that (under your scenario) governments will give up all their power to anarchy and the free markets without a massive fight. Either way there will be blood and lots of it. btw Warren Mosler (credited as the founder of MMT) advocates permanently setting the FED funds rate at zero and claims the FED is essentially a public entity and not private, a viewpoint I've previously bought into as well.
I thought murphy did a terrible job explaining anything in this debate but Mosler is a beast. I'm a trader myself so I might be inclined to hear Mosler's realistic explanations over Murphy's academic tone. Wether his economics check out or not, I'm not sure yet. I have yet to read a critique of MMT and I'm sure there are some.
The more they try to cut down on it the more demand there will be for it. What did Leia say in the first Star Wars movie? Something along Ong the lines of "the more you tighten your grip, Darth, the more star systems will squeeze through your fingers..." or some shizz.
Typical politician. And I doubt it was an innocent leak. Now the world knows who he is as he's endeared himself to the anti-Trump crowd without saying anything on the record. On another note. Have you guys noticed how the term "populism" is being used by the establishment in such a negative tone? Phrases like "the threat of populism" or "the disturbing trend in the rise of populism". So the will of the people is something they hate? It's something bad? For them it is because they are a band of thieves that have nothing but contempt for us.
I just feel like, if the Dems were to distribute the wealth they spend on failed House races, equitably among the little people... Hell, we'd be living in a utopia already.