Baffled European

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  • Too much liberation

    Liberation last week. Now no liberation. Or perhaps some liberation. Ordinary USAians have had so much of liberation in the last week, they’ve been panic buying stuff before the prices are liberated by tariffs.

    At any rate, there is now a standard tariff of 10% on everybody except China. These two countries are effectively running a trade blockade against each other, until smugglers find a way around it.

    All part of the plan, says Lutnick. Something something markets something dumping US bonds bad, says an orange word salad on Truth Social.

    There is supposed to be a 90 day break until the tariffs are reapplied, but of course nobody believes this. In fact the terms have already been “clarified”, probably with further clarifications to follow, as nobody really knows what is going on. It’s good that they got themselves a strong and decisive leader.

    Presumably the rest of the world will use these 90 days, or however long it turns out this time, to reduce their exposure to the USA as much as possible. It has become a joke among traders that they want pronouns back, in the magical hope that things will go back to the way they were.

    Hopefully they will quieten down for a few weeks and concentrate on terrorising their own population. I feel bad for the USAian citizens, but they created this problem and they should sort it out. Just leave the rest of us alone.

  • Unreal

    China and the USA are biting chunks out of each other, raising the ante over tariffs. Incredible as it seems, China is the honest actor, by being basically rational and genuinely the victim in this battle.

    It’s worth looking at what else is happening in the land of fantasy economics. President Bonespurs wants a strong military, and is planning a Pentagon budget of $1trillion. Maybe they’ve saved enough money from social security and destroying the health system to pay for this.

    Savings from USAID will definitely cover the network of “detention centers” that they want to build around the country, in order to process “immigrants” or whoever else crosses their path.

    There are plans for a large military parade through Washington to honour the president on his birthday. The timetable is a bit tight though. Maybe they will get it done in time.

    Of course, the money wasn’t allocated for any of these things, but Congress doesn’t seem to mind. They aren’t doing anything to stop it at any rate.

    Getting away from the money, there is one positive thing for us Germans – we don’t need to worry about any guilt about the shoah anymore. At least not according to the Leader of the Free World, who talked about the generous and kind treatment that the Jews received from the nazis. Netanyahu was sitting next to him. Unlike Zelensky – who answered back – Bibi just took it. Disgraceful.

  • The value of your investments…

    Stock market crash seems to have no end. I’ve lost money because of it, but then so has virtually everybody who has money in there somewhere. Except Warren Buffett apparently, who evidently saw the disaster coming.

    Hardest hit it seems are the tech boys. Nobody has any sympathy for them. Not least because of their incredible arrogance, but also because they so desperately wanted a failed businessman as president. Presumably they thought they would be able to control him and have only now found out that the mafia doesn’t work that way.

    In any case, the tech stocks have been hugely overvalued and this crash is providing a correction. If the market loses trust, it will punish the dodgy investments first. It seems they are not the geniuses we all thought they were.

    This still leaves the protection racket that the rest of the world has to deal with. The problem is that the mob don’t seem to have worked out their price, or what constitutes success. So far, retaliation (China), negotiation (EU), and capitulation (many others) hasn’t brought any relief: just more threats.

    What can possibly work? And if a “deal” is struck, what is it worth? Does anybody trust the president? He changes his mind constantly, doesn’t seem to know what he is doing, and agrees with whoever spoke to him last. Beyond that, as the USA destroys itself from within, are they even able to keep an agreement?

  • Life hacks

    I put some shelves up over the weekend. Years ago, I discovered the best way to do this is to not bother measuring anything. Just put a couple of marks on a spirit level and drill holes according to those. Everything is always the same distance apart, as well as level. There has to be limits to how far this method goes, but it is so easy, there’s nothing to go wrong.

    Canadians have developed a similarly idiot-proof way to boycott USA goods in shops. One conscientious person checks a product for the country of origin. If it is the USA, they put it back on the shelf, but upside down. Everybody who comes along afterwards can see the upside down product and not buy it. They all know the code.

    It is all getting a good response across the country. The backsliding and stupidity south of the border is bad enough, but somehow expected. The threats of annexation are worse. All of this is pushing Canadians together. A massive 85% of the population now describes itself as being “proud” to be Canadian. That’s even higher in Quebec, of all places.

    This wave of nationalism is notably different from that south of the border. Maga is driven by imagined resentments and a sense of exceptionalism. Canadians are under no illusions about their own power, but want to engage with like-minded others, in order to assert their independence.

    Meanwhile, the USA loses power and influence.

  • Whatever it takes

    It wasn’t the tyrannical behaviour. Not the repeated violations of the holy First Amendment. Nor was it the destruction of government agencies. It certainly wasn’t the persecution of the transes. Gangsterism on the international stage was excused. So was insulting foreign leaders and betraying long standing allies. Sucking up to dictators was tacitly approved. The outright contempt for the rule of law is something that people are conditioned to by now. Even blabbing out state secrets in a video conference is no cause for concern.

    A stock market crash, though, that’s a different matter. That’s what brought millions of USAians out to protest across all 50 states. Each person will have their own reasons, but the important thing is for them to see they are together. And it’s only a start, but that’s important in itself.

    However, ordinary people are not the only protesters, with rumours of various oligarchs complaining privately to the reality TV host. The crash last week wiped out over six trillion dollars. Just two months ago, the Wall St. traders were exhilarated by their new freedom to say “pussy” and “retard”. Owning the libs. Was it worth it? Do they have any influence?

    The USA seems to be trying to create as many major crises as possible, while simultaneously destroying all government capacity to deal with them. At some point, something must break, and very badly.

  • Crimes against humanity

    Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was seized by ICE agents on 12th March and held for deportation. The government claimed he was a member of a dangerous gang, but has not provided any convincing evidence for this.

    The government has repeatedly lied and sought to circumvent the justice system. It ignored the court order and sent him to El Salvador, where he is being held in a maximum security prison. The judge has now ordered the government to bring him back. The White House responded to the judge’s order with an insolent refusal, saying the judge’s jurisdiction does not run to El Salvador.

    The government did however admit to a “mistake”. That is another lie. They did it very deliberately. This is applied racism. They imprisoned and deported this man for entirely racist reasons. “Mistakes” like this happen when the decisions are made by delusional people who think they are inherently superior.

    It’s not just that they can cause suffering to a random person. To them, it’s an advantage, but only part of it. Millions of people with an immigration background who are all legally resident in the USA are afraid. They’ve seen it happen – they might be next. This is what the racists in charge want.

    There’s no benefit in doing this, other than being able to demonstrate power over lesser humans. Shameful, absolutely disgraceful.

    When and how did people stop believing in witchcraft? Can we do the same with racism?

  • There’s only two Steve Jacksons

    It’s a strange fact that there is a Steve Jackson in the UK, who produces role-playing games, and a Steve Jackson in the USA, who produces card and board games. Although in the same business, there is rarely confusion. It’s a small market and customers know who they are dealing with. The two Steves have indeed worked together in the past.

    Steve Jackson USA is taking a real pasting from the new tariffs. Trouble is, his games have special dice, woodwork, plastics and tooling. They can’t source these from the USA. Not for lack of trying. There are simply no companies in the US that produce these parts. Even those who are interested do not have the capacity or expertise.

    The upshot of this is that a game which cost $25 will now cost $40. This is entirely because of the additional costs of the tariffs. They now have the choice of redesigning their games so that all parts can be sourced from the USA, or accepting that people can simply no longer afford to buy what is now a luxury product.

    That’s how it hits a small business in the USA. Spare a thought for Saint Pierre and Miquelon, a French collectivity near Newfoundland. They export $3.5m worth of seafood to the US each year. Because they don’t import anything, they have been hit with a 99% tariff, essentially destroying their economy. For a product that the USA evidently cannot produce themselves.

  • Did they use AI for this?

    I’m starting to understand the purge of academics in USAian universities. The regime is not interested in anything they have to say. So why pay for them?

    The new tariffs were announced today. A seemingly random set of numbers, all with huge increases. It didn’t take long to work out what was going on. They have taken the total trade with each country, divided it by the trade deficit with the USA and set this percentage as the new tariff. Essentially, they have converted the US trade deficit into a tax on US citizens.

    Why stop at that point? If tariffs are so good, why not set them at 1000%?

    A few countries have been spared, such as Russia, Belarus and North Korea. For most countries, there is a flat rate of 10%, including the Heard Islands, which are uninhabited, except for penguins. They’ve also hit Diego Garcia, a US naval base, with the same tariff.

    It’s not merely the idiotic policy, but the way they are pursing it. Resentment about countries “cheating” and “victimising” the USA. Vietnam is one of these countries, but all of South East Asia is being clobbered by a policy designed to drive everybody into the arms of China.

    An incredible quote by SoS Howard Lutnick, who said the EU “hate our beef because our beef is beautiful and theirs is weak.” How can anybody say stuff as stupid as this?

    These people are lunatics.

  • 4-dimensional chess

    Elon Musk was boasting a few days ago that his predictions have generally come true. This comes as a surprise to me.

    It turns out it was as long ago as 2013 that we all got excited about self-driving cars and their imminent arrival. Musk has made regular promises about such technology, usually several times a year, but still no self-driving cars.

    We all know he wants to go to Mars. In fact, he reckoned he would send two rockets there by the end of 2022. That moved to 2025, now 2029. Not to mention that StarShip, among all the rapid unplanned disassemblies, does not meet specifications and will probably never work as promised.

    Then there’s his Boring Company. The idea was to have a tunnel for public transport. He expects cars to travel through this tunnel at 250kmh. They don’t. His sales patter following the obvious failure is like that of a perpetual motion crank: the prototype is there, we just need more money.

    Predictions for Neuralink are for 2025. Maybe they will come true. On the other hand, research suggests that the human brain is like a very very slow modem in computing terms and cannot be linked to a gigabyte stream. I await the breakthrough.

    Most recently, he predicted he could put a puppet in charge of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Despite spending $25million on this project, and engaging in outright election fraud, he got that wrong as well.

  • Brexiters tried this

    The USA’s new Golden Age starts today. It’s the president’s flagship policy, all based around his favourite word: tariffs. This is his opportunity to show that he can run the country just as well as he does his businesses.

    He started this on day one, raising arbitrary tariffs at random levels. Cancelling them. Reapplying them. Increasing them. Delaying them. Nobody seems to know what is going on. Fortunately, they can spend their time congratulating themselves on having such a strong and decisive leader.

    In the past, there were monolithic factories where raw materials went in at the start, with finished products coming out at the end. This is not the way things work anymore. Components are produced all over the world and supplied just in time to the assembly process. It’s more efficient.

    All that tariff increases do is increase costs at particular points in the process. Some components can even be hit several times by tariffs as they move along the chain.

    These tariffs will not recreate the old and inefficient processes of the past, at least not within the next five years. They will also do nothing to reduce the trade deficit, its stated aim. All they will do is raise costs for USAian businesses and consumers, and create loads of unnecessary trouble for everybody else in the world.

    In other news, Marine Le Pen has been convicted of corruption and banned from office. This sort of thing is possible.