Baffled European

Tag: crypto corruption

  • Short term planning not possible

    I’m getting used to this. I write something and the next day it is obsolete. In this case, I was complaining about how it is impossible for anybody to make long term plans when the president has the attention span of a goldfish. He’s decided to postpone the new EU tariffs until July. Going back to his not-original-but-second plan. It seems that von der Leyen talked some sense into him.

    It draws me back to looking at his other adventures in foreign affairs. The war in Ukraine continues, with Russia targeting civilians in drone attacks. It is seeping into the mind of our wannabe Nobel prize winner that Putin is taking him for a ride.

    Then there’s been a change of approach towards Syria since his visit to the gulf states. With these states having essentially infinite petrodollars for bribes, he has turned away from his previous solid support for Bibi and his perpetual war. Will this affect his crusade against “antisemitism” that his government is using to silence its critics? Possible, but it’s so useful they’ll likely keep going. Consistency is for betas.

    The problem is that the USAians congratulate themselves on having a strong and decisive leader, but he keeps getting pushed around by everybody. At some point, the rest of the world will simply ignore the USA rather than waste time. This will come as a surprise to the USAians and I don’t think they’ll like it.

  • Long term planning not possible

    It was supposed to be 90 days. After the markets started trashing the liberation day taxes, the fool who raised them announced a 90 day break so that negotiations could take place. Now, just over a month later, he gets bored, or Ron Vara gets a word in when Bessant isn’t around, and arbitrarily raises import tariffs from the EU to 50%.

    All the old favourites were there. Made up figures. Attempts to divide the EU. Whining that the EU was set up to screw the USA. And still no idea of what the USA is supposed to achieve in any deal.

    Markets were in turmoil of course. The dollar also fell as a result, although Bessant helpfully told us all it wasn’t the dollar that was falling, merely that all other currencies were rising. Scott my boy, you’re supposed to be the brains of the outfit, but I think we should have a talk about these things.

    If past experience is anything to go by, this will cause a lot of short term pain. Then there will be a triumphal announcement of some amazing deal, before quietly climbing down on basically everything. Only the insiders around him shorting the markets are winners in his corrupt system.

    This is the cost of having a ruler who has massive power but zero understanding of anything. The whole of the US establishment seems to be quite content with the random damage he is causing.

  • Airport ’25

    There’s an ongoing meltdown at Newark airport. More than half of all US air travel cancellations are at Newark. There have been near-misses and regular outages. The fun is spreading, with a similar outage at Denver airport leading to a loss of communication between aircraft and controllers.

    Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is in no doubt as to the cause of these problems: former President Biden. The systems, equipment and infrastructure are old and should have been replaced years ago. This is not entirely wrong – US infrastructure has been rotting since the 1980s when Reagan decided it would be cheaper to stop doing any maintenance.

    Nevertheless, it is notable that this has actually become a problem in the last three months. By coincidence, DOGE gleefully sacked a load of technicians, safety staff and ground support at about that time. Air traffic controllers were also threatened by email. That’ll help morale in a tricky situation. The latter incident was apparently caused by an “antiquated, old” email system. Duffy insists he doesn’t know who actually sent the email. Maybe try looking in the mirror. The computers didn’t send it themselves.

    Duffy says it is perfectly safe to fly from Newark, but he did change his wife’s flight in order to avoid Newark. Better safe than sorry. Reassuring.

    Needless to say, he’s another former Fox News presenter. It’s incompetence going all the way up. It won’t get better.