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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 8th, 2023

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  • Don’t they have many trillions in reserves?

    Right now China has about 3.2 trillion in ForEx of all kinds and currencies which means that this bailout represents nearly half of the total.

    ForEx is an extremely complicated subject, way too much for a single post, but it is essentially the lubricant for trade. If you don’t have enough of it in the right currency on an hourly (or less) basis to support your imports and exports then the machine will seize up.

    So what China is doing here is risky as hell and if it doesn’t work they will soon have the same kind of financial problems that Iran does and that is stupendously bad for an export based economy.







  • The 2 percent of GDP target is imaginary.

    The target was set so that no country would be able to join NATO and then just let everyone else pay for everything. You contribute to the common defense or you GTFO.

    We can bicker about 2% being too high or too low and whether the target should have been adjusted Post Cold War but any argument that some target isn’t necessary is just silliness.

    No amount of NATO bombs or tanks would have stopped the invasion.

    Oh I’m fairly certain that NATO military power would have stopped the invasion in the first 24 hours. A single flight of F-35s would have made those original Russian convoy’s cease to exist à la the Highway of Death from 1991.

    Even now NATO military power could substantially end the ground war in Ukraine before the end of the month.

    It only would have fueled the flames and given legitimacy to Russia’s claimed insecurity.

    So what? NATO didn’t do it and there’s STILL an ongoing war with a casualty toll well over a million and millions more displaced.

    Economic power is much stronger than military sabre rattling.

    Then the EU should have flexed them in 2014. They didn’t and here we are.









  • That matter isn’t settled yet but my guess is that Amazon will ultimately settle out of court for a lot of money. With that said a Tornado is a different kettle of fish than a flood. The warning time for a tornado is usually measured in bare minutes, sometimes when you’re lucky you get 20 minutes and even then where exactly are you going to go?

    Floods like this one though had HOURS of warning and there’s positively no reason for employees to get caught like this. There was more than enough time for these folks to get a known safe place. It’s despicable.




  • Edit: if you are going to downvote at least explain if you got a counter point, otherwise it seems y’all just butthurt haha

    Okay.

    How is this different from US ISP bootstrapping peasant grade internet?

    1. Whatabout-ism is annoying AF.
    2. How is nationwide re-configuring of DNS to enable censorship different than “bootstrapping peasant grade internet” is a dumb question on it’s face.
    3. I’m sitting in the middle of Wyoming sending this comment via a 2Gb/s fiber optic connection. This is not “peasant grade”.

    So basically you are getting downvoted because your comment is irrelevant 'Murica bashing.

    Now you know.