But unlike in the old days, US wins from higher prices. Even consumers wins (because they make more money on average, and their imported goods are cheaper because balance of payments shifts in US favour because of oil exports).
Voters are furious because of psychological factor of gas prices (purely psychological, it has nothing to do with economy or people's purchasing power). It bites politician's asses real hard.
So, Trump undermined himself by launching that war - but others are fine.
Do they make more money on average? Does any additional income cover the increase in cost of living? Becoming psychologically poor is much harder than becoming psychologically rich. I doubt that balance of payments goes anywhere near your average Joe’s pocket.
It absolutely does because balance of payments = exchange rate, and average Joe is poor and consumes disproportional part of imported goods vs the rich.
The overwhelming amount of expenses is for domestic products; lumber, food, services, rent, etc. Cheaper foreign shit isn't going to be meaningfully felt by the majority.
The part where the rich come in, is that the rich will disproportionally feel the upside of selling the fuel. The people on below average wage are just going to see prices rise and meager savings dilute, long before their wages grow.
Thats not to say the US isn't going to be well of as history's largest energy producer ever, but the reshuffling is going to be extremely painful for a majority of Americans.
All of that depends on the strength of the Dollar, If the US is to deindustrialise as it aims too it needs a weak dollar.
Secondly theres the Petro-dollar which depends on the Middle East states Reinvesting their profits in the US to keep the dollar strong I don't know if you checked but I don't think they are going to be making any money in the near term. So looks like the dollar will be falling anyway.
Further to that there is the global debt system which largely relies on buying US treasuries if countries get squeezed by the coming inflation, theres the chance these get dumped on the market and if that happens I believe the term is "Well, Fuck."
> If the US is to deindustrialise as it aims too it needs a weak dollar.
Typo for "reindustrialize"? Is the idea to move people from well paying comfortable services jobs to uncomfortable repetitive lower paid factory work by forcibly lowering their standard of living?
>"Typo for reindustialize" We invented the language first so I'll use it as intended.
The plan is for the US to not be dependent on the rest of the world (China) for its needs.
I think GP wasn't pointing out your "s" but rather your "d" at the beginning. At least, I also assumed that you meant "reindustrialise" rather than "deindustrialise".
De-industrialize, which should not be a new surprising word, as the appalachian factory belt (now mostly rusted out buildings) has existed for decades.
I'm trying to imagine your painted scenario in a positive light ie; "everyone has well paying comfortable service jobs."
Do you feel that the rest of the world will just allow itself to become the "butler" of the US, so we can all make $50 usd an hour doing easy jobs? Of course not. As the dollar weakens, and imports rise, we only get skewered more, while our "comfortable service jobs" become worthless.
Calling people's anger purely psychological is simply wrong and extremely out of touch. Perhaps you personally are in a privileged position where this is all great, but most people aren't. Most Americans work a regular job and don't have a huge amount of wealth. They make the same amount they did at the beginning of the year, but all of their expenses have increased by a significant amount since then.
Maybe down the line they'll be able to enjoy marginally cheaper socks or TVs or whatever, but that does nothing to help them afford higher gas and grocery prices this month.
Being unsustainable isn’t the same as breaking within the lifetime of the people making the decisions. The average US senator is 66, and that’s young compared to the current Supreme Court or the sitting President.
Maybe Trump is secretly for "the green agenda" and this was all part of the plan to stop oil.
He had that big falling out with Elon so that he can't be accused of pandering to him when electric car sales go through the roof.
I have also heard that this is really "big oil's" plan, they always manage to cause a huge price spike just when green energy is about to take over the market, somehow this stops the green revolution and forces everyone to go back to using fossil fuels.
Haven't you heard that thanks to Trump and the Republicans, the start-stop engines are now banned and gas stoves are back? Have you heard the cries of joy every time this has been mentioned in Republican rallies?
Also apparently a $5000 “dividend” for everyone if we just “do the right thing”. I thought you had to be profitable to pay a dividend, but apparently not. Oh also, that $1.5T will magically not add to the debt or come from tax dollars.
>In Brown v. Hartlage (1982), a Supreme Court case where a Kentucky county commissioner promised to reduce his salary if elected, the Court unanimously drew a line between policy promises and vote buying. “A candidate’s promise to confer some ultimate benefit on the voter, qua taxpayer, citizen, or member of the general public, does not lie beyond the pale of First Amendment protection,” Justice William Brennan Jr. wrote. Given that precedent, Trump is almost certainly within the bounds of the law (you might remember Elon Musk wasn’t charged for handing out $1 million checks to people during a campaign rally in Wisconsin in exchange for “taking the time to vote.”).
This is an asinine decision that essentially makes vote buying totally legal. We see this trick with the recent Supreme Court decisions that essentially make racial gerrymandering legal again by just making the crime impossible to prove by accepting any other justification at face value.
There is always a state of "this policy upside is contingent on voting for me" - though in Trumps case he is making it contingent Not on his own electoral outcome in some sense. Just messy.
Don't forget: you can accept bribes as long as you receive them after the fact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snyder_v._United_States I guess I will never pay another restaurant bill again, since any possible future "gratuity" I might award them would of course have no bearing on their past decision to bring me a plate of food.
That's a problem if you live in a country with politically illiterate voters. That's why education is so important in democracies so people don't fall for such crap
> But we can easily affort 500+ million per day for faraway foreign wars! That, no problem.
That's because War is a wealth transfer program to the billionaire class. Look at the stock prices of the Big-5 War Companies of the Corporate States of America. Look at the wealth of their executive boards and CEO compensation - which has increased even more in 2026.
They did not revoke "the subsidies." The ACA subsidies are still in place. What was allowed to expire was the temporarily increased COVID subsidy levels, which were sold as a temporary emergency expansion. If they had originally passed a genuine and permanent ACA expansion, rather than an expiring one, there's likely nothing that could have been done to "revoke" it by those currently in power.
Maybe you mean this, but it's important to be clear about the distinctions we don't mislead people, and then someone tells them the whole truth, and then they wonder what else we were wrong about.
Well if that consoles you, the US government has just approved gifting mega-bombs to Israel for another $2.8 billion. Several news call it a "sale" but it's actually a gift since most of the money comes from the US government anyway.
Eh, how is this self-inflicted, when you have a radical has-been-empire blocking a global arteries by waging relentless proxy wars. Stop it with the "only white people can be actors on the global stage"-ism, the us basically clashes with Iran once every president (directly or indirectly) - and not by choice.
Well, you can play “who started it” to no end, but technically direct country-to-country assault started with Iran’s missile barrage on Israel.
Now of-course this was preceded by the killing of IRGC members in Syria (and some by beeper casualties in Lebanon), but they were there handling Hezbollah attacks on Israel.
Are you referring to the start of the 12 Day War here? If so, are you leaving out Israel's unprovoked airstrikes on Iran out of ignorance or dishonesty?
It was blatantly obvious Iran would do that if attacked. This has been known for decades.
The only thing previously stopping them holding the strait "hostage" was the threat from the US of doing an "Operation Praying Mantis v2" and destroying their navy and attacking them.
And when the US did that anyway, they had nothing to lose.
And Iran attacked. Relentlessly every day up to that war. It does not get into western news much. But in Lebanon. In Yemen. In iraq. In ghaza. There proxies marched and attacked. The west is to weak, to wait for another pearl harbour.
I am no fan of Iran but the white people in question literally went there to wage war with the so called has-been-empire and got their butts spanked, despite EVERYBODY warning them for years this would have been an unwinnable war
It does make one wonder how many nations off China's coast are taking notes on how to asymmetrically shut down waterways even against a giant modernish navy. Or Singapore and neighbors... If the world cops can't guarantee safe trade anymore things are going to get strange, and not in a good way.
This administration wants lower rates. Also this administration does everything it can to increase inflation such as tariffs and starting another endless war in the middle east.
How is it failure? You use your military to force trade to occur using your tokens. You control the supply of said tokens. You leave some other loser holding the bag for your debts. You win.
Because they cannot force the world to buy their meme token anymore. Either they pay up and joing the world being a good credit-score conscious citizen or they get the boot.
And people still think they don't have a political choice because it is impossible to pay it up. You are all alienated and going to the double down disaster.
Can’t inflate it away for the same reason we can’t stop climate change. We would have to stop the behavior that caused the problem in the first place, and we all know that’s not going to happen. Remember during Clinton’s presidency the government ran a surplus and started paying down the debt, and there were news articles worrying about the future disappearance of treasury bonds? The party of “fiscal responsibility” took care of that problem in no time at all.
Undoubtedly Republicans have done untold damage to the US. However not all Democrats made the right choices either as it was Clinton who set the stage for further breaking the US economy, opening wide open the gates to complete offshoring (and DMCA, etc).
In general its a game between the people who love their own power/money and hate US citizens (most Republicans and many Democrats) vs people who don't hate the people they're supposed to represent (Socialist Democrats and a handful of Republicans).
You're missing choice #3 - spend more money on stupid shit, cut taxes some more, pile on more debt, blame Obama Hussein Hunter Biden for the debt as the opening salvo of the third-term run in 2028.
The goal is to win the next election but I think the populace is to blame for this more than anything.
The populace is who is too interested in winning politics as a sport that the politicians have really no choice other than to focus entirely on winning the next election.
If the voters treat politics as a constant form of sports entertainment, constantly checking the latest news and events, then voters are actually the fundamental problem as to why the politicians can not do anything in terms of long term planning.
I always hear this accusation of people treating politics like sports, but what do you want? It's a FPTP system, which favors entrenching two parties. In order to maintain the backing (funding, importantly) of one of those two parties, candidates can't fall too far out of line. If you can't get your outsider preferred candidate above 50%, considering there is also likely another main-party candidate with significant policy overlap, you get nothing.
If you want to reduce the spectacle, replace FPTP with a better system that eliminates the need for primaries, and get rid of Citizens United. Good luck.
The one that seems to be working is to treat the system as two-round like the French presidential elections and do the work in the primaries. Worked for Mamdani.
It is essentially a (weird-ass) two-round system when it comes to the presidency (and many lower offices). Party primaries exist, they overwhelmingly gave one of the nominations to a dumpster.
IMO, a runoff or single round instant-runoff wouldn't solve much. Like the sibling says, it's already sort of like that. The way they eliminate candidates still forces/incentivizes people to make choices against their actual preferences. Ideally, you could vote exactly in line with your preferences regardless of who you think has the best chance of winning and not risk making things being worse than they would have been if you "lied." I've heard many times during primaries things like "I like candidate A a lot more, but I don't think they can win the general, so I voted for candidate B". This is also an issue with approval voting, which many people seem to have a very favorable opinion of. If there is an election between <good candidate>, <bad candidate> and <total disaster shitshow candidate>, and you think there's a chance the top two might be Bad and Disaster, do you approve of bad? There's no way for you to indicate that you actually don't like Bad, but are just hoping to prevent the worst.
I think there's risk in not doing it right the first time, if you were ever to get a chance to change it.
FPTP isn't wonderful but for those of us looking on for outside the tolerance of gerrymander, deliberate disenfranchisement of some voters and letting corporations spend unlimited amounts of money on getting political outcomes ranks higher. FPTP is merely a bad choice. The others look more like a country deliberately eschewing democracy for something else.
Not that I'm a fan of this administration, but inflating away remaining our only option is not related to Trump. It was the only choice for the past administrations since at least the subprime crisis; probably even since the Iraq war. My 2c.
You could also reduce spending on military. The U.S. accounts for 42% of the global military budget. Virtually every empire in history has fallen due to overspending on an excessively large military.
The way this administration works is that anyone in a decision making position has been swapped for a self-serving yes-man who will do whatever Trump wants. Anyone they can't replace who won't deliver is briefed against or investigated until they quit or can be fired. Facts that might influence the decision play no part in the process.
The easy acceptance of this authoritarian governing style has been one of the most damaging to the idea of democracy. America's democratic institutions have great marketing but many of us outside the country and not subjected daily to that marketing have long known it is an particularly weak form of democracy and open to corruption, demagoguery and populism. Americans have a susceptibility to authority and hierarchical normalisation, has left them open to this.
This wont do absolutely nothing whatsoever to bring down inflation. Interest rates don't open the Straight of Hormuz, don't increase production of oil or any other commodities.
the only way interest rates affect anything is when they meaningfully decrease investment, consumption, in other words a recession or depression.
The yield curve has always been controlled by the Fed, and this remains the case. No one has lost control. The yield curve is the time path of short run rates, adjusted by risk. So, for example, if the market thinks inflation will rise -- for example because of a foolish war against Iran -- then they will sell the long dated bonds because they know the fed will hike rates in the future, making the long dated bonds less valuable, and they want to get ahead of that. If, on the other hand, they think inflation will be too low, they will bid up the longer dated bonds because they expect the Fed to lower rates in the future, making the long dated bonds more valuable. The entire bond market is fixated on trying to guess what the Fed will do next, so that is why they peer at the economic data and try to guess in which direction the Fed will move and when. That is the opposite of "losing control" of the yield curve.
The problem is Bessent trying to control something that he has never had any control over, by jawboning the market and doing silly things like trying to intervene. Bessent is the Treasury secretary. Treasury does not, and never has, controlled the yield curve. Whatever games he plays buy buying and selling bonds has only a short term psychological effect on the market, and soon people brush it off.
The Fed controls the yield curve, not Treasury.
Bessent is a hedge fund guy that is really not well suited to the role he is playing. Now, they want to put Bessent in charge of economic sanctions against Iran, when we shouldn't even have any sanctions against Iran. The US is sanctioning the world's top oil producers, and then complaining about oil shortages.
So Trump spent weeks on a fake fraud investigation into Powell to try and force him out because he would not cut the rate, fails at that, then finally gets his choice in place and the dude raises rates almost immediately?
Incoming unhinged POTUS rants and demands in 3…2…1…
But you know what, I’m glad to see that the fed is still operating independently. The doomer in me thought they’d fold to Trump, especially right before the midterms.
There appears to be more and more people throwing back against Trump; after the courts recently again said no to his need to plaster his name on the Kennedy Centre, he went a wailin' to his supposedly in pocket Kennedy Centre board:
But even that is not providing him comfort these days. Representative Joyce Beatty (D-OH), an ex-officio member of the Kennedy Center board and the member who sued over his takeover of the center, explained to Symone Sanders-Townsend of MS NOW that Trump called into the board meeting after the court decision and “went into a tantrum.”
While most people appear to have refused to confront Trump to his face—Maine governor Janet Mills’s “We’ll see you in court” was so rare it made headlines—Beatty took him on. She recounted: “It was the most unprofessional thing that I’ve ever witnessed or been a part of it.” But after he called her “an obstructionist” and “dumb” and said he thought she was “incompetent,” she retorted: “I know you’re incompetent.” Beatty appealed to the chair to stop Trump’s unprofessional behavior, but when he continued to berate her, claiming it would be her fault if someone were killed at the center, she responded: “You’re already killing people, we’re at war.” And when he talked about what a great developer he was, she “reminded him that he had more bankruptcies than anybody in the room.”
“I mean, it really went there,” Beatty told Sanders-Townsend. “I was not going to let him bully me, intimidate me. And the facts stand for themselves.”
Indeed, these days, facts across the board are challenging Trump’s image of himself.
This is one thing that gives me a sliver of hope for our future relations as European, please keep 'civil disobedience' up to these unhinged oligarchs for better future of us all.
He didn't, oddly enough. He said he "disagreed with it" but had confidence in the central bank. Basically that he had no problem with it. This suggests to me he thinks he'll benefit from it somehow.
Interest Rates in the United States should be 1%, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World — BY FAR. Our Country is BOOMING with new Investment! If we stopped Trading with every country that we have a Deficit with, which is most of them, we would make, at least, 1.5 Trillion Dollars a year. The word “Deficit” is nothing more than a fancy word for LOSS. We are “carrying” almost every country in the World, and that cannot go on any longer. LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST! President DONALD J. TRUMP
In the long run, inflation is probably the most potent tool in the government toolbox for managing the debt. Raised interest rates are the brakes on that tool.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see above average inflation sporadically jumping up for a while.
A small price to pay to serve the interests of a certain Levantine country whose civilization is built on the [Dark Triad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad)
The only reason we have to choose between inflation and expensive loans is corporate profits can't ever go down. It's perfectly possible to freeze margins and ban increasing prices unless a business proves their costs went up, but to enforce that you would need to a) have a competent administration and b) not be scared to piss off your billionaire donors.
Allowing stock buybacks and not taxing dividends heavily is a choice. Not breaking up monopolies is a choice. Inflation comes down to high oil prices and corporate greed powered by weak competition. Starting wars is Trump's fault. Subsidizing big oil instead of setting price controls is also his choice, as is doing everything he can to slow down EV adoption that would reduce demand.
There are a lot of SKUs to regulate. The cost of the bureaucrats checking the requests for basic "my price is going up because my inputs went up" price rises would be staggering. Also it would disincentives any price drops being passed on.
This is basically self inflicted, as usual messing up in the Middle East always ends up with consumer paying the price for their ruler's stupidity
"Oh no, my drinking water tastes like crap after I pooped in the well"
Except the person doing the pooping doesn't drink from the same well as he's got his own private reserve supply.
You mean he has his own private supply of poop that is involuntarily tapped into at any random moment?
Oh, in the end, when the hoovervill goes marching- they do..
More like the people drinking the water are being told about the eventual pooping, ask for it anyway, then drink with a scowl.
But unlike in the old days, US wins from higher prices. Even consumers wins (because they make more money on average, and their imported goods are cheaper because balance of payments shifts in US favour because of oil exports).
Voters are furious because of psychological factor of gas prices (purely psychological, it has nothing to do with economy or people's purchasing power). It bites politician's asses real hard.
So, Trump undermined himself by launching that war - but others are fine.
Do they make more money on average? Does any additional income cover the increase in cost of living? Becoming psychologically poor is much harder than becoming psychologically rich. I doubt that balance of payments goes anywhere near your average Joe’s pocket.
It absolutely does because balance of payments = exchange rate, and average Joe is poor and consumes disproportional part of imported goods vs the rich.
Imported goods which have been made more expensive by tariffs?
This is just wrong.
The overwhelming amount of expenses is for domestic products; lumber, food, services, rent, etc. Cheaper foreign shit isn't going to be meaningfully felt by the majority.
The part where the rich come in, is that the rich will disproportionally feel the upside of selling the fuel. The people on below average wage are just going to see prices rise and meager savings dilute, long before their wages grow.
Thats not to say the US isn't going to be well of as history's largest energy producer ever, but the reshuffling is going to be extremely painful for a majority of Americans.
I mean, it's rather absurd to claim that "a net exporter country loses out because of increase in price of the commodity in question".
The country not in total, individuals though could overwhelmingly lose.
All of that depends on the strength of the Dollar, If the US is to deindustrialise as it aims too it needs a weak dollar. Secondly theres the Petro-dollar which depends on the Middle East states Reinvesting their profits in the US to keep the dollar strong I don't know if you checked but I don't think they are going to be making any money in the near term. So looks like the dollar will be falling anyway. Further to that there is the global debt system which largely relies on buying US treasuries if countries get squeezed by the coming inflation, theres the chance these get dumped on the market and if that happens I believe the term is "Well, Fuck."
> If the US is to deindustrialise as it aims too it needs a weak dollar.
Typo for "reindustrialize"? Is the idea to move people from well paying comfortable services jobs to uncomfortable repetitive lower paid factory work by forcibly lowering their standard of living?
>"Typo for reindustialize" We invented the language first so I'll use it as intended. The plan is for the US to not be dependent on the rest of the world (China) for its needs.
I think GP wasn't pointing out your "s" but rather your "d" at the beginning. At least, I also assumed that you meant "reindustrialise" rather than "deindustrialise".
De-industrialize, which should not be a new surprising word, as the appalachian factory belt (now mostly rusted out buildings) has existed for decades.
I'm trying to imagine your painted scenario in a positive light ie; "everyone has well paying comfortable service jobs."
Do you feel that the rest of the world will just allow itself to become the "butler" of the US, so we can all make $50 usd an hour doing easy jobs? Of course not. As the dollar weakens, and imports rise, we only get skewered more, while our "comfortable service jobs" become worthless.
No, because the US are the slowest to electrify their grid and transportation.
Can you prove any of that? Most stuff I see online are people complaining how they can't afford anything anymore.
Calling people's anger purely psychological is simply wrong and extremely out of touch. Perhaps you personally are in a privileged position where this is all great, but most people aren't. Most Americans work a regular job and don't have a huge amount of wealth. They make the same amount they did at the beginning of the year, but all of their expenses have increased by a significant amount since then.
Maybe down the line they'll be able to enjoy marginally cheaper socks or TVs or whatever, but that does nothing to help them afford higher gas and grocery prices this month.
We can’t afford healthcare because they revoked the subsidies but at least we now also can’t afford gasoline too!
While this isn't the best way to address the issue, the US is way too dependent on gasoline/diesel for transportation. It's not sustainable.
Being unsustainable isn’t the same as breaking within the lifetime of the people making the decisions. The average US senator is 66, and that’s young compared to the current Supreme Court or the sitting President.
Maybe Trump is secretly for "the green agenda" and this was all part of the plan to stop oil.
He had that big falling out with Elon so that he can't be accused of pandering to him when electric car sales go through the roof.
I have also heard that this is really "big oil's" plan, they always manage to cause a huge price spike just when green energy is about to take over the market, somehow this stops the green revolution and forces everyone to go back to using fossil fuels.
Haven't you heard that thanks to Trump and the Republicans, the start-stop engines are now banned and gas stoves are back? Have you heard the cries of joy every time this has been mentioned in Republican rallies?
> We can’t afford healthcare because they revoked the subsidies but at least we now also can’t afford gasoline too!
But we can easily affort 500+ million per day for faraway foreign wars! That, no problem.
Also apparently a $5000 “dividend” for everyone if we just “do the right thing”. I thought you had to be profitable to pay a dividend, but apparently not. Oh also, that $1.5T will magically not add to the debt or come from tax dollars.
Isn't that the textbook definition of buying votes?
Yeah. And? :)
Apparently not.
>In Brown v. Hartlage (1982), a Supreme Court case where a Kentucky county commissioner promised to reduce his salary if elected, the Court unanimously drew a line between policy promises and vote buying. “A candidate’s promise to confer some ultimate benefit on the voter, qua taxpayer, citizen, or member of the general public, does not lie beyond the pale of First Amendment protection,” Justice William Brennan Jr. wrote. Given that precedent, Trump is almost certainly within the bounds of the law (you might remember Elon Musk wasn’t charged for handing out $1 million checks to people during a campaign rally in Wisconsin in exchange for “taking the time to vote.”).
https://www.readtangle.com/trump-dividend-midterm-promise/
This is an asinine decision that essentially makes vote buying totally legal. We see this trick with the recent Supreme Court decisions that essentially make racial gerrymandering legal again by just making the crime impossible to prove by accepting any other justification at face value.
I mean, if you really believe that, then no politician would ever be able say something like "I'll work to get you free health care".
Yeah. I'm not sure how a strict reading doesn't end up with obvious policies ending up making all of the policies below "vote buying":
There is always a state of "this policy upside is contingent on voting for me" - though in Trumps case he is making it contingent Not on his own electoral outcome in some sense. Just messy.
As is often the case with our commander in chief, things once expressed subtly are now expressed brazenly.
Don't forget: you can accept bribes as long as you receive them after the fact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snyder_v._United_States I guess I will never pay another restaurant bill again, since any possible future "gratuity" I might award them would of course have no bearing on their past decision to bring me a plate of food.
That's a problem if you live in a country with politically illiterate voters. That's why education is so important in democracies so people don't fall for such crap
> But we can easily affort 500+ million per day for faraway foreign wars! That, no problem.
That's because War is a wealth transfer program to the billionaire class. Look at the stock prices of the Big-5 War Companies of the Corporate States of America. Look at the wealth of their executive boards and CEO compensation - which has increased even more in 2026.
They did not revoke "the subsidies." The ACA subsidies are still in place. What was allowed to expire was the temporarily increased COVID subsidy levels, which were sold as a temporary emergency expansion. If they had originally passed a genuine and permanent ACA expansion, rather than an expiring one, there's likely nothing that could have been done to "revoke" it by those currently in power.
Maybe you mean this, but it's important to be clear about the distinctions we don't mislead people, and then someone tells them the whole truth, and then they wonder what else we were wrong about.
Well if that consoles you, the US government has just approved gifting mega-bombs to Israel for another $2.8 billion. Several news call it a "sale" but it's actually a gift since most of the money comes from the US government anyway.
Eh, how is this self-inflicted, when you have a radical has-been-empire blocking a global arteries by waging relentless proxy wars. Stop it with the "only white people can be actors on the global stage"-ism, the us basically clashes with Iran once every president (directly or indirectly) - and not by choice.
Iran is a pain in the ass, but the latest round of escalation was started by Israel and the USA.
Well, you can play “who started it” to no end, but technically direct country-to-country assault started with Iran’s missile barrage on Israel.
Now of-course this was preceded by the killing of IRGC members in Syria (and some by beeper casualties in Lebanon), but they were there handling Hezbollah attacks on Israel.
Are you referring to the start of the 12 Day War here? If so, are you leaving out Israel's unprovoked airstrikes on Iran out of ignorance or dishonesty?
This is a pointless slipperly slope. Eventually one of you will get to "well ISraelites where there first"
That's for reddit not HN
I would argue the October 7 massacre perpetrated by Iran backed proxies started this round.
It was blatantly obvious Iran would do that if attacked. This has been known for decades.
The only thing previously stopping them holding the strait "hostage" was the threat from the US of doing an "Operation Praying Mantis v2" and destroying their navy and attacking them.
And when the US did that anyway, they had nothing to lose.
And Iran attacked. Relentlessly every day up to that war. It does not get into western news much. But in Lebanon. In Yemen. In iraq. In ghaza. There proxies marched and attacked. The west is to weak, to wait for another pearl harbour.
The damage Iran did to the various US bases around the gulf is now visible to everyone, I just saw the images on CBS.
I am no fan of Iran but the white people in question literally went there to wage war with the so called has-been-empire and got their butts spanked, despite EVERYBODY warning them for years this would have been an unwinnable war
It does make one wonder how many nations off China's coast are taking notes on how to asymmetrically shut down waterways even against a giant modernish navy. Or Singapore and neighbors... If the world cops can't guarantee safe trade anymore things are going to get strange, and not in a good way.
> when you have a radical has-been-empire blocking a global arteries by waging relentless proxy wars.
Took me a while to understand that you were not referring to the US here.
עבודה טובה, פעיל הסברה.
"Oh no, my drinking water tastes like ~~crap~~arsenic after I ~~pooped in the well~~deregulated business interests"
This administration wants lower rates. Also this administration does everything it can to increase inflation such as tariffs and starting another endless war in the middle east.
The administrations choices are fairly binary now.
Inflate away the $40Trillion+ debt they can never pay back
Or
Hard default on the debt, and be the one holding the hot potato as the union breaks up.
Fed is trying to thread the needle between the two and keep the music playing as long as possible.
There is one obvious choice here, the policy is inflation and always has been.
yet many "third world" countries managed to pay their debts just fine. some even more than once in recent history.
American exceptionalism even in failure?
How is it failure? You use your military to force trade to occur using your tokens. You control the supply of said tokens. You leave some other loser holding the bag for your debts. You win.
Because they cannot force the world to buy their meme token anymore. Either they pay up and joing the world being a good credit-score conscious citizen or they get the boot.
And people still think they don't have a political choice because it is impossible to pay it up. You are all alienated and going to the double down disaster.
From the adminstration
Fed independance is about tempering that policy so UST still has buyers.
Fed policy is explicitly controlled inflation (2% target).
2% inflation isn't going to inflate away the debt any time soon. It's basically as close to zero as can be realized without going under.
It is not in fact close to zero, it is significant inflation, particularly as they tend to float over the target (3-4%).
At 2% over just 25 years money loses 60% of its value. That is not insignificant, and of course with higher rates it loses value quicker.
> Fed is trying to thread the needle between the two
Not really, inflating it away is the only possible choice.
Can’t inflate it away for the same reason we can’t stop climate change. We would have to stop the behavior that caused the problem in the first place, and we all know that’s not going to happen. Remember during Clinton’s presidency the government ran a surplus and started paying down the debt, and there were news articles worrying about the future disappearance of treasury bonds? The party of “fiscal responsibility” took care of that problem in no time at all.
Or just fail for 4 years like every Republican administration since the 80s and wait for a Democrat to fix the economy...
Undoubtedly Republicans have done untold damage to the US. However not all Democrats made the right choices either as it was Clinton who set the stage for further breaking the US economy, opening wide open the gates to complete offshoring (and DMCA, etc).
In general its a game between the people who love their own power/money and hate US citizens (most Republicans and many Democrats) vs people who don't hate the people they're supposed to represent (Socialist Democrats and a handful of Republicans).
You're missing choice #3 - spend more money on stupid shit, cut taxes some more, pile on more debt, blame Obama Hussein Hunter Biden for the debt as the opening salvo of the third-term run in 2028.
You give the people in charge too much credit regarding any long term thinking or goals in general.
Or thinking
They definately think.
The thinking process is just line their pockets with as much as possible before they lose their position to someone else.
Once you understand that everything is rational. If not desirable.
The goal is to win the next election but I think the populace is to blame for this more than anything.
The populace is who is too interested in winning politics as a sport that the politicians have really no choice other than to focus entirely on winning the next election.
If the voters treat politics as a constant form of sports entertainment, constantly checking the latest news and events, then voters are actually the fundamental problem as to why the politicians can not do anything in terms of long term planning.
I always hear this accusation of people treating politics like sports, but what do you want? It's a FPTP system, which favors entrenching two parties. In order to maintain the backing (funding, importantly) of one of those two parties, candidates can't fall too far out of line. If you can't get your outsider preferred candidate above 50%, considering there is also likely another main-party candidate with significant policy overlap, you get nothing.
If you want to reduce the spectacle, replace FPTP with a better system that eliminates the need for primaries, and get rid of Citizens United. Good luck.
The one that seems to be working is to treat the system as two-round like the French presidential elections and do the work in the primaries. Worked for Mamdani.
It is essentially a (weird-ass) two-round system when it comes to the presidency (and many lower offices). Party primaries exist, they overwhelmingly gave one of the nominations to a dumpster.
IMO, a runoff or single round instant-runoff wouldn't solve much. Like the sibling says, it's already sort of like that. The way they eliminate candidates still forces/incentivizes people to make choices against their actual preferences. Ideally, you could vote exactly in line with your preferences regardless of who you think has the best chance of winning and not risk making things being worse than they would have been if you "lied." I've heard many times during primaries things like "I like candidate A a lot more, but I don't think they can win the general, so I voted for candidate B". This is also an issue with approval voting, which many people seem to have a very favorable opinion of. If there is an election between <good candidate>, <bad candidate> and <total disaster shitshow candidate>, and you think there's a chance the top two might be Bad and Disaster, do you approve of bad? There's no way for you to indicate that you actually don't like Bad, but are just hoping to prevent the worst.
I think there's risk in not doing it right the first time, if you were ever to get a chance to change it.
America desperately needs ranked choice voting, everywhere it can implement it.
I would also argue mandatory voting would be useful but I don't think the Americans are ready for that.
FPTP isn't wonderful but for those of us looking on for outside the tolerance of gerrymander, deliberate disenfranchisement of some voters and letting corporations spend unlimited amounts of money on getting political outcomes ranks higher. FPTP is merely a bad choice. The others look more like a country deliberately eschewing democracy for something else.
>tolerance of gerrymander
Yes, but for example if you had proportional representation, the power of gerrymandering would be greatly reduced.
Agree on the other two. I don't know what the answer is there.
Not that I'm a fan of this administration, but inflating away remaining our only option is not related to Trump. It was the only choice for the past administrations since at least the subprime crisis; probably even since the Iraq war. My 2c.
Or you could, you know, raise taxes. There’s policy solutions to these problems they just happen to be painful in a way that is easier to point to.
You could also reduce spending on military. The U.S. accounts for 42% of the global military budget. Virtually every empire in history has fallen due to overspending on an excessively large military.
The way this administration works is that anyone in a decision making position has been swapped for a self-serving yes-man who will do whatever Trump wants. Anyone they can't replace who won't deliver is briefed against or investigated until they quit or can be fired. Facts that might influence the decision play no part in the process.
The easy acceptance of this authoritarian governing style has been one of the most damaging to the idea of democracy. America's democratic institutions have great marketing but many of us outside the country and not subjected daily to that marketing have long known it is an particularly weak form of democracy and open to corruption, demagoguery and populism. Americans have a susceptibility to authority and hierarchical normalisation, has left them open to this.
The purpose of a system is what it does.
This wont do absolutely nothing whatsoever to bring down inflation. Interest rates don't open the Straight of Hormuz, don't increase production of oil or any other commodities. the only way interest rates affect anything is when they meaningfully decrease investment, consumption, in other words a recession or depression.
Don't the latter things you mentioned bring down inflation?
The government has fully lost control of the long-term Treasury yield - this is their attempt to bring it back under control.
I expect to see the president fire the Fed, nationalise it and make the rates negative, collapsing the economy.
well thats one way to get out of having to pay back your loans :-|
The yield curve has always been controlled by the Fed, and this remains the case. No one has lost control. The yield curve is the time path of short run rates, adjusted by risk. So, for example, if the market thinks inflation will rise -- for example because of a foolish war against Iran -- then they will sell the long dated bonds because they know the fed will hike rates in the future, making the long dated bonds less valuable, and they want to get ahead of that. If, on the other hand, they think inflation will be too low, they will bid up the longer dated bonds because they expect the Fed to lower rates in the future, making the long dated bonds more valuable. The entire bond market is fixated on trying to guess what the Fed will do next, so that is why they peer at the economic data and try to guess in which direction the Fed will move and when. That is the opposite of "losing control" of the yield curve.
The problem is Bessent trying to control something that he has never had any control over, by jawboning the market and doing silly things like trying to intervene. Bessent is the Treasury secretary. Treasury does not, and never has, controlled the yield curve. Whatever games he plays buy buying and selling bonds has only a short term psychological effect on the market, and soon people brush it off.
The Fed controls the yield curve, not Treasury.
Bessent is a hedge fund guy that is really not well suited to the role he is playing. Now, they want to put Bessent in charge of economic sanctions against Iran, when we shouldn't even have any sanctions against Iran. The US is sanctioning the world's top oil producers, and then complaining about oil shortages.
The market controls the yield curve, at least if the Fed doesn't choose to create hyperinflation.
Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49731356
So Trump spent weeks on a fake fraud investigation into Powell to try and force him out because he would not cut the rate, fails at that, then finally gets his choice in place and the dude raises rates almost immediately?
The rate decision is based on the FOMC votes, not the FED chair. The FOMC decides the policy, the FED implements the policy
Meanwhile Bessent is buying long dated bonds and selling short dated, betting the yields will go down.
Dear US, try not to take the rest of the world with you when. You implode.
But if you bring everyone down with you, You don't have to pay anything to anyone.
It's not like Donald Trump didn't use this exact strategy already when he had to get out of debt from his private ventures.
And the dot plots suggest no rate decreases until 2028.
No rate decreases until a “real” recession, but yes, early 28 sounds about right.
Incoming unhinged POTUS rants and demands in 3…2…1…
But you know what, I’m glad to see that the fed is still operating independently. The doomer in me thought they’d fold to Trump, especially right before the midterms.
There appears to be more and more people throwing back against Trump; after the courts recently again said no to his need to plaster his name on the Kennedy Centre, he went a wailin' to his supposedly in pocket Kennedy Centre board:
~ Letters from an American (September 16, 2026) https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-16-202...
At this point, people don't even care about his rants.
Some care enough to pay $100K to get them before everyone else.
This is one thing that gives me a sliver of hope for our future relations as European, please keep 'civil disobedience' up to these unhinged oligarchs for better future of us all.
Move on. When someone tells you who they are, multiple times, listen. Don’t act like you’re in an abusive relationship.
He didn't, oddly enough. He said he "disagreed with it" but had confidence in the central bank. Basically that he had no problem with it. This suggests to me he thinks he'll benefit from it somehow.
He did say he would be an awesome Fed Chair, can he appoint himself?
Don't lie.
Interest Rates in the United States should be 1%, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World — BY FAR. Our Country is BOOMING with new Investment! If we stopped Trading with every country that we have a Deficit with, which is most of them, we would make, at least, 1.5 Trillion Dollars a year. The word “Deficit” is nothing more than a fancy word for LOSS. We are “carrying” almost every country in the World, and that cannot go on any longer. LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST! President DONALD J. TRUMP
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1172826433186...
He is demanding 1% rates and to cut off all foreign trade because that'll somehow make $1.5T.
In the long run, inflation is probably the most potent tool in the government toolbox for managing the debt. Raised interest rates are the brakes on that tool.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see above average inflation sporadically jumping up for a while.
A small price to pay to serve the interests of a certain Levantine country whose civilization is built on the [Dark Triad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad)
The only reason we have to choose between inflation and expensive loans is corporate profits can't ever go down. It's perfectly possible to freeze margins and ban increasing prices unless a business proves their costs went up, but to enforce that you would need to a) have a competent administration and b) not be scared to piss off your billionaire donors.
Allowing stock buybacks and not taxing dividends heavily is a choice. Not breaking up monopolies is a choice. Inflation comes down to high oil prices and corporate greed powered by weak competition. Starting wars is Trump's fault. Subsidizing big oil instead of setting price controls is also his choice, as is doing everything he can to slow down EV adoption that would reduce demand.
There are a lot of SKUs to regulate. The cost of the bureaucrats checking the requests for basic "my price is going up because my inputs went up" price rises would be staggering. Also it would disincentives any price drops being passed on.
> Also it would disincentives any price drops being passed on.
Are any cost drops being passed on as lower prices?
> It's perfectly possible to freeze margins and ban increasing prices
Americans across the political spectrum will call you a communist for this, as they do whenever rent controls are brought in.
What you suggesting goes against the foundational and existential code of the United States of America.