»In for a penny, in for a pound«
– the Donald himself has openly admitted as much.
As for lining one’s pockets: looting is already standard practice.
There’s only one option left for those ‘record approval ratings’ – the first attempt isn’t really going to plan. What's next?
When Charles deGaulle decided to retire from public life the British ambassador and his wife threw a gala dinner party in his honor.
At the dinner table, the Ambassador's wife said to Madame deGaulle: "Your husband has been such a prominent public figure, such a presence on the French and international scene for so many years.”
“How quiet retirement will seem in comparison. What are you most looking forward to in these retirement years?"
"A penis," replied Madame deGaulle.
A huge hush fell over the table. Everyone heard her answer and no one knew what to say next.
Le Grand Charles leaned over to his wife and said, "Ma cherie, I believe ze English pronounce zat word ‘appiness!”
Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits showing the finger-picking style guitar playing on a TV show in 2015.
Knopfler has an amazing ability to play with fingers when he is compared to other guitar players. He plays many different scales and tunes on the guitar and all of them may require some other skills that he has to have. However, he does this with his talent on his finger tips.
As he couldn't get an amplifier during his guitar learning process, he learnt how to play with fingers. He composed Sultans of Swing on an acoustic guitar that he had back in the day but he didn't record the song.
Instead, he put aside the lyrics of the song and when he got an amplifier and fender strat, he re-played the song and then he recorded it.
The divide is state capitalism versus stateless capitalism, not EV versus ICE.
China treats electricity, critical minerals, manufacturing, defence and infrastructure as one strategic system. Credit, permitting, refining, fabrication and demand scale together.
Western systems fragment the same problem across central banks, markets, regulators and election cycles, assuming price signals will coordinate what institutions refuse to coordinate. That system is failing against the core needs of society.
The central banking framework fails because the transition is not a consumer shift it’s an industrial build.
Mines, refining, batteries, power generation, transmission, transformers and charging infrastructure must expand simultaneously. If one layer lags, the system stalls.
The constraints are already visible: copper shortages, transformer bottlenecks, decade-long mine timelines and concentrated rare earth refining. Siemens has a five-year order backlog of €144 billion.
Central banks manage demand through interest rates. That works for stabilising consumption. It cannot build industrial systems. When inflation emerges from material shortages, higher rates compress the capital needed to expand supply.
Reserve currency privilege pulls capital into finance, assets and consumption rather than mines, refineries, alternative energy or heavy industry. Financialisation expands while industrial capacity erodes. Industrial capacity is the capability required to address climate change.
Imports suppress prices, masking the decline, so central banks did not notice the scale of deindustrialisation.
Then the same system announces an energy transition.
Carbon pricing inside a deindustrialised economy acts as a poison pill. It raises domestic energy costs before replacement capacity exists, weakens industry and shifts production abroad while dependence on foreign supply chains deepens.
The asymmetry between the systems follows
China builds the industriall chain first and then scales demand.
The West stimulates demand and assumes markets will summon the missing system. All this efficient price signally theories fail under rivalry .
That’s what we are all watching now, the failure of the post war neo liberal economic frameworks .
The Xi state model model coordinates capacity , a state model was also the basis of western central banking , Roosevelt won WW2 and Hamilton the revolution under a state model ,
The stateless model prices scarcity assuming it will lead to efficient outcomes . We now have absolute proof that is false , all its lead to is Financialization . The central banks have selected for that
All of this arrives just as climate models are being revised upward, suggesting the problem may be larger than earlier projections.
@Dr_JohnFletcher@philosophyminis@rorysutherland Compelling thoughts. Optimistic take: could it be that LLMs turn expert knowledge into commodity, as the printing press did with formal knowledge? With similar, mostly positive, consequences?
Power + geopolitics
🇨🇳 never ever again outside top3, never!
🇯🇵 times to remember
🇮🇳 if we really have to
🇷🇺 not without us, make no mistake
🇪🇺 we'll prove that P<P/27
🇺🇸 use it or lose it, any idea will do. It ain't complicated
Now, choose your allies.
@OliverBWeber@stefanolix@miriam_vollmer Der tweet spricht doch eben von Verteilung, nicht Höhe. Aktienrenditen sollten breiter verteilt werden.
Die u.a. These ist eine These, kein Gesetz. Ist zwar auf richtigem Weg, dürfte mE aber nur begrenzt treffend sein,
My Venezuela experience as head of trading in the region for Cargill.
Cargill was/is the leading producer of critical staple ingredients such as flour, pasta, vegetable oil, and rice in VZ. I am not saying I agree with grabbing the dictator, but I did have a front row seat to the damage a kleptocracy did to innocent people.
1. The government took over our "minute rice" facility at gunpoint because we were "gouging" the nation's poor. The government was never able to run the plant. It never ran again. It was returned years later with no equipment inside
2. There are 1000's of generals in the army. They are each given a slice of the economy to loot. The large number of generals made it difficult to organize a coup against the regime.
3. The government opened grocery stores and sold staples below the cost we sold them to the government. In theory they used petro oil money to lower grocery prices. Our regular grocery outlets were forced out of business. When the government demanded we sell them products below cost we simply had to shut down. The populous became ever more dependent on the government handouts. (PS this is the mayor of New York City's proposal.
4. Dollars- We needed dollars to go buy raw materials like wheat from places like the US and Canada. The government would periodically allocate us some dollars that could only be spent for raw materials and freight. Eventually only the local companies that can and would pay bribes got dollar allocations. We had several facilities closed for lack of raw material
5. My employees liked working for Cargill. The office was an armed compound with access to a gym, high speed internet, global communications, and a weekly box of basic staples. Cargill provided a safe and secure environment if only for the working hours.
6. Employees became very close to others inside the apartment building. Going out on the street with a desperate population was not advisable.
7. I needed wood pallets for feed. We tried to export wood pallets to swap for grain. We refused to pay the bribes it would take to export the pallets
8. I once tried to set up a closed loop wheat planting to flour mill supply chain. A. They came and stole all the seed wheat for food. When we tried to ship in seed wheat in containers via US donors there was no way to get it out of the port without it being stolen
9. Livestock- Our feed business completely collapsed. Even if you could raise a pig, you couldn't defend it from being stolen. People with guns were hungry.
10. Employees- In the end my highly skilled team alone with other highly educated people chose to leave. Cargill often found jobs for them in other Latin countries. The regime was more than happy to see the well-educated leave the country. Setting these employees up with high quality stable jobs after fleeing remains one of the best things I ever did in my career. No one remembers millions in trading earnings.
This is a short list. In my opinion the first money spent needs to happen now and it needs to be food. The US is already on the clock. The current regime does not care if it starves the population. The orgy of theft will actually accelerate if they believe their days are numbered. VZ should be an outstanding customer of US grown ag products. Rice, bread wheat, veg oil ect. Feed the people first.
Jeff Kazin
Former head trading Cargill
@EuroBriefing spot on, sadly.
"Like no US president before him, Trump exposes Europe’s delusions,its lack of a strategic thinking and action. This is why the Europeans hate him so much. And to no avail. It promises to be another bad week for Kallas et al."
https://t.co/LB9PPjyGK6
A message from 411 BCE (source below):
'Thucydides scarcely hides his disgust at the chaos, irrationality and Orwellian doublespeak. “Reckless daring was regarded as courage and as displaying loyalty to one’s political group, and prudent hesitation as specious cowardice; moderation was considered a screen for lack of courage; applying intelligence to everything was judged an excuse for doing nothing. Impulsive rashness was added to the notion of manliness.” He cannot stop. “Ties to one’s political comrades became stronger than ties to one’s family … and their pledges of loyalty to one another were reinforced not by divine law but by collaborating in breaking the law. … Taking revenge on someone was more important than not being harmed in the first place.” In short, “it was thanks to civil strife that every form of wickedness became confirmed throughout Greece.”'
This is the definitive conversation on Alpha School with @jliemandt, who is the school’s principal and backer.
What if kids could learn in two hours a day, test in the top 1% nationally, spend their afternoons mastering other great skills, AND love school more than vacation?
What sounds impossible is already happening at Alpha. If you are a parent like me, it’s impossible not to wonder how to make sure your kids will benefit from this enormous innovation.
We explore everything in exhaustive detail—the learning science, the role of software and AI, the central role of motivation, the challenges of scaling to ALL kids, and more.
Joe is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in history, who has now decided to devote his next two decades to ushering in a new era of education. I hope this becomes a historically important episode.
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:54 What Is Alpha School?
4:02 The 200-Year Education Problem
8:06 Two-Hour Learning
16:41 Academic Results & Efficiency
23:51 AI-Generated Personalized Lessons
35:03 EdTech Fails Without Motivation
41:18 Life Skills & Afternoon Workshops
1:13:35 Gamification
1:29:09 Scaling Challenges
1:46:52 Video Games for Education
1:54:07 Joe's Background & Trilogy
2:14:22 Lessons from Mentors
2:32:29 The Kindest Thing