Markus

[Markus @mhdus]

@visionergeo

[Markus @mhdus]

@zenteisch @MartinGreive Ja, Höchst- mit Spitzensteuersatz verwechselt, sorry. 🙄

[Markus @mhdus]

@zenteisch @MartinGreive Jammern auf sehr hohem Niveau... Spitzensteuer ab 555.652 € für Verheiratete, nach allen Abzügen wie 60k€ Kinder-/Betreuungsfreibeträge... schlimm.

[Markus @mhdus]

@ProfAlkas Milliardenkosten für die Verbrenner-Verlängerung(!), US-Zölle, Absatz in China, ...

[Markus @mhdus]

@vonGammCom Ich bin begeistert, Sie haben eine neue Literaturgattung erschaffen, die sich selbst persiflierende Persiflage. Genial.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is batshit insane, no other way to call it.

We now have the first attempt by the White House—specifically by Steve Miran, the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers—to justify the tariffs based on economic "theory", and it's without a doubt the most dishonest piece of economic reading that's I've ever had the misfortune to lay my eyes upon.

The gist of Miran's argument is to reposition the global reserve currency status of the dollar not as an exorbitant privilege (as erstwhile French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing once characterized it), but as somehow a "burden" that the rest of the world needs to compensate the US for bearing.

As Miran explains it, having the dollar as a reserve currency "has caused persistent currency distortions and contributed, along with other countries’ unfair barriers to trade, to unsustainable trade deficits" which "have decimated our manufacturing sector."

So he wants to give up the reserve currency status of the dollar, right? Wrong. He wants to have it both ways.

He says that America's "financial dominance cannot be taken for granted; and the Trump Administration is determined to preserve [it]" but this same financial dominance "comes at a cost" and "other nations" need to pay for it.

And he means this literally. He made a list of what exactly he means by "burden sharing" and one of the forms it can take is countries "simply writ[ing] checks to Treasury that help us finance global public goods."

Let's pause a moment here to contemplate the sheer insanity of this: the U.S. is literally suggesting that countries should mail checks to the US Treasury as tribute for the 'privilege' of maintaining the dollar as a global reserve currency, when it is this very reserve status of the dollar that is the cornerstone of US power.

It's the equivalent of Samson asking everyone to pay him to keep his hair.

Because that's what Miran is conveniently not mentioning in his text. The reason Giscard d'Estaing called it an "exorbitant privilege" is that it allows the U.S. to quite literally have its way of life subsidized by the rest of the world.

Miran (and Trump) complain about the trade deficits, but they are the very manifestation of this subsidization: countries normally cannot run a permanent trade deficit because they'd one day face a balance of payments crisis.

It's like a private individual: you cannot indefinitely buy more from others than what you yourself earn. At some point you'll have to pay up. Unless, that is, you're the issuer of the currency everyone uses, in which case the normal rules of economic gravity are suspended.

While other nations must balance their books eventually, the dollar's reserve status gives America the unique ability to consume more than it produces perpetually, with the world eagerly accepting dollars that cost nothing to create in exchange for real goods and services. That's not a "burden", it very much is an "exorbitant privilege".

So yes, sure, because America can effectively buy most of what it needs from the rest of the world for "free" (by printing dollars), this situation doesn't exactly create incentives to do the hard work of manufacturing goods domestically. But framing this as other countries taking advantage of America rather than America taking advantage of its currency dominance is an astonishing inversion of reality.

And even more astonishing is Miran's ask that countries now compensate the U.S. for this. Some people mention that it's like asking vassals for tribute but it's actually even worse than this. The tribute is already embedded in the global reserve currency status of the dollar: other countries work hard for the U.S. while they can just issue IOUs that never come due.

What Miran is thus proposing is effectively demanding vassals make payments for the privilege of already making payments—a double tribute system where countries first subsidize American living standards by accepting dollars as reserves, and then must pay an additional fee for the 'burden' this supposedly places on the US.

Miran's piece is replete with other complete inversions of reality. For instance, he now blames China for the 2008 crash because "their holdings of U.S. mortgage debt helped fuel the housing bubble, forcing hundreds of billions of dollars of credit into the housing sector without regard as to whether the investments made sense."

Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the 2008 financial crisis would have their breath taken away by such brazen revisionism. Not only is the crisis universally known to have been caused by US regulatory failures and the reckless securitization of subprime mortgages by Wall Street firms, but China in this instance literally saved U.S. markets from complete meltdown after Hank Paulson personally appealed to Beijing to continue purchasing US Treasury bonds during the height of the crisis, which they did.

To now blame them for the very crisis they helped mitigate and played no part in creating is beyond dishonest—it's gaslighting on a geopolitical scale.

All in all, it's clear what the US is trying to achieve here, they effectively want to have their cake and eat it. They want to keep the privilege and want the rest of the world to pay for the downsides that come with it.

Which means we're truly at a crossroad in history where nations must make an immensely consequential choice: acquiesce to this insane double tribute system or stand against it. There are very few precedents in world history for such a nakedly exploitative power play, but history is very clear on two things: submitting to extortion only invites more of it, and collective resistance is the only effective response.

[Markus @mhdus]

what a perfect humorous summary of these crazy times

[Saint Javelin @saintjavelin]

BREAKING: In order to avoid tariffs, we will begin shipping from Kursk

[Markus @mhdus]

@mark_ungewitter So, this signal is followed by a longer- term crash half of the times and approx half of longer crashes are preceeded by such a signal... 🤔

[Markus @mhdus]

@ChanasitJonas Irgendwie ist es wieder wie bei Corona - alle sollen ihren Beitrag leisten aber eigentlich vor allem die Jugend, weil die sich nicht wehren kann. Es bräuchte nur eine wirklich professionelle und effiziente Berufsarmee - kein Relikt aus den 80ern. Dann wird sie auch akzeptiert.

[Markus @mhdus]

https://t.co/JWDxkWQsBW

[CALL TO ACTIVISM @CalltoActivism]

I literally watched this 11 times and I can’t stop.

[Markus @mhdus]

@ProfAlkas 🤔 https://t.co/ZtFEBEHhsV

[Bricktop_NAFO @Bricktop_NAFO]

‘Why The British Don’t Like Trump’🇬🇧

- Written by Nate White🇬🇧

A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.

There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.

So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:

• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.

• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?' If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.

[SPIEGEL EIL @SPIEGEL_EIL]

Donald Trump's most important security advisers used Signal to discuss an imminent military strike. Now, reporting by DER SPIEGEL has found that the contact data of some of those officials, including mobile phone numbers, is freely accessible on the internet.https://t.co/VUX1Cp5z9A

[Sarah Longwell @SarahLongwell25]

I’m going to spend the rest of my afternoon posting clips of high-level officials on that Signal text chain demanding “accountability” for Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information.

[Markus @mhdus]

@FrankfurtZack Und man sieht an den USA, dass das Ergebnis noch beschissener ist.

[Joni Askola @joni_askola]

Witkoff thinks that Ukrainians who speak russian are russian. With that logic, he is British

[Markus @mhdus]

@ProfAlkas @UnbiasedReport Nein, viele Überstunden sind vertraglich mit dem Grundgehalt abgegolten, das Tracking meist umständlich. Und nochmal die Frage: woher haben Sie das mit dem unproduktiven Home-Office? Studien?

[Carlo "Realism, Gedankenfetzen and Rants" Masala @CarloMasala1]

„Journalists are trying to understand Trump’s irrational behavior, and are generally unwilling to consider the possibility that it is not some grand strategy but just a sign of a madman with increasingly diminished mental faculties.“

Eine Interpretation https://t.co/qOD3kUm6i5

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

Ukraine agreed to an unconditional ceasefire. Russia did not. Russia doesn’t get to pick and choose from which ceasefire elements most benefit it and most harm Ukraine. It’s absurd. Ukraine must stop striking RU oil refineries but Russia can keep bombing UKR civilians? No.