I am not saying Trump is anti-war, I am saying that Biden continues to escalate a war for 2.5 years knowing that hundreds of thousands if not millions will be thrown into a meat grinder.
You cannot even attribute that to “we made a mistake, we shouldn’t have started this war” (low bar, but a bar nonetheless), because if so they would have made every attempt to stop it from continuing. Instead, they personally flew to Ukraine and tore up the peace negotiations Ukraine was undergoing with Russia. They really want to fight this to the last Ukrainian. And that’s scary if you think about it.
After Soleimani was killed and a war was nearly started with Iran in January 2020, there was still an “oh shit” moment from the Trump government and they quickly walked back and prevented a war from being escalated.
At the very least, you can still argue that Trump was duped by his advisors into thinking that assassinating a “rogue general” can solve the Iran problem.
You cannot look at Ukraine and say that the Biden administration has ever come close to a moment of wanting to “walk back”. For 2.5 years, knowing that 500k people have been killed, they still want to fight it to the last Ukrainian. At every turn there is only escalation - sending more and more weapons to Ukraine, long-range missiles to kill civilians within Russian borders, taking out their anti-ballistic missile warning system, threatening about a nuclear war with Russia. These people are insane.
Not that Trump can change anything at this point. It is far too late. Even if he is president, he cannot stop the war that is already in motion, because too much financial interests from the bourgeoisie are now tied to the Ukraine war at this point.
The Chinese economy has already overtaken the US as the world’s largest economy back in 2015, FYI. The US economy is propped up by virtual sectors (real estate, finance) that have no bearing on the real economy.
Its only strengths are its military (seems to be handily defeated even by the Yemenis) and its currency (inflated thanks to all the money in the virtual sector). It is the latter that the US has been using to wreck the economies of the developing countries.
Yes China is doing a lot to help the developing world, but the problem is still the currency. China has no control over the huge piles of dollars and euros they have earned. They are as good as junk papers.
Chinese labor and resources utilized to serve Western consumers’ insatiable demand, and China only gets a pile of junk papers in return. All those disproportionate amount of Chinese labor and resources employed for export sectors could have been used to develop their own country instead. Can you imagine that.
This is the reason why China has been lending out these foreign currencies to Belt and Road and the other developing countries, because they literally don’t know where else to spend those junk money. They’ve stopped accumulating US treasuries since 2013, and started spending them on Belt and Road.
The problem here is that the developing countries now inherit the debt denominated in currencies that China has no control over, which means that the only way for the developing countries to pay them back is to sell stuff to the West to earn their currencies. This is not dedollarization, this is dollarization.
China’s problem is not that it still hasn’t have enough capital to take on the US. It’s the opposite: its economy has been geared so heavily towards the export sector that it needs Western consumers to have the ability to keep spending (that means a strong US currency), otherwise a lot of factories are going to have to shut down and many workers will lose their jobs. This means a recession and a crisis in China.
The only way out is to re-orientate towards its domestic sector (what they’re now calling the Great Internal Circulation) so that if Western economies fall, China doesn’t have to go down with them.
Again, there is always a price to be paid. You make a pact with the Great Satan, you are not allowed to get away unscathed.
As you said, 25 million USD is pennies for China, why not just lend in yuan?
That’s extra 25 million USD equivalent for Burkina Faso has to earn from the French (because only the French can print CFA franc, not China) to pay back Chinese creditors. At least with yuan, Burkino Faso can trade with China to earn yuans to pay back their creditors (although it is still very reasonable to cancel all those debt together).
In contrast to Western propaganda that China is setting a “debt trap” in developing countries, it’s more accurate to say that China is helping to set a “debt trap” for Western imperialists.
It is clear that China has been accumulating so much of these junk papers that they don’t know how to spend them. That’s the problem with huge trade imbalances, where the US can just print and print and print to import cheap stuff, and China is forced to accumulate the junk papers but is not allowed to use their huge US dollar reserves to purchase anything critical. In other words, Chinese labor and resources in exchange for junk papers.
That’s the same problem with “petro dollars”, where petroleum export countries are forced to sell their oil in USD but they are not allowed to spend them to industrialize their own countries, other than to buy US weapons and treasury bonds. The Saudi oil tycoons are allowed to enrich themselves with luxury items, but anything that would help industrialize and develop their countries is out of the question.
That’s also why China has been lending out so much dollars in Belt and Road, to get away from buying US treasuries, which to be fair is good for the economy but it comes at the cost of having no control over the currency. The debtor countries now have to earn US dollars to pay back China, so just kicking the can down the road.
Keynes had proposed bancor as a competing system for Bretton Woods, and it would not have come to this if it had been adopted back in 1944.
For the record Burkino Faso has an overhanging 1.2 TRILLION CFA-denominated debt. For all the talks about Sahel leaving the CFA franc zone (which is itself pegged to euro), it turns out that China still comes in and added more fuel to the fire.
How do you think these countries are ever going to get out of French imperialism? They are now even more entrenched to the French colonizers because of the debt owed to a currency they have no sovereignty over. They now have to earn more by selling to the French to pay back their Chinese creditors.
China needs to lend in yuan (a currency that China can print) or even better yet, pay off their debt and flood these countries with yuan in a Marshall Plan style, if they really want to help free African countries from Western imperialism.
However, China has so far refused to take that role as a leader of anti-imperialism because they still want to be a net exporter country that runs huge trade surpluses (which benefits greatly from the US running huge trade deficits), so they don’t want to create more yuan than needed to maintain this advantage over others. Instead, the dollars and euro they accumulated from selling cheap goods to Western consumers were turned into loans to the developing countries, further entrenching Western imperialism over the Global South.
Compare this approach to Russia’s, a far far weaker economy, going around and canceling whatever debt they can that the Global South owed to Russia and the USSR. Russia seems to be the only country who has the right idea on how to fight Western imperialism, being infested by liberals notwithstanding.
Disney pointed to Vice President Kamala Harris as a solid alternative to Biden, arguing she’d be able to defeat Trump.
This is a KHive coup. Even Biden’s corpse would do better than Kamala.
All the mainstream economists and economics journals were wrong about the economy, if only people still haven’t memory-holed the constant dooming about recession throughout 2022-2023. They were all wrong.
The fact is that Trump’s growth occurred under a low inflation zero interest rate environment that Obama started. Biden’s presidency has been plagued with record inflation and fastest rate hikes since Volcker shock, yet the stock market continues to grow like never before…
I cannot stress this enough: the neoclassical model is a complete bunk, and it’s amazing that policy makers continue to treat Milton Friedman like a god and his words gospels.
Rather lose to Trump than to let Bernie win. Biden got lucky with Covid though.
We’re talking about an entire complex network of political and business elites who have been granted access to power, influence and wealth by the Bidens, from the Delaware-based financial companies, to the Zionist lobbyists, to the military industrial complexes who benefited from Biden’s championing of the Iraq War.
Joe Biden is old and senile, but if he goes down the pillars that have been delicately supporting the entire structure of the elite network would be in jeopardy, not to mention internal strife and power vacuum within the Democratic Party.
It is too late for another primary now (which is when all this bargaining for political favors with the candidates took place), and there is no way to swap him out because people have already paid the campaign (through campaign fundraising) expecting favors in return of their investments, and they do not want to see all that go down in drain. Everyone’s in the same boat and do or die together.
This is why they have been propping up Hunter so much. Hunter’s the one to persuade Joe to stay in the race. Hunter’s been attending White House meetings with Joe.
The message is clear: “Even if the president’s cognitive ability has declined, Hunter will be there to make sure that all promises made by the Bidens will be fulfilled. Do not worry about the money you have spent on us, the Bidens always keep their words.”
The bourgeoisie are worried about Biden’s senility and would jeopardize the political favors they had spent a fortune on, and Hunter’s there to make sure that the words of the House of Biden will be kept no matter what.
My friend (also south Asian) just got his US citizenship earlier this year and he said the first thing he’s gonna do is to vote for Trump.
Spoiler: Boeing Starliner launch was canceled the day after.
Because AIPAC lobbying (money laundering) works on both Democrats and Republicans. War in Israel/Palestine is good for both sides of the ruling class.
Ukraine is different. It is strongly tied to the Democratic Party and the Biden family (note Hunter Biden’s involvement) which essentially allows the Biden Democrats to unlock a “cheat code” that blatantly pumps $175 billion (so far) for Ukraine in just 2 years, as long as the majority of the people are sympathetic to the Ukrainian cause, and which are ultimately laundered back to the pockets of Democratic politicians and their proxies, as well as the military industrial complexes, oil and gas industries and financial companies that have pledged their loyalty to the Bidens, as a treat.
This is why Trump and the Republicans want to end the war in Ukraine, and why they are so keen on crucifying Hunter Biden. The Republicans are getting beat at the avenues that give away treats to the bourgeoisie. It is simply more profitable to align with the Democrats and gain access to the Ukraine gravy train.
This is also why the Biden campaign has been propping up Hunter lately - him persuading Joe Biden to keep running, attending White House meetings with Joe, etc. - to signal that even if Joe’s mental ability has far degraded, Hunter’s still there to make sure that the promises of treats to the Biden Patreon supporters will be fulfilled.