Interestingly, this article says that Europe owns 8 trillion dollars of US debt and equities rather than the 2 trillion that I found. It also raises the prospect of Europe dumping some of this debt as a financial weapon against the US.
That could rebound on Europe, I think I read.
According to Le Monde this morning, Trump is threatening 200% tariffs on French champagne and wine - and all because Macron doesn’t want to join the Mango Mussolini’s peace board.
It will rebound everywhere and the world will become more isolationist. I’m beginning to think that it is inevitable. We have always been at war with Oceania
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Selling large amounts US debt would affect just about everyone. The risks are quite high. It would lower US bond prices, making them a less attractive option and increase yields which increases the cost of further borrowing by the US. It also makes investing in the US in general less attractive. That triple whammy would cost the US trillions of dollars. Unfortunately, it would be ordinary people who would suffer the most. It would also have effects for most countries that hold US debt, and Europe holds a lot.
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Wot about Afrabia, tho’? Whose side are they on?
You might mean Eastasia - Africa was part of the “disputed territories”.
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Some time ago.
I am convinced that Starmer is receiving advice from psychologists on how to handle Trump.
His behaviour is that of someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
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I would tend to agree. There tends to be an assumption that senior leaders are idiots because they don’t jump in all guns blazing when, really, there’s a hell of a lot of thought goes into every interaction and statement.
There’s also an element of coordination between leaders on the various approaches (within the limits allowed by national politics) on who plays good cop/bad cop and how best to exploit their individual relationship with any particular leader.
I’ve seen it up close and some of the criticisms of European leaders are painfully naive.
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No, I thought I had invented a 4th power, now that we have Arab oil and rising sense of global identity in Africa.
Although I know China is active in Africa so maybe it can now be Eastasia.
It’s been well over half a century since I read 1984, I don’t remember much.
If you ask practically any clinical psychologist, they’ll confirm (perhaps with the caveat they’d need his case notes for a definitive diagnosis) he’s a classic NPD case.
I edited Dr Stephen Shainbart’s book a few years ago ( I Actually Did It!: Becoming Canadian because of Trump: Amazon.co.uk: Shainbart Ph. D., Stephen: 9781777359201: Books ) in which he lays out why he moved to Canada when Trump was elected (the first time) and the classic symptoms of NPD; it’s Trump’s personality to a tee, with the main point being that he’s governed by his ego. He simply can’t help himself, and it’s what we saw yesterday in the released letter to the Norwegian PM: Trump’s ego was slighted by not winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Again, in classic NPD style, he lashes out against that because it challenges the notion he’s not as brilliant as his ego has him believe. This is one of the reasons he’s so confrontational and childish, because anything that doesn’t tally with his White House-sized ego has to be crushed. To not do so would bring his whole created facade down, and it’s one of the reasons he surrounds himself with sycophants and sacks anyone who stands up to him.
The first thing about narcissists is that you don’t elect them to be the most powerful man in the world because, that way, disaster lies. Unfortunately, this will get worse before it gets better.
As you say, leaders now know what they’re dealing with and act accordingly. Putin played Trump like a fiddle by indulging his orange-faced ego.
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Hmm… Will it get better? I only see it getting worse and worse until… something really bad happens. Then it will just stay bad.
Pessimiste? Moi? Oui.
Trump’s 79, so … In theory, he’s got another three years, max, but he’ll probably push back on that. Or, rather, his ego will push back on it, because it won’t allow him to not continue as the most powerful man in the world (that’s what the whole farcical rigged election claims were about, and the sulking on the golf course for days after the ballot).
However Trump goes, it will leave an inevitable power void, and it could be filled by something even worse, so you might be right.
Number 10 is really Coveffe.
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Another word I had to look up! But is it Coveffe or Covfefe?
Covfefe is a word, widely presumed to be a typographical error, that Donald Trump used in a viral tweet during his first term as President of the United States. It quickly became an Internet meme.
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I recognised this because of my mother in law.
She also had MS and apparently my father in law was told that if she became upset it would make her condition worse.
This was like pouring petrol on a fire and I was her main target.
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He also said somewhere in this speech that ‘sometimes you need a dictator’.
Donald Trump: “NATO is nothing without America.”
Meloni: “Perfect. Then Europe will close the U.S. bases, tear up the sweetheart trade deals, and, just to make the message land, boycott McDonald’s too.”
As a US/IT dual national, I can be proud of at least one of my fascist leaders.
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If she really said that (and meant it) then I might just change my opinion of her.
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