Fascinating! I only understood bits, but I’ve long wondered (ever since taking Latin in high school and bring informed that my teacher, Sister Olivia, used the “soft Italian” pronunciation rather than the “hard Roman”) how linguists draw conclusions about how dead languages were pronounced.
Soft Italian – vaynee veedee veechee.
Hard Roman – waynee weedy weeky.
I think the hard Roman is ugly.
Jamie,
My secular Latin Professors at public University taught me hard Roman was the proper way and “veedee” was “church Latin.” They typically spat when speaking the term, “church Latin.” 🙂
Regarding pronunciation, I assume they back into it based on modern languages derived from it; like Italian.
And one, little nit. Why do we say Latin is a “dead language?” Italian is Latin 2,000 years later.
Jamie, my Latin professor in college was adamant that Hard Roman was the proper pronunciation. He said that scholars used the poor spelling and grammar of graffiti found on walls of ruins to conclude that. The poorly educated provided the clues to pronunciation.
Two distinct arguments. The first is most interesting. The GOP has an obligation to protect its voters.
As to whether perfecting harvesting is the best path, I prefer simply eliminating all the Democrats’ tools to perform vote fraud. Demand the same election integrity measures found everywhere else in the world.
And to compliment the sounds of Etruscan, there are the Etruscan silver hands.
My wife is a very nice person, and loyal and fierce. No shrinking violet she, especially when it comes to protecting children and the weak. She has been a huge Trump fan for the past 7 years, or so. She often smiles and laughs during his speeches and she believes he has faced immense persecution in the past 7 years, or so. She likes a lot of what he did and how he did it.
We watched his speech yesterday and about 15 minutes into it she said, “he sounds tired and weak.” I said, “Well, he’s 76 years old.” About 5 minutes later she said, “He sounds whiny. The whole speech has been him complaining about how he has been treated.”
I had not been saying anything (although I had thought the exact same things). My wife really wanted to like that speech and was not impressed.
That’s brilliant! Can’t believe I hadn’t thought of that. People who make spelling errors are actually giving pronunciation clues. Most all spelling errors are going to be phonetic and can give guidance to actual pronunciation.
Does anyone know if Rome had an official vocabulary and spelling? I don’t think English language dictionaries existed until the 1700s? Did other cultures have the same idea?
Why do we say Latin is a “dead language?” Italian is Latin 2,000 years later.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Furthermore, I expect Roman Catholic priests, some of them anyway, at a pinch, can still converse in Latin, as the stories went in my Catholic youth.
Perhaps a commenter more up to date may comment.
I can understand with Rufus. I confess I have often been on hand to defend Trump’s legacy and track record, but I do feel he has been past his “Best Used By” Date. I do think he deserves to have the second term that was robbed from him, but even if that is true I feel it would largely be attempts to firm up the foundations for what came later.
well its not a language in common parlance, that is jibberish, they call it English now, it may be Chinese in the future, although I don’t think so,
he opened up with all we have lost in the last two years, our energy independence our military confidence, that put al queda and the sepah, back on their heals, a semblance of law and order, although the color revolution did much damage, the weaponization of law enforcement is part and parcel of that
much like hindu has some circulation, but not sanskrit, although that’s region specific,
Rufus T.: “We watched his speech yesterday and about 15 minutes into it she said, “he sounds tired and weak.”
I had the same feeling about his energy. But I remembered that it had been a long day and a disheartening one at that. Most men his age would have put the speech off until they could get some rest.
I think of Trump as a bull in the ring being set up for the kill by the picadors and the bandoleros (the various prosecutors.) Most men would shrink from this engagement. He’s facing overwhelming odds.
Yet, he will not back down. Occasionally the bull wins. We have to hope that this very uneven, fixed process can be overcome.
Whether you believe it or not, he’s standing between us and the tyranny the left is trying to establish. When he’s vanquished, who will defend us? DeSantis is a good man, but he doesn’t have the resources to fight back that Trump has.
I look at the two men and wonder why they don’t join forces. A Trump/DeSantis ticket would be very powerful and unite many factions within the Republican party.
IMO, we are at an inflection point that could lead either to rebirth, or a steep decline for the nation.
huxley,
Plenty of Roman Catholic priests can converse in Latin, along with a lot of other people. Heck, I have a son who can. As a matter of fact, the Harry Potter book you’re reading in French. He’s read it in Latin (I gifted it to him).
There is a lot that is still published in Latin and groups convene and converse in the language.
JJ et al,
I think all you state Trump can do, or needs to do, he can do all and more effectively if he is not also running for the Presidency.
If he’s not running there is not much those picadors can do (clever analogy, by the way, especially in conjunction with DJT’s “bull in a china shop nature”) and he would be much more free to fight and rally his supporters.
Turtler, it’s really difficult to keep emotion out of it, especially for the aggrieved; DJT.
However, look at how much further Hillary’s star has fallen as she continues on, Ahab like, trying to re-win the election she lost.
Americans don’t like a loser. There are also second acts in America, and American’s like someone who battles and doesn’t give up. But we don’t tolerate complainers.
As a matter of fact, the Harry Potter book you’re reading in French. He’s read it in Latin (I gifted it to him).
Rufus T. Firefly:
Well, I hope not the translation I’m reading. “Not great,” he said with litotes.
One of my tiniest regrets is that I didn’t pay more attention in Latin class. I went to an old-school parochial high school and that meant Four Years of Latin. My response was an adolescent “Why are you torturing me?”
Looking back, I could have easily gotten more out of it.
The language learning community I’ve joined is called LingQ, which is based on an app of the same name. I’ll say nice, hyperbolic things about LingQ another time. My point is that LingQ supports a few dozen languages, Latin among them.
When my French fever dies down, I’d like to take a look at LingQ Latin. He said with alliteration.
Always like your linguistic finds, Neo. Thanks.
Since this is an open thread – let me pass on Happy Passover to those who celebrate it. Chag Pesach Sameach!
biden’s crew is the same one that hillary would have delivered on to us, they just couldn’t cheat enough then, they didn’t have near total control of the infosphere,
Justin Hart gives us weeks worth of Covid/mRNA reading in his latest:
The existence of a transgender ELCA pastor does not surprise me. The denomination elevated a transgender person to a bishopric in California, and then forced the bishop to resign. Didn’t learn any lessons, apparently.
They’ve done more than a few Passover videos in their immaculate a cappella style. Here’s one where they adapt the music and lyrics from “Les Misérables” to the Passover story.
It definitely works. Get out your handkerchiefs.
______________________________
I dreamed a dream in times gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that hope would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving
Over the past six years at my cafe I’ve cultivated the friendship of a bright English Lit major, now a grad student. It doesn’t hurt that she’s “California Girls” beautiful, to me anyway.
I’m an old fart, but she knows I know stuff and I have my moments of wit she doesn’t find elsewhere. So we talk now and then. She actually takes notes on some of what I say.
But lord, she’s a serious Third Wave Feminist. (And how ironic, her first name is Regan after King Lear’s second daughter. Which I don’t understand, so don’t ask.)
At some point in our conversations she usually presses some political point. Today I told her I was reading Harry Potter in French. So she tells me of her analysis of HP as J.K. Rowling’s unconsciously racist narrative, which Regan is sharing with some third wave prof.
She’s not entirely wrong. I flinched in HP 1 when the bankers in the magic Potterverse turned out to be ugly short goblins with huge hooked noses.
I don’t feel like confronting her. I’ve lost enough people at the cafe over politics. Besides there was no old guy in the world who could have changed my political opinions when I was 25.
She’s kind, intelligent and thoughtful. She’s easy on the eyes and she handles it well. I can’t find a way to dismiss her as a fool or mentally ill or part of a zombie horde determined to destroy America.
Yet we really are on opposing sides and there are stakes.
Our carnivore Seder plate actually featured two items. The lamb shank was joined by a hardboiled egg. Food was the easiest to make and best tasting ever. Full fat chicken soup with Empire kosher chicken in homemade bone broth, followed by lamb meat with a little horseradish.
So, they can barter if they needed to? A year later, despite the sanctions you were told are the greatest ever devised, the Russian ruble is just as strong against the U.S. dollar as it was before the war in Ukraine. So, we didn’t really hurt Russia with those sanctions, certainly not long term, but we hurt ourselves. E.J. Antoni and Peter St Onge wrote an incisive piece in The Daily Caller last week that explains part of why this happened “A critical feature of reserve currency is its apolitical nature, which Biden is now gutting after both parties in Washington destroyed the dollar’s stability with inflation…
@Banned Lizard
I will always be grateful to Tucker for blowing the lid off of the January 6th witch hunts and receiving the footage, and that will be more than enough to justify my well wishes of him, but I will say his writings about Ukraine and Russia irk me.
Let me start….
These sanctions were never going to work in the way they promised because unlike the United States, Russia does not have a late stage financed economy.
Yeah it does, it’s just rather impotent.
Russian oligarchs do not get rich from credit default swaps.
Yeah they did. Kindly research the wholesale “privatization” and theft at the end of the USSR, and particularly study which ones kept their wealth.
They get rich from selling actual things that people need in order to live: Oil, natural gas, iron, fertilizer, coal, wheat.
Officially. Unofficially, they can only KEEP even a portion of that power and those resources if they kiss the brass ring of the men in the Kremlin, because otherwise they get screwed out of the assets at submarket rates or pushed out a window. Because by this point in time they are glorified servitors of the state and the state economy, as even a cursory look at Gazprom shows.
By some measures, Russia has the largest resource economy in the world. Oh, OK.
“By Some Measures.”
And by “some measures” the PRC is the wave of the future and the 21st century will belong to the Red Chinese that decided to halve their population.
So, they can barter if they needed to? A year later, despite the sanctions you were told are the greatest ever devised, the Russian ruble is just as strong against the U.S. dollar as it was before the war in Ukraine. So, we didn’t really hurt Russia with those sanctions, certainly not long term, but we hurt ourselves.
Tucker, that’s not how money ACTUALLY WORKS. The value of your currency isn’t a score in a video game where the higher it is the more prosperous and successful you are as a nation.
To make a long story short, the Japanese went into the Great Recession seeing their currency the Yen spike in value. And this triggered a catastrophic panic among the Japanese government and those trading with Japan, leading to drastic measures. While in the US the Fed has largely been working to try and shore up the value of the dollar while engaging in borrowing like a drunken sailor, in Japan their equivalents pulled out almost all the stops to TANK the value of their own currency with at least as much fervency as they are now working to shore up its value and increase it.
Why is that?
Shouldn’t the Japanese be glad that their currency became worth more?
No, no they shouldn’t have. Because currencies are mediums of exchange, not video game high scores. And in order to serve effectively as mediums of exchange, they need to have a value, preferably conductive to the trades the economic actors tied to that want it to be.
And for an expert dominated economy like JAPAN and Russia, that involves keeping the currency DEPRECIATED to a modest degree. Because a weak Home Currency means that imports are more expensive for that nation but exports are cheaper. Meaning that the countries want to strike a health balance (between “being able to buy any imports you want at least until the money runs out because everybody is scared off from buying anything from you” and “being able to send out all the exports you want but unable to rub your coins together to buy the imports you need”). But the Ruble and Yen are keyed to exports, meaning that in general their governments want to err on the side of caution.
Which brings us to why Muh Strong Ruble is not the reason for Russian celebration that Tucker makes it out to be.
Firstly: there’s the issue of what the Russian Government and markets had to do in order to ACHIEVE that. Namely, thoroughly gutting the currency’s integrity with heavy handed currency and even market controls.
Demanding loudly that people take payments in Rubles, preventing the sale of Rubles on the open market, and screwing the people you are taking advance orders from are NOT indications of a healthy, dynamic economy that is functioning well under its own power. It’s not even signs of a moderately functional but heavily manipulated currency like the USD is. It’s a sign that the government in question has stopped any hint of subtlety and has decided to screw its long term prospects in order to prop up the currency and Pay Paul Tomorrow, even if it means robbing Peter down the road.
This isn’t surprising because it is quite similar to what a lot of the “Best and Brightest” and New Dealers did, to catastrophic effect, during the Great Depression.
Which brings us to the second point:
That the Russian Government OVERDID It. Not only did these effects have more adverse results on the market and its health than they hoped, but they overshot their goal and wound up overvaluing the Ruble.
The reasons for this are fairly clear. Firstly: While the Russian Government didn’t want the Ruble to get too devalued (and correctly so), it also doesn’t want it to be OVERVALUED both overall (since that will hurt its ability to buy goods, which is PARTICULARLY important now for the War Economy) and relative to the amount of pain holding the value up is doing to the economy. Secondly: people aren’t actually fooled into thinking the Ruble is really worth what the Russian government is saying it is worth. Which is why the Black Market Rate (and that used by many legal or grey area but non-state-controlled exchanges) is so dramatically lower than the Ruble’s official rate that Tucker is going off on.
And that’s a BAD thing for the Russian Government, because if it persists it will help break down the functioning of their economy as “Bad Money pushes out Good Money (and Goods)” and people hide their foreign exchange and goods or skip town to their Real Estate Empires in West Hollywood and London.
Which is why currently the Russian Government is trying to reverse course and engage in controlled devaluation of the Ruble, so that the currency goes back down to an official value that is not catastrophically deflated relative to its actual value, but without slipping too far into the kind of extreme devaluation we saw during Spring of 2022.
And all of that comes at the cost of fiscal discipline and a modest amount of pain for the marketplace.
Something that the Russian government itself has been moderately candid about, since it now predicts economic contraction, the main question being “how much.”
So the idea that the sanctions didn’t “really hurt Russia” is laugh out loud false and is contradicted by the Russian regime’s economists themselves. The only question being whether or not it hurt Russia more than others.
E.J. Antoni and Peter St Onge wrote an incisive piece in The Daily Caller last week that explains part of why this happened “A critical feature of reserve currency is its apolitical nature,
Bullshit.
A critical feature of reserve currency is its STABLE nature. That’s different from being apolitical. The USD has been political since we first switched to it (and indeed, we based it off of the Spanish Silver Dollar, which in turn was based off of the “Great” Thaler, and if you think either the Holy Roman Empire or Spain engaged in “apolitical” currency I have several economics textbooks to brain you with). Political dimensions to currency are both normal and expected, even if not necessarily desirable.
THE TRICK IS that while a Currency can be POLITICAL, it has to be moderately stable. The people managing the currency have to avoid screwing with it so much that it destroys faith in its value and cultivates the expectation in the markets and investors that its value could change tomorrow, this triggering risk that will lead to the more risk-adverse to jumping ship.
This is not new. This is not controversial. Indeed, the Spanish Silver Dollar that we patterned our own Dollar after was a currency reform introduced by the nascent Bourbon Spanish administration to fix literal centuries of economic mismanagement, hyperinflation, and bankruptcy caused by previous Spanish fiscal policy (oh yeah, and also overreliance on precious metals). The “Clipper and Seasaw Times” of the 17th century was caused by extensive debasement of the currency from both governments and private individuals during the height of the Greater Thirty Years War.
This is why “Bad Currency drives out Good Currency” (at least when forced to be artificially treated at equal value) is axiomatic.
This is ALSO why the Ruble’s real and black market values are so catastrophically lower than the official figures Tucker is touting and why that is a bad thing. Because in addition to being subject to the uncertainty of war spending and sanctions, the Russian money men tipped their hands too aggressively and gutted the organic workings of currency value. Which they have now recognized and are trying to reverse track on before the Black Market gets more power.
which Biden is now gutting after both parties in Washington destroyed the dollar’s stability with inflation.
Honestly, this would be true except for the “destroyed the dollar’s stability with inflation.” Because like it or not the USD IS still one of the world’s most stable currencies, and indeed one of the most stable of all time. It is one of all of human history’s greatest champions at retaining value.
“But Turtler!” You say, “Look at Obama’s cocaine binging on money printing! Look at the huge deficits! Look at the Fed screwing with interest rates to keep an artificially rosy picture!”
Why yes, yes, yes. I know those things, or at least the broad outlook and magnitude.
Which is why it is important to realize that What I say STILL HOLDS TRUE in SPITE of all of that. Because as bad as the Fed is and has been, it is MUCH better than the central currency authorities in Russia, the PRC, and most of the planet. Indeed, there’s a reason why the USD is not only the preferred reserve currency of most of the planet, but the ACTUAL, OFFICIAL, LEGAL TENDER of a bunch of nations you wouldn’t expect it to be (such as Ecuador) in a way that the Ruble and Rinminbei have not been unless you literally had the Kremlin pointing guns at your head and forcing acceptance of it.
Keep in mind: this is a world where the French Franc and Italian Lira were not merely more successful than most currencies, but OVERWHELMINGLY more successful than most currencies, both of their time and in existence. Where the Turks ran their own shindig of “Be a Turkish Millionaire.” And where all of that looks better than the economic and fiscal policies that dominated essentially everywhere 300 years or more ago, where the scale and the scalpel were still everyday economic tools for the common man.
Now, the Biden administration has chosen to wield the dollar as a weapon.
Which is unsurprising, since the Dollar has been wielded as a weapon constantly. Indeed the first official articulation of it that I know of (and I am prepared to be corrected on it) was during Taft’s presidency, with “Dollar Diplomacy.”
Together, these two factors send a message to foreigners, which is they should get out while they still can.
The problem is that message is balanced out by other pieces of information. Starting with the fact that unless you are trying to get out of the market ALTOGETHER and resort to storing your valuables under a mattress, or you aren’t but somehow want to gamble that New York, the City of London, and so on are going to accept West African Money Conches, it isn’t enough to “get out.” One also needs to “get into” something.
Which is where the obvious question is “get into what?”
What currency on Earth would be a better solution?
The Ruble certainly isn’t it, for the reasons I mentioned. The reason the Ruble is overvalued is because of the draconian and utterly politicized currency restrictions the Kremlin’s economists imposed, and the reason they imposed them is because not even Russians wanted to keep the Ruble which is what triggered the slide in value.
And now they’ve so overcorrected that they realize they started pricing the ruble out of a threshold where it’s economical to use for every day economic activity and are now beginning to try and slide its value down to reconcile it with its actual value.
Because it turns out that the Russian government doesn’t want its taxes to be paid in monopoly money, whether officially (due to a collapsed official rate) or unofficially (due to an artificially high official rate that will lead to goods flight and substitution).
The Indians have apparently begun making a play to join the Big Leagues by putting for the Rupee, and that might actually work since for all of its many problems it has been rather successful, dynamic, and not nakedly state controlled. So we’ll have to see.
In response to Russia’s war with Ukraine, the U.S. froze the dollar reserves of Russia’s central bank. To be clear, these were not American assets. These were dollars owned by the Russian Central Bank and the Russian people.
This is true and also utterly unsurprising. The fact of the matter is that Russia’s dictatorship committed a hideous crime against the Peace, and against basic diplomatic etiquette by invading Ukraine. It also made the host of Western Pols that lined up to push Ukraine to sign Minsk I and II (including Slow Joe) look bad.
There’s a long ass history and legal precedent for seizing the overseas assets of foreign malcontents going back to at least the 19th century, especially in an attempt to limit their warmaking capabilities. Seizing Russia’s assets was quite proper in this case.
“The seizure was intended to cause bank runs and collapse Russia’s credit system. It didn’t work.
No, it did work.
Which is again why the Russian Government and its financial gurus had to course correct and jam their hands onto the scales so much they overcorrected at the cost of the currency’s integrity and market integrity.
Instead, it exposed the Biden administration’s willingness to violate the trillions of dollars that foreigners rightfully own.The danger of this president is difficult to overstate.”
No, it really isn’t.
The Russian Government committed a heinous crime against the peace by invading Ukraine. It also did so by violating the Budapest Memorandum, the Astana Accords, and the Minsk Agreements. All of which were either signed or co-signed by the US. This more than opened up the Kremlin and its foreign financial assets abroad to freezing in retaliation by the US as punishment.
This is an old strategy and thoroughly legal and justified.
I’m not saying there is no risk involved (and indeed we have already seen some modest attempts by the Kremlin to push back), but Tucker is hugely distorting the justice of the measures as well as the risk.
Now, all of us saw that happening, but you couldn’t see anything because Russia bad.
Fair.
All right. What do you think happened next as we’re jumping up and down and talking about Winston Churchill? Well, smart, foreigners and there are some, believe it or not, started to dump the U.S. dollar. Why? Because the U.S. dollar was no longer a reliable store of value.
To which I say Tucker, Got Any Evidence for that?
Because the US Dollar remains a far more reliable store of value and more stable and apolitical than most other currencies, including most of those there.
Suddenly, it was a political weapon that could be wielded at will against anyone who held it.
SUDDENLY.
Earth to Tucker: Taft’s Presidency was more than a century ago. Nobody ALIVE has seen a time where the capacity to use the USD as a weapon was NOT present. Which to be fair to Putin’s old teachers is something the Kremlin recognized, hence the draconian Soviet era currency controls and borderline Mercantilist approach to drawing in USD and other foreign currency.
So, what if you had a border dispute with one of your neighbors that the State Department hadn’t authorized?
The State Department was prepared to not only ignore but outright APPEASE the Kremlin putting the Russian Tricolor by force and fraud over Crimea and armed proxies throughout the Donbas. It has no great stance on things like the Antarctic territory disputes. What it was not prepared to tolerate (CORRECTLY in my estimate, and it pains me to write that given how much I hate Foggy Bottom) was Putin having an UNAUTHORIZED OPEN INVASION of another country that simultaneously humiliated them as co-signatories to Minsk I and Minsk II.
Or what if you accidentally criticized transgender theology and irritated the Human Rights Campaign?
Please study US financial policy towards Hungary, or for that matter the freakshow that is the Taliban in Afghanistan. The US is not prepared to seize currency over criticizing transgender theology, at least yet. It isn’t even prepared to freeze funding over a literal terrorist state emerging in Afghanistan that was a co-conspirator to 9/11, and is still negotiating hand-in-glove with the Ayatollah and Putin for a new Nuclear Steal for Iran.
It’s painfully tedious to see Tucker play ignorant and stupid, because he really can do better.
Well, the U.S. government might denounce you as immoral and then confiscate all your money because they just did that with Russia
Tucker baby, that’s always been a risk. Bernie Sanders could stage a coup against Slow Joe tomorrow and order (or have his Deep State handlers order) the confiscation of all foreign assets held in the US, and assuming some level of compliance there’s not much the foreign countries could do to pre-empt it short of being quick with transfers and threatening retaliation up to and including war.
This is also why it’s a good idea to measure exposure and dependence.
The issue is that just because the US CAN do such things, doesn’t mean it WILL.
The US only began confiscating Russian Government assets in response to a direct, open invasion by the Russian Government of a neighboring country in violation of more treaties and laws than I care to name. It is, the situation remaining relatively stable, not going to start confiscating assets simply because you criticized State Department’s idiocy flying the Trans Flag or because Egypt and Sudan can’t decide which of them doesn’t own Bir Tawil.
That encourages a certain level of investor and consumer confidence because foreigners are reasonably smart and realize that so long as you keep your behavior somewhere South of 1930s Imperial Japan, you will almost certainly NOT have your assets confiscated by the US. Especially with a party of habitual appeasers in the White House.
That’s in sharp contrast to the Kremlin, which began doing similar on a much larger scale.
and as a result, dollars begin to look much less appealing to the rest of the world and so de=dollarization began,
Look less appealing sure. Much less, no.
And “de-dollarization” has been predicted so many times and failed to manifest it isn’t even funny. Especially not on the apocalyptical scale implied. It’s possible the Indians may be able to make it work (since they are not totalitarian basket cases), but we’ll have to see. For now the Saudis pointedly told the PRC to get the hell off in terms of paying for oil with Yuan, and told similar to the Russians regarding the Ruble in spite of Saudi relations with Biden and co being poor.
and it has accelerated at remarkable speed, almost without comment in the American media over the last year.
Please clarify and quantify, Tucker.
And no, high publicity propaganda initiatives by two largely moribund authoritarian tin pot dictatorships with marginal currency confidence abroad (and India) does not “remarkable speed” make. Especially since the key to De-Dollarization would be the ability to OUTCOMPETE THE DOLLAR ON THE MARKET, something that its competitors have consistently failed to do.
Which is why pointing to the (official, overvalued) “value” of the ruble and saying “LOOK HOW HIGH IT IS!” is not exactly a “BEHOLD THE WHITE HORSE” moment of De-Dollarization.
So, Russia announced it will conduct business in Asia, Africa and Latin America in Chinese currency.
Unsurprising given Russian dependence on the PRC and reliance on it. Issue is that there’s little faith outside the PRC’s sphere in the RMB and the Yuan.
Brazil, which has a brand-new government supported by the Biden administration, announced it will do the same thing. Brazil’s largest economy in the hemisphere after hours.
Correct. Though this is less decisive than it looks because
A: Brazil’s preferred currency of foreign exchange was the EURO, not the Dollar, since Brazil had already begun dedollarization decades ago.
B: it’s one thing to say it, it’s another thing to actually do it. Especially since this was a nakedly partisan issue pushed by Lula loyalists and not many other people, and there’s the practical issue even for them of the lack of RMB in Brazil.
I could be wrong (I often am) but I predict this effort to collapse in Brazil.
Pakistan is doing the same thing. That’s a longtime U.S. ally.
The longtime US ally that claims to be a blood brother of the PRC and which hid freaking Bin Laden near their national equivalent of West Point. This isn’t surprising.
India and Malaysia, two of the biggest economies in the world, announced they’ll be settling their trade in their own currencies, not the dollar.
But they are still going to be conducting trade in the dollar.
Even France, which we liberated, is using Chinese currency in a new liquefied natural gas trade.
It has been for years.
China and Saudi Arabia are now major business partners and again,
Always have been.
etc., etc., etc.. This is happening around the world and all of it is shutting out the U.S. dollar
Siiigh.
Firstly: There’s a difference between changing the focus on currency and “shutting out the US Dollar.” Of those only Russia and the PRC are likely to do it officially and make it stick, and even unofficially that’s unlikely in Russia. Pakistani agents abroad are unlikely to simply ditch their USD stockpiles when doing things like buying fuel from the Saudis or arms from us (WHY we are selling to the bastards is another issue, but hey).
Secondly: There’s a difference between announcing something and making it stick.
So, if you want the rest of the world to trust your currency, the last thing you would do is use it as a weapon or print too much of it.
The latter is true. As for the former, Tucker I’m getting really fucking tired of making references to the Classical and Neoclassical eras of finance, so kindly cut it out.
Skipping down a bit…
Biden, as you just saw, is continuing to send the contents of our Treasury, our dollars to corrupt oligarchs in Eastern Europe and around the world
Like most POTUSes for the past several decades? That’s not alarming unto itself.
Especially in comparison to…
and yet at the very same time and you should pay attention to this, he’s selling off America’s most valuable hard asset. That’s our Strategic Petroleum Reserve, because unlike the U.S. dollar, oil, which is in the reserve, has inherent value. Oil is the densest store of transportable energy known to man.
That is absolutely true and one reason why I rage at Biden for doing so. It is utterly inexcusable and for nakedly political gain, to keep leftist wine moms from complaining about gas prices around the time of an election.
So, unlike fiat currencies like the dollar, oil will always have value.
Untrue. Oil will have no value unless you can A: Use it, or B: Sell it to someone who can use it.
That’s why Russia is not now impoverished because they have a lot of oil,
Which it is becoming harder and harder for them to sell at a profit, as shown by how India and even their ally the PRC has bent them over a barrel to extract deep price cuts, hurting Russia at the pocket book.
That’s a good way to start ticking down the clock to impoverish a country.
And I could go on, but suffice it to say Tucker’s assessment of the Russian economy and Ukraine are much poorer than that of the US economy.
huxley,
Your Regan almost certainly appreciates her time with you as much as you appreciate your time with her. Human contact is vital and young and old have much to learn from one another.
It would be interesting to learn her opinion about women’s roles in other cultures; much of the Middle East, Africa, Asia? Does she think those women tend to be happier than women in the West; less depression, suicide? If so, does she think those women are less intelligent? brainwashed? naïve? Does she judge those cultures as evil for “enforcing” traditional roles on men and women?
No easy nor obvious answers to those questions, but modern feminism often ignores the contradiction of non-1st world women. The modern, 1st world West is somehow the worst culture on Earth while at the same time being the only culture that does not impose traditional roles on women AND traditional roles for women are oppressive and unjust. Both those things cannot be true. Is Saudi culture wrong for imposing the hijab? Is Chad wrong for mutilating girls’ genitals? Is India wrong for arranging marriages?
we are being cannibalized, like Russia was in the early 90s, the rise of the oligarchs, like the tech barons, like black rock, our patrimony sold off to the highest bidder,
this white hat, black hat notion that berezovsky and khodokorsky was good, but others like deripaska, are the bad guys, putin not a guy I wouldn’t take tea with, but in retrospect neither was yeltsin, nor gaidar or chubais,
our roads collapse, our chemical and food processing facilities suffer cascading failures, this is coincidence no enemy action,
huxley,
I just re-read my comment. It reads like I’m stating opinions; some of them bizarre.
My intent was to list some interesting questions that I don’t think modern feminism has good answer for. Just an interesting exercise that might stimulate conversation to encourage Regan to think beyond what her books and teachers parrot.
is he, Russia has raw material, and is allowed to exploit them, maybe injudiciously,I I thought the donbas expedition was just such a raid, but sometimes you get carried away, when your opponent is such a foolish knave, putin certainly has biden’s file, gathered from the 70s when he was rising up to full wrong lizard status,
so dwarves are evil, because hook noses, but voldemort who has no nose, is less evil, I didn’t think ralph fiennes, could really pull off the part as well as he did amon goeth, who he painted with much more charm then this styrian thug really was,
of course dungeons and dragons plunges even farther into the insanity, banning half breed, wait what???
modern feminism seems to allow for the erasure of women, none of the standard bearers seem to defend their identity against interlopers, there are the likes of camille paglia, but those are mavericks,
It’s hard to be humble after fathering a Turtler mega post with many fair points and valid insights on a complex topic. The afterglow (pride, a sense of power) will wear off. Soon, I hope.
Your Regan almost certainly appreciates her time with you as much as you appreciate your time with her. Human contact is vital and young and old have much to learn from one another.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Thanks. I like to think so, and agree that young and old have much to offer each other. It’s a shame we have become so siloed into our sliced-and-diced identities.
I appreciate that Regan talks to me, not just because she’s pretty and smart, but because I have dropped enough clues that she knows I’m not Third Wave Feminist adjacent at all.
Although I also throw her off track by quoting gay poets now and then.
So it’s an interesting dance.
I wasn’t bothered by your other thoughts. I would be curious how Regan squares those circles too.
But as an ex-leftist I pretty much know. One always presses the attack with one’s strong points. The messy bits will be worked out after the Revolution.
Maybe.
Leave a Reply
HTML tags allowed in your
comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>
Fascinating! I only understood bits, but I’ve long wondered (ever since taking Latin in high school and bring informed that my teacher, Sister Olivia, used the “soft Italian” pronunciation rather than the “hard Roman”) how linguists draw conclusions about how dead languages were pronounced.
Soft Italian – vaynee veedee veechee.
Hard Roman – waynee weedy weeky.
I think the hard Roman is ugly.
Jamie,
My secular Latin Professors at public University taught me hard Roman was the proper way and “veedee” was “church Latin.” They typically spat when speaking the term, “church Latin.” 🙂
Regarding pronunciation, I assume they back into it based on modern languages derived from it; like Italian.
And one, little nit. Why do we say Latin is a “dead language?” Italian is Latin 2,000 years later.
Jamie, my Latin professor in college was adamant that Hard Roman was the proper pronunciation. He said that scholars used the poor spelling and grammar of graffiti found on walls of ruins to conclude that. The poorly educated provided the clues to pronunciation.
https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/04/the-gop-has-an-obligation-to-protect-its-voters/
Two distinct arguments. The first is most interesting. The GOP has an obligation to protect its voters.
As to whether perfecting harvesting is the best path, I prefer simply eliminating all the Democrats’ tools to perform vote fraud. Demand the same election integrity measures found everywhere else in the world.
And to compliment the sounds of Etruscan, there are the Etruscan silver hands.
https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-other-artifacts/tomb-silver-hands-0018191
Interesting anecdote regarding Trump’s speech yesterday:
My wife is a very nice person, and loyal and fierce. No shrinking violet she, especially when it comes to protecting children and the weak. She has been a huge Trump fan for the past 7 years, or so. She often smiles and laughs during his speeches and she believes he has faced immense persecution in the past 7 years, or so. She likes a lot of what he did and how he did it.
We watched his speech yesterday and about 15 minutes into it she said, “he sounds tired and weak.” I said, “Well, he’s 76 years old.” About 5 minutes later she said, “He sounds whiny. The whole speech has been him complaining about how he has been treated.”
I had not been saying anything (although I had thought the exact same things). My wife really wanted to like that speech and was not impressed.
One story that’s getting zero mainstream media coverage for obvious reasons is the trial of the hip hop artist (Pras from the Fugees) who was part of a scheme with a Malaysian financier to funnel millions of dollars from the Chinese government to the 2012 Obama reelection campaign. Leonardo DiCaprio testified yesterday about it.
stan,
That’s brilliant! Can’t believe I hadn’t thought of that. People who make spelling errors are actually giving pronunciation clues. Most all spelling errors are going to be phonetic and can give guidance to actual pronunciation.
Does anyone know if Rome had an official vocabulary and spelling? I don’t think English language dictionaries existed until the 1700s? Did other cultures have the same idea?
Why do we say Latin is a “dead language?” Italian is Latin 2,000 years later.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Furthermore, I expect Roman Catholic priests, some of them anyway, at a pinch, can still converse in Latin, as the stories went in my Catholic youth.
Perhaps a commenter more up to date may comment.
I can understand with Rufus. I confess I have often been on hand to defend Trump’s legacy and track record, but I do feel he has been past his “Best Used By” Date. I do think he deserves to have the second term that was robbed from him, but even if that is true I feel it would largely be attempts to firm up the foundations for what came later.
well its not a language in common parlance, that is jibberish, they call it English now, it may be Chinese in the future, although I don’t think so,
he opened up with all we have lost in the last two years, our energy independence our military confidence, that put al queda and the sepah, back on their heals, a semblance of law and order, although the color revolution did much damage, the weaponization of law enforcement is part and parcel of that
much like hindu has some circulation, but not sanskrit, although that’s region specific,
Rufus T.: “We watched his speech yesterday and about 15 minutes into it she said, “he sounds tired and weak.”
I had the same feeling about his energy. But I remembered that it had been a long day and a disheartening one at that. Most men his age would have put the speech off until they could get some rest.
I think of Trump as a bull in the ring being set up for the kill by the picadors and the bandoleros (the various prosecutors.) Most men would shrink from this engagement. He’s facing overwhelming odds.
Yet, he will not back down. Occasionally the bull wins. We have to hope that this very uneven, fixed process can be overcome.
Whether you believe it or not, he’s standing between us and the tyranny the left is trying to establish. When he’s vanquished, who will defend us? DeSantis is a good man, but he doesn’t have the resources to fight back that Trump has.
I look at the two men and wonder why they don’t join forces. A Trump/DeSantis ticket would be very powerful and unite many factions within the Republican party.
IMO, we are at an inflection point that could lead either to rebirth, or a steep decline for the nation.
huxley,
Plenty of Roman Catholic priests can converse in Latin, along with a lot of other people. Heck, I have a son who can. As a matter of fact, the Harry Potter book you’re reading in French. He’s read it in Latin (I gifted it to him).
There is a lot that is still published in Latin and groups convene and converse in the language.
JJ et al,
I think all you state Trump can do, or needs to do, he can do all and more effectively if he is not also running for the Presidency.
If he’s not running there is not much those picadors can do (clever analogy, by the way, especially in conjunction with DJT’s “bull in a china shop nature”) and he would be much more free to fight and rally his supporters.
Turtler, it’s really difficult to keep emotion out of it, especially for the aggrieved; DJT.
However, look at how much further Hillary’s star has fallen as she continues on, Ahab like, trying to re-win the election she lost.
Americans don’t like a loser. There are also second acts in America, and American’s like someone who battles and doesn’t give up. But we don’t tolerate complainers.
As a matter of fact, the Harry Potter book you’re reading in French. He’s read it in Latin (I gifted it to him).
Rufus T. Firefly:
Well, I hope not the translation I’m reading. “Not great,” he said with litotes.
One of my tiniest regrets is that I didn’t pay more attention in Latin class. I went to an old-school parochial high school and that meant Four Years of Latin. My response was an adolescent “Why are you torturing me?”
Looking back, I could have easily gotten more out of it.
The language learning community I’ve joined is called LingQ, which is based on an app of the same name. I’ll say nice, hyperbolic things about LingQ another time. My point is that LingQ supports a few dozen languages, Latin among them.
When my French fever dies down, I’d like to take a look at LingQ Latin. He said with alliteration.
Always like your linguistic finds, Neo. Thanks.
Since this is an open thread – let me pass on Happy Passover to those who celebrate it. Chag Pesach Sameach!
biden’s crew is the same one that hillary would have delivered on to us, they just couldn’t cheat enough then, they didn’t have near total control of the infosphere,
Justin Hart gives us weeks worth of Covid/mRNA reading in his latest:
https://covidreason.substack.com/p/vindication-for-team-reality-the?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=64295&post_id=112723756&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
I heard today referred to as Spy Wednesday–new to me.
A happy Passover to all those celebrating.
happy passover,
What Kate said–
A happy Passover to all of Neo’s readers who celebrate it.
A happy and blessed Passover!
there is no end to their evil,
https://redstate.com/streiff/2023/04/05/transgender-lutheran-minister-says-nashville-shooter-audrey-hale-was-a-lot-like-jesus-n726825
The existence of a transgender ELCA pastor does not surprise me. The denomination elevated a transgender person to a bishopric in California, and then forced the bishop to resign. Didn’t learn any lessons, apparently.
https://religionnews.com/2022/05/28/elca-presiding-bishop-requests-resignation-of-first-transgender-bishop/
Past Passovers I have recommended the Maccabeats “Dayenu” video. Beautiful, funny, powerful:
–“The Maccabeats – Dayenu – Passover”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZgDNPGZ9Sg
They’ve done more than a few Passover videos in their immaculate a cappella style. Here’s one where they adapt the music and lyrics from “Les Misérables” to the Passover story.
It definitely works. Get out your handkerchiefs.
______________________________
I dreamed a dream in times gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that hope would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving
–“The Maccabeats – Les Misérables – Passover”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmthKpnTHYQ
Over the past six years at my cafe I’ve cultivated the friendship of a bright English Lit major, now a grad student. It doesn’t hurt that she’s “California Girls” beautiful, to me anyway.
I’m an old fart, but she knows I know stuff and I have my moments of wit she doesn’t find elsewhere. So we talk now and then. She actually takes notes on some of what I say.
But lord, she’s a serious Third Wave Feminist. (And how ironic, her first name is Regan after King Lear’s second daughter. Which I don’t understand, so don’t ask.)
At some point in our conversations she usually presses some political point. Today I told her I was reading Harry Potter in French. So she tells me of her analysis of HP as J.K. Rowling’s unconsciously racist narrative, which Regan is sharing with some third wave prof.
She’s not entirely wrong. I flinched in HP 1 when the bankers in the magic Potterverse turned out to be ugly short goblins with huge hooked noses.
I don’t feel like confronting her. I’ve lost enough people at the cafe over politics. Besides there was no old guy in the world who could have changed my political opinions when I was 25.
She’s kind, intelligent and thoughtful. She’s easy on the eyes and she handles it well. I can’t find a way to dismiss her as a fool or mentally ill or part of a zombie horde determined to destroy America.
Yet we really are on opposing sides and there are stakes.
Our carnivore Seder plate actually featured two items. The lamb shank was joined by a hardboiled egg. Food was the easiest to make and best tasting ever. Full fat chicken soup with Empire kosher chicken in homemade bone broth, followed by lamb meat with a little horseradish.
Meanwhile,
…These sanctions were never going to work in the way they promised because unlike the United States, Russia does not have a late stage financed economy. Russian oligarchs do not get rich from credit default swaps. They get rich from selling actual things that people need in order to live: Oil, natural gas, iron, fertilizer, coal, wheat. By some measures, Russia has the largest resource economy in the world. Oh, OK.
So, they can barter if they needed to? A year later, despite the sanctions you were told are the greatest ever devised, the Russian ruble is just as strong against the U.S. dollar as it was before the war in Ukraine. So, we didn’t really hurt Russia with those sanctions, certainly not long term, but we hurt ourselves. E.J. Antoni and Peter St Onge wrote an incisive piece in The Daily Caller last week that explains part of why this happened “A critical feature of reserve currency is its apolitical nature, which Biden is now gutting after both parties in Washington destroyed the dollar’s stability with inflation…
@Banned Lizard
I will always be grateful to Tucker for blowing the lid off of the January 6th witch hunts and receiving the footage, and that will be more than enough to justify my well wishes of him, but I will say his writings about Ukraine and Russia irk me.
Let me start….
Yeah it does, it’s just rather impotent.
Yeah they did. Kindly research the wholesale “privatization” and theft at the end of the USSR, and particularly study which ones kept their wealth.
Officially. Unofficially, they can only KEEP even a portion of that power and those resources if they kiss the brass ring of the men in the Kremlin, because otherwise they get screwed out of the assets at submarket rates or pushed out a window. Because by this point in time they are glorified servitors of the state and the state economy, as even a cursory look at Gazprom shows.
“By Some Measures.”
And by “some measures” the PRC is the wave of the future and the 21st century will belong to the Red Chinese that decided to halve their population.
Tucker, that’s not how money ACTUALLY WORKS. The value of your currency isn’t a score in a video game where the higher it is the more prosperous and successful you are as a nation.
Don’t believe me?
Ask the Japanese.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/BUSINESS/03/17/japan.yen/index.html
To make a long story short, the Japanese went into the Great Recession seeing their currency the Yen spike in value. And this triggered a catastrophic panic among the Japanese government and those trading with Japan, leading to drastic measures. While in the US the Fed has largely been working to try and shore up the value of the dollar while engaging in borrowing like a drunken sailor, in Japan their equivalents pulled out almost all the stops to TANK the value of their own currency with at least as much fervency as they are now working to shore up its value and increase it.
Why is that?
Shouldn’t the Japanese be glad that their currency became worth more?
No, no they shouldn’t have. Because currencies are mediums of exchange, not video game high scores. And in order to serve effectively as mediums of exchange, they need to have a value, preferably conductive to the trades the economic actors tied to that want it to be.
And for an expert dominated economy like JAPAN and Russia, that involves keeping the currency DEPRECIATED to a modest degree. Because a weak Home Currency means that imports are more expensive for that nation but exports are cheaper. Meaning that the countries want to strike a health balance (between “being able to buy any imports you want at least until the money runs out because everybody is scared off from buying anything from you” and “being able to send out all the exports you want but unable to rub your coins together to buy the imports you need”). But the Ruble and Yen are keyed to exports, meaning that in general their governments want to err on the side of caution.
Which brings us to why Muh Strong Ruble is not the reason for Russian celebration that Tucker makes it out to be.
Firstly: there’s the issue of what the Russian Government and markets had to do in order to ACHIEVE that. Namely, thoroughly gutting the currency’s integrity with heavy handed currency and even market controls.
https://www.morganlewis.com/pubs/2022/04/update-central-bank-of-russia-imposes-further-currency-control-restrictions
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/03/08/ruble-dollar-exchange-barred/
https://interfax.com/newsroom/top-stories/80335/
Demanding loudly that people take payments in Rubles, preventing the sale of Rubles on the open market, and screwing the people you are taking advance orders from are NOT indications of a healthy, dynamic economy that is functioning well under its own power. It’s not even signs of a moderately functional but heavily manipulated currency like the USD is. It’s a sign that the government in question has stopped any hint of subtlety and has decided to screw its long term prospects in order to prop up the currency and Pay Paul Tomorrow, even if it means robbing Peter down the road.
This isn’t surprising because it is quite similar to what a lot of the “Best and Brightest” and New Dealers did, to catastrophic effect, during the Great Depression.
Which brings us to the second point:
That the Russian Government OVERDID It. Not only did these effects have more adverse results on the market and its health than they hoped, but they overshot their goal and wound up overvaluing the Ruble.
But don’t take MY word for that.
Ask the freaking Russian Government.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/russias-first-deputy-pm-says-rouble-is-overvalued-sees-inflation-easing-tass-2022-06-15/
https://www.ft.com/content/2feb14af-bd59-4d22-9731-ab90f73eee93
The reasons for this are fairly clear. Firstly: While the Russian Government didn’t want the Ruble to get too devalued (and correctly so), it also doesn’t want it to be OVERVALUED both overall (since that will hurt its ability to buy goods, which is PARTICULARLY important now for the War Economy) and relative to the amount of pain holding the value up is doing to the economy. Secondly: people aren’t actually fooled into thinking the Ruble is really worth what the Russian government is saying it is worth. Which is why the Black Market Rate (and that used by many legal or grey area but non-state-controlled exchanges) is so dramatically lower than the Ruble’s official rate that Tucker is going off on.
And that’s a BAD thing for the Russian Government, because if it persists it will help break down the functioning of their economy as “Bad Money pushes out Good Money (and Goods)” and people hide their foreign exchange and goods or skip town to their Real Estate Empires in West Hollywood and London.
Which is why currently the Russian Government is trying to reverse course and engage in controlled devaluation of the Ruble, so that the currency goes back down to an official value that is not catastrophically deflated relative to its actual value, but without slipping too far into the kind of extreme devaluation we saw during Spring of 2022.
And all of that comes at the cost of fiscal discipline and a modest amount of pain for the marketplace.
Something that the Russian government itself has been moderately candid about, since it now predicts economic contraction, the main question being “how much.”
https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Russia-s-economy-contracted-2.1-in-2022-less-than-expected
So the idea that the sanctions didn’t “really hurt Russia” is laugh out loud false and is contradicted by the Russian regime’s economists themselves. The only question being whether or not it hurt Russia more than others.
Bullshit.
A critical feature of reserve currency is its STABLE nature. That’s different from being apolitical. The USD has been political since we first switched to it (and indeed, we based it off of the Spanish Silver Dollar, which in turn was based off of the “Great” Thaler, and if you think either the Holy Roman Empire or Spain engaged in “apolitical” currency I have several economics textbooks to brain you with). Political dimensions to currency are both normal and expected, even if not necessarily desirable.
THE TRICK IS that while a Currency can be POLITICAL, it has to be moderately stable. The people managing the currency have to avoid screwing with it so much that it destroys faith in its value and cultivates the expectation in the markets and investors that its value could change tomorrow, this triggering risk that will lead to the more risk-adverse to jumping ship.
This is not new. This is not controversial. Indeed, the Spanish Silver Dollar that we patterned our own Dollar after was a currency reform introduced by the nascent Bourbon Spanish administration to fix literal centuries of economic mismanagement, hyperinflation, and bankruptcy caused by previous Spanish fiscal policy (oh yeah, and also overreliance on precious metals). The “Clipper and Seasaw Times” of the 17th century was caused by extensive debasement of the currency from both governments and private individuals during the height of the Greater Thirty Years War.
This is why “Bad Currency drives out Good Currency” (at least when forced to be artificially treated at equal value) is axiomatic.
This is ALSO why the Ruble’s real and black market values are so catastrophically lower than the official figures Tucker is touting and why that is a bad thing. Because in addition to being subject to the uncertainty of war spending and sanctions, the Russian money men tipped their hands too aggressively and gutted the organic workings of currency value. Which they have now recognized and are trying to reverse track on before the Black Market gets more power.
Honestly, this would be true except for the “destroyed the dollar’s stability with inflation.” Because like it or not the USD IS still one of the world’s most stable currencies, and indeed one of the most stable of all time. It is one of all of human history’s greatest champions at retaining value.
“But Turtler!” You say, “Look at Obama’s cocaine binging on money printing! Look at the huge deficits! Look at the Fed screwing with interest rates to keep an artificially rosy picture!”
Why yes, yes, yes. I know those things, or at least the broad outlook and magnitude.
Which is why it is important to realize that What I say STILL HOLDS TRUE in SPITE of all of that. Because as bad as the Fed is and has been, it is MUCH better than the central currency authorities in Russia, the PRC, and most of the planet. Indeed, there’s a reason why the USD is not only the preferred reserve currency of most of the planet, but the ACTUAL, OFFICIAL, LEGAL TENDER of a bunch of nations you wouldn’t expect it to be (such as Ecuador) in a way that the Ruble and Rinminbei have not been unless you literally had the Kremlin pointing guns at your head and forcing acceptance of it.
Keep in mind: this is a world where the French Franc and Italian Lira were not merely more successful than most currencies, but OVERWHELMINGLY more successful than most currencies, both of their time and in existence. Where the Turks ran their own shindig of “Be a Turkish Millionaire.” And where all of that looks better than the economic and fiscal policies that dominated essentially everywhere 300 years or more ago, where the scale and the scalpel were still everyday economic tools for the common man.
Which is unsurprising, since the Dollar has been wielded as a weapon constantly. Indeed the first official articulation of it that I know of (and I am prepared to be corrected on it) was during Taft’s presidency, with “Dollar Diplomacy.”
The problem is that message is balanced out by other pieces of information. Starting with the fact that unless you are trying to get out of the market ALTOGETHER and resort to storing your valuables under a mattress, or you aren’t but somehow want to gamble that New York, the City of London, and so on are going to accept West African Money Conches, it isn’t enough to “get out.” One also needs to “get into” something.
Which is where the obvious question is “get into what?”
What currency on Earth would be a better solution?
The Ruble certainly isn’t it, for the reasons I mentioned. The reason the Ruble is overvalued is because of the draconian and utterly politicized currency restrictions the Kremlin’s economists imposed, and the reason they imposed them is because not even Russians wanted to keep the Ruble which is what triggered the slide in value.
And now they’ve so overcorrected that they realize they started pricing the ruble out of a threshold where it’s economical to use for every day economic activity and are now beginning to try and slide its value down to reconcile it with its actual value.
Because it turns out that the Russian government doesn’t want its taxes to be paid in monopoly money, whether officially (due to a collapsed official rate) or unofficially (due to an artificially high official rate that will lead to goods flight and substitution).
The Indians have apparently begun making a play to join the Big Leagues by putting for the Rupee, and that might actually work since for all of its many problems it has been rather successful, dynamic, and not nakedly state controlled. So we’ll have to see.
This is true and also utterly unsurprising. The fact of the matter is that Russia’s dictatorship committed a hideous crime against the Peace, and against basic diplomatic etiquette by invading Ukraine. It also made the host of Western Pols that lined up to push Ukraine to sign Minsk I and II (including Slow Joe) look bad.
There’s a long ass history and legal precedent for seizing the overseas assets of foreign malcontents going back to at least the 19th century, especially in an attempt to limit their warmaking capabilities. Seizing Russia’s assets was quite proper in this case.
No, it did work.
Which is again why the Russian Government and its financial gurus had to course correct and jam their hands onto the scales so much they overcorrected at the cost of the currency’s integrity and market integrity.
No, it really isn’t.
The Russian Government committed a heinous crime against the peace by invading Ukraine. It also did so by violating the Budapest Memorandum, the Astana Accords, and the Minsk Agreements. All of which were either signed or co-signed by the US. This more than opened up the Kremlin and its foreign financial assets abroad to freezing in retaliation by the US as punishment.
This is an old strategy and thoroughly legal and justified.
I’m not saying there is no risk involved (and indeed we have already seen some modest attempts by the Kremlin to push back), but Tucker is hugely distorting the justice of the measures as well as the risk.
Fair.
To which I say Tucker, Got Any Evidence for that?
Because the US Dollar remains a far more reliable store of value and more stable and apolitical than most other currencies, including most of those there.
SUDDENLY.
Earth to Tucker: Taft’s Presidency was more than a century ago. Nobody ALIVE has seen a time where the capacity to use the USD as a weapon was NOT present. Which to be fair to Putin’s old teachers is something the Kremlin recognized, hence the draconian Soviet era currency controls and borderline Mercantilist approach to drawing in USD and other foreign currency.
The State Department was prepared to not only ignore but outright APPEASE the Kremlin putting the Russian Tricolor by force and fraud over Crimea and armed proxies throughout the Donbas. It has no great stance on things like the Antarctic territory disputes. What it was not prepared to tolerate (CORRECTLY in my estimate, and it pains me to write that given how much I hate Foggy Bottom) was Putin having an UNAUTHORIZED OPEN INVASION of another country that simultaneously humiliated them as co-signatories to Minsk I and Minsk II.
Please study US financial policy towards Hungary, or for that matter the freakshow that is the Taliban in Afghanistan. The US is not prepared to seize currency over criticizing transgender theology, at least yet. It isn’t even prepared to freeze funding over a literal terrorist state emerging in Afghanistan that was a co-conspirator to 9/11, and is still negotiating hand-in-glove with the Ayatollah and Putin for a new Nuclear Steal for Iran.
It’s painfully tedious to see Tucker play ignorant and stupid, because he really can do better.
Tucker baby, that’s always been a risk. Bernie Sanders could stage a coup against Slow Joe tomorrow and order (or have his Deep State handlers order) the confiscation of all foreign assets held in the US, and assuming some level of compliance there’s not much the foreign countries could do to pre-empt it short of being quick with transfers and threatening retaliation up to and including war.
This is also why it’s a good idea to measure exposure and dependence.
The issue is that just because the US CAN do such things, doesn’t mean it WILL.
The US only began confiscating Russian Government assets in response to a direct, open invasion by the Russian Government of a neighboring country in violation of more treaties and laws than I care to name. It is, the situation remaining relatively stable, not going to start confiscating assets simply because you criticized State Department’s idiocy flying the Trans Flag or because Egypt and Sudan can’t decide which of them doesn’t own Bir Tawil.
That encourages a certain level of investor and consumer confidence because foreigners are reasonably smart and realize that so long as you keep your behavior somewhere South of 1930s Imperial Japan, you will almost certainly NOT have your assets confiscated by the US. Especially with a party of habitual appeasers in the White House.
That’s in sharp contrast to the Kremlin, which began doing similar on a much larger scale.
Look less appealing sure. Much less, no.
And “de-dollarization” has been predicted so many times and failed to manifest it isn’t even funny. Especially not on the apocalyptical scale implied. It’s possible the Indians may be able to make it work (since they are not totalitarian basket cases), but we’ll have to see. For now the Saudis pointedly told the PRC to get the hell off in terms of paying for oil with Yuan, and told similar to the Russians regarding the Ruble in spite of Saudi relations with Biden and co being poor.
Please clarify and quantify, Tucker.
And no, high publicity propaganda initiatives by two largely moribund authoritarian tin pot dictatorships with marginal currency confidence abroad (and India) does not “remarkable speed” make. Especially since the key to De-Dollarization would be the ability to OUTCOMPETE THE DOLLAR ON THE MARKET, something that its competitors have consistently failed to do.
Which is why pointing to the (official, overvalued) “value” of the ruble and saying “LOOK HOW HIGH IT IS!” is not exactly a “BEHOLD THE WHITE HORSE” moment of De-Dollarization.
Unsurprising given Russian dependence on the PRC and reliance on it. Issue is that there’s little faith outside the PRC’s sphere in the RMB and the Yuan.
Correct. Though this is less decisive than it looks because
A: Brazil’s preferred currency of foreign exchange was the EURO, not the Dollar, since Brazil had already begun dedollarization decades ago.
B: it’s one thing to say it, it’s another thing to actually do it. Especially since this was a nakedly partisan issue pushed by Lula loyalists and not many other people, and there’s the practical issue even for them of the lack of RMB in Brazil.
I could be wrong (I often am) but I predict this effort to collapse in Brazil.
The longtime US ally that claims to be a blood brother of the PRC and which hid freaking Bin Laden near their national equivalent of West Point. This isn’t surprising.
But they are still going to be conducting trade in the dollar.
It has been for years.
Always have been.
Siiigh.
Firstly: There’s a difference between changing the focus on currency and “shutting out the US Dollar.” Of those only Russia and the PRC are likely to do it officially and make it stick, and even unofficially that’s unlikely in Russia. Pakistani agents abroad are unlikely to simply ditch their USD stockpiles when doing things like buying fuel from the Saudis or arms from us (WHY we are selling to the bastards is another issue, but hey).
Secondly: There’s a difference between announcing something and making it stick.
The latter is true. As for the former, Tucker I’m getting really fucking tired of making references to the Classical and Neoclassical eras of finance, so kindly cut it out.
Skipping down a bit…
Like most POTUSes for the past several decades? That’s not alarming unto itself.
Especially in comparison to…
That is absolutely true and one reason why I rage at Biden for doing so. It is utterly inexcusable and for nakedly political gain, to keep leftist wine moms from complaining about gas prices around the time of an election.
Untrue. Oil will have no value unless you can A: Use it, or B: Sell it to someone who can use it.
Which it is becoming harder and harder for them to sell at a profit, as shown by how India and even their ally the PRC has bent them over a barrel to extract deep price cuts, hurting Russia at the pocket book.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russian-oil-sold-india-below-price-cap-buyers-market-2022-12-14/
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/China-And-India-Are-Buying-Russian-Crude-At-A-40-Discount.html
That’s a good way to start ticking down the clock to impoverish a country.
And I could go on, but suffice it to say Tucker’s assessment of the Russian economy and Ukraine are much poorer than that of the US economy.
huxley,
Your Regan almost certainly appreciates her time with you as much as you appreciate your time with her. Human contact is vital and young and old have much to learn from one another.
It would be interesting to learn her opinion about women’s roles in other cultures; much of the Middle East, Africa, Asia? Does she think those women tend to be happier than women in the West; less depression, suicide? If so, does she think those women are less intelligent? brainwashed? naïve? Does she judge those cultures as evil for “enforcing” traditional roles on men and women?
No easy nor obvious answers to those questions, but modern feminism often ignores the contradiction of non-1st world women. The modern, 1st world West is somehow the worst culture on Earth while at the same time being the only culture that does not impose traditional roles on women AND traditional roles for women are oppressive and unjust. Both those things cannot be true. Is Saudi culture wrong for imposing the hijab? Is Chad wrong for mutilating girls’ genitals? Is India wrong for arranging marriages?
we are being cannibalized, like Russia was in the early 90s, the rise of the oligarchs, like the tech barons, like black rock, our patrimony sold off to the highest bidder,
this white hat, black hat notion that berezovsky and khodokorsky was good, but others like deripaska, are the bad guys, putin not a guy I wouldn’t take tea with, but in retrospect neither was yeltsin, nor gaidar or chubais,
our roads collapse, our chemical and food processing facilities suffer cascading failures, this is coincidence no enemy action,
huxley,
I just re-read my comment. It reads like I’m stating opinions; some of them bizarre.
My intent was to list some interesting questions that I don’t think modern feminism has good answer for. Just an interesting exercise that might stimulate conversation to encourage Regan to think beyond what her books and teachers parrot.
is he, Russia has raw material, and is allowed to exploit them, maybe injudiciously,I I thought the donbas expedition was just such a raid, but sometimes you get carried away, when your opponent is such a foolish knave, putin certainly has biden’s file, gathered from the 70s when he was rising up to full wrong lizard status,
so dwarves are evil, because hook noses, but voldemort who has no nose, is less evil, I didn’t think ralph fiennes, could really pull off the part as well as he did amon goeth, who he painted with much more charm then this styrian thug really was,
of course dungeons and dragons plunges even farther into the insanity, banning half breed, wait what???
modern feminism seems to allow for the erasure of women, none of the standard bearers seem to defend their identity against interlopers, there are the likes of camille paglia, but those are mavericks,
It’s hard to be humble after fathering a Turtler mega post with many fair points and valid insights on a complex topic. The afterglow (pride, a sense of power) will wear off. Soon, I hope.
On the other hand, I claim no credit for Kid Rock’s eloquently delivered Bud Light remarks on a much simpler topic. It’s a thing of beauty.
Your Regan almost certainly appreciates her time with you as much as you appreciate your time with her. Human contact is vital and young and old have much to learn from one another.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Thanks. I like to think so, and agree that young and old have much to offer each other. It’s a shame we have become so siloed into our sliced-and-diced identities.
I appreciate that Regan talks to me, not just because she’s pretty and smart, but because I have dropped enough clues that she knows I’m not Third Wave Feminist adjacent at all.
Although I also throw her off track by quoting gay poets now and then.
So it’s an interesting dance.
I wasn’t bothered by your other thoughts. I would be curious how Regan squares those circles too.
But as an ex-leftist I pretty much know. One always presses the attack with one’s strong points. The messy bits will be worked out after the Revolution.
Maybe.