wesapien

I agree. It's a finance capitalism issue. The people who build data centers get free reign on the use energy, land, water and the atmosphere while everyone will bear the cost. Its another upward transfer of wealth. Another wealth pump as Peter Turchin describes it. This could end whatever democratic process is left. The West will be just like China but worse. Slower trains and more violent. At least in China, Political power is in control of capital.

If only other countries just gave away their sovereignty then we wouldn't have to preemptively take away their sovereignty because if we don't then they will do it to us. If we don't instigate war then it will come to us and our stocks won't go up and contracts dry up.

One of the problems with the data center boom is its use of fresh water. How does geo-thermal plants use water and how much?

The cover story for tarrifs was re-Industrialization. The facts are that they are used more as another rent seeking maneuver, a street rat style protection racket or a means to coerce. Sell the theory but do something else.

It's an admission that the decades of preference falsification and praise of the emperors clothes is not worthy anymore. Carney hints that the same pressures that kept the dysfunctional Soviet system is similar to the same pressures that keep the dysfunction of capitalism, Neo-liberalism (religion) as well as Neo-classical economics (theology).

Most think that the cracks in the financial system started to appear after 2008 (global financial crisis) and become truly visible after the financial system was weaponized through the seizures of Russian central bank USD reserves. It setup a precedent that it happened once it could happen again to some other country.

Cheers to you for mentioning Triffin's dilemma. In my opinion, the dilemma is in the ability of the host country to be able to make "good use" of the exorbitant privilege. The financial system was not only used against other states but against its own people. Instead of developing the country and building equity through the middle class, it cannibalized its own.

I was there 2 years ago. I went inside one of the multi storey gaming places in Akihabara. The old school (90's and older) era games are a small section in one floor when there is 6 storeys of gaming.

Late Stage Capitalism. The real paper clip maximizers are the Silicon Valley and Wallstreet bros we met along the way.

Read up on 1900s world history and what path dependency is. The dollar is the reserve currency because the USA won the title of world power near the end of the first of half of the 1900s. It was formalized in the Bretton Woods agreement in 1944. The US helped win the war and gained enormous trust and goodwill around the world which it has slowly been squandering since then. POTUS hit the turbo button just a few months ago.

The PRC has strict controls of their money because that is how they can became the factory of the world. They played the hand that were dealt with and battled adversity and they are reaping the rewards.

The president said today that the US trade partners and allies/friends have been taking advantage. You can easily verify if that is true or false. US capitalists moved production overseas to make more money at the expense of the local workers. That's the scam.

Fake, no not at all. Look around your where live. Think about who, where, and how those things were made. Scam? From whose perspective? There is only one global reserve currency. For all intents and purposes, that is the crown and heavy is the head that wears it. Sure it feels like a scam for anyone outside of the 1% or the political class or the plutocracy.

The world followed the lead and it just wanted reciprocity (exclude the enemies of course). What seems fake to you and who is getting scammed by who?

I think the outcomes achieved for domestic vs foreign is another interesting angle. The degradation of purchasing power of working and middle class is have been consistently getting worse.