The BBC

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The BBC
by timdaub.eth12379 🥝 • 2y
AI summary of the linked article

The author argues that the Federal Reserve, under Chair Jerome Powell, will resume quantitative easing focused on US Treasury bonds by this summer, because President Trump's trade and fiscal goals require the Fed and US commercial banks to print money and buy Treasuries. The essay opens with a satirical dialogue in which Powell describes being pressured by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent after a March meeting. The argument points to the US current account deficit, which the essay ties to China's export growth after its 2001 World Trade Organization entry, and to foreign buying of Treasury debt that has funded it.

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Guess I'm not the only one wondering what was going on https://decrypt.co/312169/trump-pardons-arthur-hayes-bitmex-founders
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woah! I completely missed that actually.
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And finally, Germany decided to build an army again paid for with printed euros and every other European nation must respond by building their own army with printed euros because they are afraid of a 1939 Remix to Ignition.

He seems to know German politicians, I am not aware of 😁
his writing style really cracks me up
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He seems to know German politicians, I am not aware of 😁

I think this is the basic idea behind offensive realism [1]. Basically the idea is that there's inter state anarchy on the world stage and that you can't "call 9/11" when someone attacks you.

So inevitably this leads to security competition between states. And if you have e.g. Ukraine, Russia and the US having a ball at becoming much more high tech armies, then as Germany inevitably you'll also have to, at one point, upgrade your equipment, but you'll also have to "test your army in production" bc as we all know just testing on staging doesn't tell you about production-only issues.

This is what sucks about war, is that it creates security competition pressure for all others. So when I read what he says I think it is directionally correct.

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I don't have a problem with that offensive realism idea. It was primarily the combination of the US, China and Germany in that last paragraph, that piqued my interest:

1) there is a level difference between the US, China on one hand and Germany on the other
2) the 1939 scenario collides with the need of common financing (aka debt) in the EU

In the end, yes, there will be a lot of money printed, so there he is right.
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