In my humble opinion Donald’s decisions regarding Russia are predicated on conditions and terms that have never been disclosed. Ie he is beholden to Putin. Is it debt,or other issues may never be made known but without sounding like the crazy conspiracists or mystics advising Trump Putin definitely has Trump by the ……!!!
Absolutely no one can be that dumb in dealing with Russia.
I wondered if I'd ever see the day when if finally dawned on Trump that he'd been played. And I hope something good comes of it, although I tend to think he might be too old, too unstable and too numbed by all the previous times he's been outmatched by others who saw right through him to their own advantage to stick with his dawning insight.
Thanks for this and your ongoing insights. Clearly, when even completely ignorant people can recognize that what they see just doesn’t make any sense at all, there must be huge hidden direct personal issues involved. I won’t speculate on what they may be but my bet is that Trump, his buddies and the Russian oligarchs are much more intertwined than we will ever know. There is no other rational explanation for the absurdities we are witnessing and our civilization is not likely to survive the chaos that will engulf us all while they try to protect and expand their ill gotten empires!!!
Trump is demonstrably insane, he is delusional. Nobody with an ounce of intelligence could not see that he is being played by Putin. The same could be said of Witkoff, Rubio and all the other retards who supposedly support Trump or work for him. I have no hope that anything will change in the future. Ukraine & Europe should proceed as if there is no future with the US.
There is no hope that Trump will achieve a ceasefire between Ukraine & Russia. Any such agreement along the lines of Trump’s proposal would mean the capitulation of Ukraine, which they will not entertain. Europe will have to step up and be part of the solution if Russia (Putin) is to be defeated. Unless Russia is defeated or there is a collapse, there will be no return of the children or compensation for all the damage done thru Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
I don’t believe for a minute that Trump is disturbed by the loss of life in Ukraine, nothing he has done leads me to believe otherwise.
Trump has single handedly destroyed any trust that most of world had in the US. The implementation or otherwise of tariffs, the erratic nature of his rantings - on again/off again, the incoherent musings, his threats against Canada, Greenland, Panama and Gaza, his anti-European/Ukraine rhetoric, his withdrawal of funding from USAID, his withdrawal from WHO, his total disregard for international norms eg voting with other autocrats in the UN are just some of the outcomes due to his actions. This doesn't even scratch the surface of what he is doing in the US.
It is also possible the dollar will lose its status as the world’s reserve currency because of Trump’s actions.
The economic, social and political damage that is being done by successive U.S. administrations to the ephemeral genie of “American Exceptionalism” challenges all of us to take/make our stance toward the future! Arguably that genie has been the “rule of law,” and putting it back into a bottle politically supported by most Americans will require a very long-term, multi-year effort, which we may have little interest in doing, especially if we might see ourselves as being less prosperous by doing so!
Notwithstanding exceptional U.S. power and entrepreneurial business risk-taking, the U.S. government is in the process of causing substantial damage both to its own institutions of governance, and to our relationships with others through our neglect of and violence towards support for the rule of law.
We seem to find it harder to understand relationships that are about more than simple power over, or control of others and a hegemonic “getting our way,” that has characterized much of our post-war history.
Relationships can either be based on a foundation of trustworthiness, or not, and can be described as situational, transactional or mercantile. We are burning the relational bridges that have taken us so long to establish! Simply stated, it is felt as a betrayal!
U.S. deficits and dollar debasement will continue to adversely impact young Americans, but corrective remediation is now limited. Long-term, continually growing indebtedness, our income inequalities, and substantial distrust from other countries has eroded our standing and power in the world, and results from years of historical naiveté that has now morphed into a kind of political victimhood with its apparent intention to blunder chaotically into an uncertain future that we seem to think we will better control through the order we intend to impose out of the chaos we have created! Magical thinking is infantile!
Capital has been fleeing our markets! Trump has encouraged it! We have many difficult economic, social and political problems ahead with dimished capacity to stitch together agreements from our older institutional structures with their undependable competency and mature leadership!
If you see the future more hopefully, I am interested why you think so. If that hope is not based on a sound reading of our present circumstances, nor is a data-driven explanation, then it is but wishful thinking!
The dollar will continue to need active debasement in order to inflate away a debt crisis unlike anything we have ever seen before in our country! Gold is for me the only reliable future “store of value,” or wealth preservation, and dollars the only “medium of exchange” I have recourse to.
The upcoming, generally conceded recession (perhaps by design) does not appear to me to be either short, or a V-shaped transition to future economic growth! The policy history cited of years of naivete and blundering will make reestablishing supply chains more difficult for us than Covid, and make remediation of Middle Class stagnation many years away, if it can ever be again achieved.
In my humble opinion Donald’s decisions regarding Russia are predicated on conditions and terms that have never been disclosed. Ie he is beholden to Putin. Is it debt,or other issues may never be made known but without sounding like the crazy conspiracists or mystics advising Trump Putin definitely has Trump by the ……!!!
Absolutely no one can be that dumb in dealing with Russia.
Trump is redefining "dumb".
I wondered if I'd ever see the day when if finally dawned on Trump that he'd been played. And I hope something good comes of it, although I tend to think he might be too old, too unstable and too numbed by all the previous times he's been outmatched by others who saw right through him to their own advantage to stick with his dawning insight.
Thanks for this and your ongoing insights. Clearly, when even completely ignorant people can recognize that what they see just doesn’t make any sense at all, there must be huge hidden direct personal issues involved. I won’t speculate on what they may be but my bet is that Trump, his buddies and the Russian oligarchs are much more intertwined than we will ever know. There is no other rational explanation for the absurdities we are witnessing and our civilization is not likely to survive the chaos that will engulf us all while they try to protect and expand their ill gotten empires!!!
Trump is demonstrably insane, he is delusional. Nobody with an ounce of intelligence could not see that he is being played by Putin. The same could be said of Witkoff, Rubio and all the other retards who supposedly support Trump or work for him. I have no hope that anything will change in the future. Ukraine & Europe should proceed as if there is no future with the US.
There is no hope that Trump will achieve a ceasefire between Ukraine & Russia. Any such agreement along the lines of Trump’s proposal would mean the capitulation of Ukraine, which they will not entertain. Europe will have to step up and be part of the solution if Russia (Putin) is to be defeated. Unless Russia is defeated or there is a collapse, there will be no return of the children or compensation for all the damage done thru Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
I don’t believe for a minute that Trump is disturbed by the loss of life in Ukraine, nothing he has done leads me to believe otherwise.
Trump has single handedly destroyed any trust that most of world had in the US. The implementation or otherwise of tariffs, the erratic nature of his rantings - on again/off again, the incoherent musings, his threats against Canada, Greenland, Panama and Gaza, his anti-European/Ukraine rhetoric, his withdrawal of funding from USAID, his withdrawal from WHO, his total disregard for international norms eg voting with other autocrats in the UN are just some of the outcomes due to his actions. This doesn't even scratch the surface of what he is doing in the US.
It is also possible the dollar will lose its status as the world’s reserve currency because of Trump’s actions.
I forgot to add, he is corrupt too.
The economic, social and political damage that is being done by successive U.S. administrations to the ephemeral genie of “American Exceptionalism” challenges all of us to take/make our stance toward the future! Arguably that genie has been the “rule of law,” and putting it back into a bottle politically supported by most Americans will require a very long-term, multi-year effort, which we may have little interest in doing, especially if we might see ourselves as being less prosperous by doing so!
Notwithstanding exceptional U.S. power and entrepreneurial business risk-taking, the U.S. government is in the process of causing substantial damage both to its own institutions of governance, and to our relationships with others through our neglect of and violence towards support for the rule of law.
We seem to find it harder to understand relationships that are about more than simple power over, or control of others and a hegemonic “getting our way,” that has characterized much of our post-war history.
Relationships can either be based on a foundation of trustworthiness, or not, and can be described as situational, transactional or mercantile. We are burning the relational bridges that have taken us so long to establish! Simply stated, it is felt as a betrayal!
U.S. deficits and dollar debasement will continue to adversely impact young Americans, but corrective remediation is now limited. Long-term, continually growing indebtedness, our income inequalities, and substantial distrust from other countries has eroded our standing and power in the world, and results from years of historical naiveté that has now morphed into a kind of political victimhood with its apparent intention to blunder chaotically into an uncertain future that we seem to think we will better control through the order we intend to impose out of the chaos we have created! Magical thinking is infantile!
Capital has been fleeing our markets! Trump has encouraged it! We have many difficult economic, social and political problems ahead with dimished capacity to stitch together agreements from our older institutional structures with their undependable competency and mature leadership!
If you see the future more hopefully, I am interested why you think so. If that hope is not based on a sound reading of our present circumstances, nor is a data-driven explanation, then it is but wishful thinking!
The dollar will continue to need active debasement in order to inflate away a debt crisis unlike anything we have ever seen before in our country! Gold is for me the only reliable future “store of value,” or wealth preservation, and dollars the only “medium of exchange” I have recourse to.
The upcoming, generally conceded recession (perhaps by design) does not appear to me to be either short, or a V-shaped transition to future economic growth! The policy history cited of years of naivete and blundering will make reestablishing supply chains more difficult for us than Covid, and make remediation of Middle Class stagnation many years away, if it can ever be again achieved.
How much more depressing can it be with Trumper in charge of this mess?
Let’s hope this is a light at the end of this tunnel and not an approaching train wreck.
Excellent thank you