On January 17, the Saudi minister of finance, Mohammed Al-Jadaan, announced that the Saudi state is open to selling oil in currencies other than the dollar. “There are no issues with discussing how we settle our trade arrangements, whether it is in the US dollar, whether it is the euro, whether it is the Saudi riyal,” Al-Jadaan told Bloomberg TV.

If the Saudi regime does indeed embrace substantial trade in currencies other than the dollar as part of its oil-export business, this would signal a shift away from the dollar as the dominant currency in global oil payments. Or measured another way, this would signal the end of the so-called petrodollar.

But how large of a shift is this? With the increasingly frequent Saudi comments about trading in nondollar currencies, we’ve also seen an increasing number of pundits announcing the “collapse” of the dollar or the imminent implosion of the dollar’s currently outsized global power.

Will a shift away from the dollar in the global oil trade really lead to a big relative decline in the dollar? Probably and eventually. But a number of other dominoes would need to fall first, most especially the domino we call “Eurodollars.”

On the other hand, it would be foolish to simply dismiss the potential end of the Saudi preference for the dollar with hand-waving. The end of the petrodollar would indeed weaken the dollar, even if this would not be a mortal blow in itself. Moreover, it is especially foolhardy to ignore the status of the petrodollar because that status also has geopolitical implications. Saudi comments on the dollar signal that the Saudis no longer consider its alliance with the United States to be as important as it has been since the 1970s. What’s not an immediate economic problem for the US regime or the dollar may nonetheless be an immediate geopolitical problem. //

But if global dollar dominance truly is in decline, we could potentially expect both higher domestic price inflation and higher interest rates than what Americans have become accustomed to over the past thirty years. In other words, as the dollar declines, the US regime will no longer be able to monetize debt and heap up immense new deficits without fear of high price inflation or falling Treasury prices. The end of the petrodollar is not a reason to panic right now, but it is the latest sign that the US regime’s power via the dollar is being reined in. //

The Petrodollar Is a Type of Eurodollar
In terms of its economic role, however, the petrodollar has always just been a type of Eurodollar.

What is a Eurodollar? According to Robert Murphy:

The term Eurodollar actually refers to any US dollar-denominated deposit held at a financial institution outside of the United States, or even a USD deposit held by a foreign bank within the US. It thus has nothing to do with the euro currency, and is not restricted to dollars held in Europe; they are dollar deposits that are not subject to the same regulations as US dollars held by American banks, nor are they guaranteed by FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) protection (and hence they tend to earn a higher rate of return).

The trade in Eurodollars is huge, although it’s difficult to quantify exactly how huge. One estimate puts Eurodollar assets at around $12 trillion. For context, we can consider that all assets in US banks total about $22 trillion. Or put another way, “offshore dollar banking now amounts to about half of the US total.” So, the Eurodollar economy is very large, and this “dollar zone” is also a key component of many of the world’s leading economies, given that half or more of the world economy lies in that zone.

In contrast, in 2020, the petrodollar trade amounted to less than $3.5 trillion annually.

Every nation has had to convert its currency to the U.S. dollar, making it the de facto global currency. Thanks to Joe Biden, it’s all gone. //

The petrodollar agreement with Saudi Arabia began in 1974, two years into Joe Biden’s first term as a United States senator. It ended this week, a half-century later, during Biden’s first term as U.S. president. //

The debacle mirrors Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal: decades of work undone and dismantled in one brief instant because of incompetence and stupidity with nothing to show for the investment, work, and toil. Gone. //

What will replace the petrodollar as a global, commodities-based currency? Likely the Chinese yuan. The Biden administration’s radical push to “go green” has only strengthened China, as my organization, Power The Future, documented in a congressional report. I testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on this very issue, but rather than discuss it, House Democrats chose to call me names. I can guarantee you Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., an 87-year-old bitter partisan who wagged his finger at me over “mean tweets” rather than discuss his trillions in spending to buy Chinese wind and solar, has no idea the petrodollar ended. I can guarantee you the useless staffers in his office have no comment on the matter. //

It is only a matter of time until America is hooked on Chinese green the way Americans are poisoned by Chinese fentanyl, and then China asks us to convert our currency to theirs for ongoing purchases. As America built the Saudi and Russian oil industries, we are now building the Chinese green industry. //

But the petrodollar is gone forever, and with it, America’s role in the world is diminished.

Atrox
20 hours ago
Hearing the House bitch, moan, complain, demand and lose every time, is just trying. The HOUSE controls the money, but they never use it. IF you want change and you want to make demands, cut the money off and watch what happens. ... //

Tech in RL Atrox
18 hours ago
This problem can be laid at the feet of Jimmy Carter. It was during his administration that the government adopted current services baseline budgeting, which means everything in last year's budget is moved forward to the next year's budget along with automatic inflation increases UNLESS Congress votes to rescind funding or a sunset provision was provided in previous budgets. That's how you get "cuts" when they're just reductions in increases. The increases are automatic, and to interfere with that is a "cut".

Because of this, rescinding funding to DOJ, FBI, etc. is almost impossible because it requires those amendments to be passed by both the House and Senate and signed by the president. Under sane budget rules, the House could simply omit funding, but under insane current budget rules, they actually have to pass language that says they are removing funding, something that cannot happen without bipartisan support.

The rest of the world uses zero-based budgeting, which means everything in a budget must have explicit language including spending. Our insane policies include everything from last year's budget with the written budget amending what was spent last year.

In other words, even if every Republican supported zeroing out the DOJ's budget, they could not do it without Senate and presidential approval. //

INTJ ECoolidge19
5 hours ago
Congressional Budget Act of 1974, correct.

The petrodollar — a deal, not a currency — was born out of the late 1970s energy crisis. The United States, having just gone off the gold standard, struck a deal with Saudi Arabia — one of the largest producers of petroleum in the world — that meant the Saudis would price their oil exclusively in United States dollars and that any surplus revenues from their sales of petroleum would be invested in U.S. Treasury bonds. This had several effects: It ensured the U.S. a supply of oil, it established the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency, and it helped the U.S. maintain what was, by today's standards, its modest federal debt.

That agreement is now over. //

Oil being denominated in U.S. dollars alone has significance beyond the categories of oil and finance. By mandating that oil be sold in U.S. dollars (DXY), the agreement elevated the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. This, in turn, has profoundly impacted the U.S. economy. The global demand for dollars to purchase oil has helped to keep the currency strong, making imports relatively cheap for American consumers. Additionally, the influx of foreign capital into U.S. Treasury bonds has supported low interest rates and a robust bond market. //

First, the effect on the dollar: Weakening the dollar, as this is bound to do, will have one major effect, namely, raising the price of anything imported into the United States. And from whom does the United States import the most goods, from knick-knacks to industrial electrical transformers? China. China, we may well remember, is a country that is not particularly friendly towards the United States. Second, the end of the dollar as the global reserve currency will almost certainly lower foreign investment in the U.S. Treasury bonds that are largely used to finance America's runaway spending. Interest rates, inflation, bond markets, and the public debt are all in for a sudden, dramatic readjustment, and it won't be good for American consumers.

There is a billionaire who, for the most part, has gone under the radar pushing "reimagining capitalism." His name is Pierre Omidyar. Omidyar was born in France to Iranian parents. He later moved to the United States, where he founded eBay.

With over six billion dollars in personal wealth, he founded the Omidyar Network to influence not just the private sector but, more importantly, to inject human capital into the federal bureaucracy. His intent seems clear: to make structural changes. What type of changes? It’s no secret that Omidyar has his acolytes who are all-in on equal results, not equal treatment. In 2020, his Network produced a pamphlet titled: “Call to Reimagine Capitalism in America.” On its opening page, it calls for:

A more democratic economy is one in which the real creators – working people, consumers, individuals, small businesses, and families – can have equal voice, hold power, and get ahead.

Further into the manifesto, it laments that America is rife with badness:

“structural racism, colonialism, paternalism,”

It calls for:

“an explicitly anti-racist and inclusive economy.” //

Since 2004, the Omidyar Network has spent $1.89 billion on social justice causes. //

The top-heavy influence of the Omidyar Network and related and funded entities and the injection of ideologues is unknown. Soros has had a remarkable influence on local politics by targeting district attorneys and local politicians. Omidyar is influencing policy at the federal level. //

anon-m0b0
15 hours ago edited
So a rich billionaire with buckets of money wants to create a society where he has more power and the people he says he is "helping" will be totally impoverished by the time he is done.

Its almost as if he accidentally created eBay and made money from it. Because he doesn't really believe in free markets.

The WSJ notes that the total household net worth rose 19 percent through Biden’s first three years in office, but it was higher, 23 percent, through Trump’s first three years. But the real kicker was after doing the adjustment, under Biden, net worth only goes up 0.7 percent through his three years versus 16 percent through Trump's.

Townhall.com
@townhallcom
·
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Biden Economic Adviser Jared Bernstein on the administration having previously defined inflation as transitory:

"The lack of specificity about the cadence that was implied by that word, the temporal cadence implied by that word, led to a level of ambiguity..."

3:34 PM · Jul 18, 2022 //

Brit Hume
@brithume
·
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Good grief! Watch this. He doesn't know what he's talking about.
FINDING THE MONEY Film
@FindingMoneyDoc
CLIP: We hear a lot about the national debt.
But do currency-issuing governments really ‘borrow' their own currencies?
The answer might surprise you.

Watch FINDING THE MONEY documentary, In Theaters and On Demand TOMORROW May 3: http://FindingMoneyFilm.com
Embedded video
5:56 PM · May 3, 2024 //

anon-x8p1
an hour ago
Can you imagine what the Trump OMB will be uncovering, when it audits the past four years of the Biden administration?

Every single Biden department and cabinet agency has had zero supervision for four whole years. Zero accountability. A total cess pit.

Don’t get me wrong: I was happy working hard with my two feet planted firmly on the land. In a better world I and people like Scott Chang-Fleeman would have kept getting our hands dirty, making an honest, if modest, living providing good and wholesome food in synch with the rhythms of the planet.

But to borrow a word from the world of ecology, being a young farmer in today’s economy is “unsustainable.” The numbers don’t work economically and, eventually, any mind trying to square this un-squarable circle is going to break. The economic, physical and mental challenges are all interconnected.

It’s hard to find an American, Republican or Democrat, red or blue state resident that doesn’t want more young hands on the land. We all rightly see agriculture as a pathway to personal fulfillment and a way to make our food supply healthier and more secure. But words and intentions can only do so much. We must answer these very real problems with very real subsidy.

Debt is never truly canceled, only transferred. And Biden’s latest election year stunt could transfer nearly $150 billion of student loan debt onto your backs, even though 87% of American adults don’t have student debt. We need your help to fight back.

A groundbreaking new study commissioned by Revolver News concludes that COVID-19 lockdowns are ten times more deadly than the actual COVID-19 virus in terms of years of life lost by American citizens. //

Revolver News set out to commission a study to do precisely that: to finally quantify the net damage of the lockdowns in terms of a metric known as “life-years.” Simply put, we have drawn upon existing economic studies on the health effects of unemployment to calculate an estimate of how many years of life will have been lost due to the lockdowns in the United States, and have weighed this against an estimate of how many years of life will have been saved by the lockdowns. The results are nothing short of staggering, and suggest that the lockdowns will end up costing Americans over 10 times as many years of life as they will save from the virus itself.

Jeff S Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
15y
8,465
Subscriptor++
jandrese said:
This is actually somewhat impressive. 12,600 victims means each one was extorted for around $135, which seems like the amount of money you might expect an average 14-17 year old boy to have. That's an enormous amount of work on the scammers part. Day in and day out camming and scamming.
One of the things that often ends up being the case for groups committing organized crime is that, when you look at the hours worked to perpetrate the crime, most of the people in the crime ring don't get paid very well. The people at the very top of the gang usually make some decent money.

There have been a few studies on the economics of gangs primarily involved in drug dealing, and most of the people in the gang were making minimum wage or much less - despite taking enormous risks both legally, and the risk of getting shot or beat up or whatever by rival gangs or even your own gang if they decide it's time to 'fire' you.

On top of that, if the criminal enterprise has some success, there's a very real risk that as soon as you start making some money, now you gotta start paying out protection money to crooked cops, politicians, judges, etc.

Even that people at the top of the gangs topped out at around $130k annually, which would be a very good wage for a middle class professional, but really low for an 'executive management' person, which is the closest analog for those groups.

Makes you wonder why they don't get the idea if they are starting up what basically constitutes a business, to sell something legal instead.

First: Eliminate withholding. Everyone, every quarter, has to send money to the IRS. Everyone gets their entire paycheck and then has to pay up. The withholding system is too painless; most people scarcely glance at their paycheck stub, and if everyone were required to write a check for quarterly estimated taxes and send it to the various levels of government, I'd wager a substantial sum that they would suddenly become a lot more interested in what government does with their money.

Second: Eliminate “progressive” taxation. Implement a single-rate flat tax with no exemptions or deductions for individuals. Everyone pays something. I’d be willing to consider exempting the first, oh, $40k from taxation, if that’s what it took to get it done – in return, I’d want major welfare reform, to include lifetime limits and severe restrictions on how public aid is delivered – no more open-ended debit cards.

Third: How about eliminating the capital gains tax next? You want people to invest their hard-earned in business ventures, then stop double-taxing them on income earned from money they already paid taxes on once. Want businesses to start bringing capital back from overseas? Eliminate the capital repatriation penalty. Both of those taxes are well to the left of stupid if economic growth is on the agenda, but these taxes were sold by the “We’ll soak those rich guys” school of political campaigning.

Janet - Stop #FreelanceBusting @webcodepro
·
Both #AB5 and fast food minimum wage law were written by UNIONS

BOTH bills HARM the very people they are meant to "help"

Tons of independent contractors LOST their incomes because of AB5

Now it's fast food workers turn

California policies show what other states SHOULDN'T do

Janet - Stop #FreelanceBusting @webcodepro
California's #AB5 reduced self-employment AND overall employment by 10% and 4.4% respectively

Now CA fast food employees are getting laid off or losing hours because of new minimum wage law

Would love to see @mercatus examine this CA fiasco too

https://youtu.be/FWZd0JRKmH4?si=HZOlcvg0CyiGnHZv
12:19 AM · Apr 2, 2024 //

anon-9s7n
8 hours ago
Dollars are not what drives an economy, value is. These workers are providing WAY less than $20 of value per hour which is why consumers aren't paying, causing business to close. It's consumers that determine the price of value, not government.

And at the end of the day a new equilibrium will be established that'll make $20 have the buying power of $10 and low skill workers, who think low skill jobs are something they should be able to make a career out of, will end up even worse off than when they started. Like they have every single time this has happened before.

That's the result every time government puts it's finger on the scale. The lowest end of the economy get the worst impact. But the people in CA have the government they deserve. Suck it up and change how you vote in November. //

anon-a755
6 hours ago edited
As Thomas Sowell said, "Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero..."

I stopped by Biden-Mart.com and was greeted with the message:

Putting food on the table has become harder than ever thanks to "Bidenomics." As costs for everyday items continue to rise, American families are struggling more and more to foot the bill.

Check off the items from the list below to compile your weekly grocery list and see how much more expensive your bill has become under Joe Biden. //

Grocery prices have jumped by 25 percent over the past four years as Americans are routinely shocked by the cost of a typical visit to the store. //

And now Biden is proposing a $7.3 trillion budget bloated with social justice efforts and green energy giveaways.

recently I stumbled across the fact that, indeed, there is still such a thing as government cheese. In fact, there's a whopping huge amount of it, hidden away in caves in Missouri, and what's more, according to this March 2023 article in the Science Times, the story behind government cheese is a brilliant example of how screwed up things get when the government fiddles with markets.

Missouri cheese caves are deep within the Ozark Mountains' heart under Springfield. Made of converted limestone mines, the caves are perfectly kept at 36 degrees Fahrenheit to give an ideal environment for storing stockpiles of government-owned cheese.

It all started in the 1970s when the U.S. suffered from a national dairy shortage which was made worse by 30% inflation on dairy products. In response to the economic crisis, then-President Jimmy Carter decided to spend money on the dairy industry to encourage dairy production.

The government set A [sic] new policy where a two-billion-dollar budget was allotted to subsidize dairy products over the next four years. This plan was favorable to farmers but also led them to overproduce dairy products. The farmers became motivated to produce as much dairy as they could because they knew that whatever was not sold on the market would be bought by the government. //

Most dairy products were converted to cheese because they have a longer shelf life. By the early 1980s, the government-owned more than 500 million pounds of cheese. Because of this, the next U.S. President, Ronald Reagan, had to pass a law in 1981 enacting the public distribution of government-owned cheese. //

In the years that followed, the demand for cheese declined, but the production rate remained the same as the government continued to support dairy producers. As of 2019, the collection comprises almost 1.4 billion pounds of surplus cheese in the U.S.

So, the federal government, with your tax dollars, has produced 1.4 billion pounds of cheese and has it stored in caves in Missouri. //

All the cheese is still there, presumably awaiting another Ronald Reagan, who will crack open the cheese vaults and give back to the American people the cheese that they have, after all, already paid for. The problem is, that dumping a billion-and-a-half pounds of cheese on the market will have a brutal effect on cheese prices and American dairy farmers. It's difficult to see a good way out of this mess now. Once again the federal government has tossed a bunch of taxpayer money after a problem that would have resolved itself if just left alone. Forty years later, we are still paying for it. //

I'll keep saying it until I turn blue: Markets aren't perfect, but they generally get things right if they are left alone. The problem is that the government just can't leave them alone. And this is what happens.

Warren, along with leftist Democrat Reps. Pramila Jayapal (WA) and Brendan F. Boyle (PA), have reintroduced the Ultra-Millionaire Tax, which would impose a wealth tax and captivity tax ("exit tax"), and would also allot $100 billion for increasing tax audits on the the wealthy.

As law professor, author, and political commentator Jonathan Turley called it in a Wednesday column, an "Eat the Rich" plan. As you might imagine, Turley isn't a fan of a wealth tax — and that's just the beginning.

The wealth tax is back. We have previously discussed the constitutional and policy concerns surrounding the push by Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) to introduce a wealth tax that would start with billionaires. It would not likely end there. //

It is worth noting that the top 1 percent’s income share rose from 22.2 percent in 2020 to 26.3 percent in 2021 and its share of federal income taxes paid rose from 42.3 percent to 45.8 percent.” The top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97.7 percent federal income taxes,. The bottom 50 percent paid the only 2.3 percent.

Even more stark, in 2021, the bottom half of taxpayers earned 10.4 percent of total adjusted gross income and paid 2.3 percent of all federal individual income taxes, while the top 1 percent earned 26.3 percent of total AGI and paid 45.8 percent of all federal income taxes.

IBM Vice Chair and former Trump economic advisor Gary Cohn slam-dunked Biden's claim, and he brought the receipts.

"If you actually look at who pays taxes in this country, the bottom 50% of earners in the United States pay 2.3% of tax collected, and the top 10% pays over 70% of tax collected in this country," Cohn said, adding that this is in large part thanks to how the Trump administration redid the tax code in 2017.

Cohn then identified a problem with Biden's talking point about billionaires, noting that a billionaire is a measure of net worth, not a description of one's taxable income. //

Cohn went on to clarify the difference between wealth and income:

"We do a very good job in this country of taxing income," he said. "There is no income in this country, unless you buy a tax-free bond, that doesn't get taxed at a minimum of 20%, whether it's interest or dividends or capital gains. So, there's no billionaire in this country that has income that is not paying at least 20%." //

a person may hold wealth - say, in the form of a family farm that has no paper on it but may be worth several million dollars - without seeing any income from the mere existence of that asset. Taxing a person on that basis would be ruinous for that person and for the economy. //

MCPR
4 hours ago
Republicans and economists have been “fact checking” the Democrats on this since LBJ, but it doesn’t do any good. When it comes to worldly wealth, everyone who has less than another is jealous. Thinking people can overcome this and use logic to decide on reasonable policies. The rest vote on emotion. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Robin Hood gonna give me all their money! Emotional people don’t see the world is filled with people who have less than they, and when Robin Hood comes around, it’s gonna be them that lose.
Keep “fact-checking” and keep losing. Reduce taxes and win.

We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. Until the craven Republicans in Congress can get together and CUT spending (not rate-of-increase) we are going to lose to jealousy, every time. //

anon-201n
4 hours ago
Remember, Joe Biden is absolutely brilliant - was in the top of his law class - 76 out of 85 - so it must have been at the top of a page with 25 in a column! I would rank his financial acumen less than that of a 10 year old so that's the reason why the whole Biden family had to be involved in its (illegal) financial dealings, with 10% for the big guy.
Taxing assets is, at present, constitutionally illegal but raises all sorts of questions. If assets decrease in a year, are the tax levies given back (fat chance)? As Reagan said, we don't have a revenue problem but a spending problem. Until federal spending is addressed, pressures to increase taxes will persist.

Once a paragon of quality, Boeing's focus on its stock price has caused hundreds to die.

When asked how Boeing’s recent door plug incident came about, company CEO Dave Calhoun cryptically explained “a quality escape occurred.” That kind of corporate doublespeak is indicative of the problem at hand. Boeing used to have quality, but it escaped, apparently sometime around when it merged with McDonnell Douglas in 1997.

For the last three decades, the company has spent substantial amounts of money buying back its own shares to pump up the stock price, and issuing dividends, instead of researching and developing new high-quality high-efficiency airplanes. The results have been catastrophic, as HBO’s funny Sunday night news man John Oliver explains. //

Prior to Reagan-era deregulation, stock buybacks were considered illegal market manipulation. If a company wanted to boost its stock, it had to do something worth crowing about, like develop good product. //

The desire to push R&D costs off to the company’s suppliers meant that Boeing was essentially building its planes from kits that weren’t designed together, didn’t fit together, and didn’t meet the standard of quality the company had once been known for. This move may have been a short-term boon for company profits, the share price, or for CEO bonuses, but the reduction in quality has given rise to the phrase “If it’s a Boeing, I ain’t going.” //

Saigon_Design
Bradley Brownell
3/07/24 9:55am
It began when Boeing took over Mcdonnell-Douglas and transplanted their board and C-suite into Boeing’s, effectively making it a MDD takeover of Boeing when it was actually Boeing that actually bought MDD.

MDD failed precisely because of their shitty leadership, and they had the opportunity to try their shenanigans again at Boeing and... look where we are now.

Boeing has literally no answer to Airbus and other competitors’ products, and won’t for at least a decade precisely because they focused on their stock price instead of the business. They claimed it would cost too much to invest in a new design - well, now you don’t have anything to offer airlines except the 777, 787, and 737Max, with big holes in the product lineup (e.g. a product to rival the A220). //

Mosko
Saigon_Design
3/07/24 10:31am
Somebody put it brilliantly in another comment on a previous article:

“McDonnell-Douglas bought Boeing with Boeing’s money”.

That story had to do with an abandoned McDonald's outlet on Adak Island out in the Aleutians, which still had its prices listed. //

According to the prices listed on the old-school menu, a Big Mac was $2.45, a Big Mac meal was $4.59, a six-piece McNuggets cost $2.35, a Happy Meal cost $3.36 and an egg McMuffin was $1.95.

Now, a Big Mac meal — which includes a burger, fries and a drink — has increased to $18 in some locations.

Now Biden has been saying prices are coming down and claiming credit, even though prices are still up more than when he came in. In his latest remarks in South Carolina, he also blamed the greedy corporations for Bidenflation. //

But now, Treasury Janet Yellen just threw him under the bus with what she had to say about inflation. She was being interviewed by ABC when she was asked how she would convince people that prices might not go back to what they were before the pandemic. This is an astounding statement, especially in light of what Biden keeps saying now. //

"Well, I think most Americans know that prices are not likely to fall," Yellen said. "It's not the Fed's objective to try to push the level of prices back to where they were."

Oh.

So sorry, just accept we broke everything //

anon-372u
2 hours ago
Inflation was the objective. Make no mistake about that. Inflation is an incredible tool for raising taxes without ever having to discuss it, write legislation or pass a bill in to law. Inflation raises income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, you name it. It depletes your savings, destroys your emergency fund, and crushes your retirement. But it does get the government a lot more $$$ and most people never get that. //