There's an open goal in Ireland right-now for who can claim the post-liberal space.

The populist-right, opportunistic elements in the FF/FG establishment, independents, a strategic SF even.

Old post-GFA multilateral order melting down and no one knows what to do.

✍️ 'Gordon Brown’s decision to sell Britain’s gold looks more disastrous by the day' | Writes Philip Pilkington

telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/…

Iranian missile tech makes its way out of the murky Telegram channels and onto CNN. It really is 2024, isn’t it? 🇮🇷🚀

Japanese Ministry of Finance desperately trying to stop the yen’s slide toward becoming an EM currency while apparently never questioning the utility of their crazed sanctions policies which do nothing but destroy Japan. 🤡🇯🇵

Looks like the Houthis have mastered FPV drone technology. I think this is the first point-of-view video of an attack from the group. This is the same technology that wreaks havoc on Russian and Ukrainian vehicles in Ukraine. 🇾🇪

Tfw you politicise your trade policies and get on board with pointless sanctions because DC says so. I’ll bet the Japanese ‘leadership’ would double down and do this all over again with China too. 🇯🇵📉

The sanctions don’t work anyway. But the extent to which Ukraine goes under the bus when energy prices rise in the run up to the US election is really something.

Here’s a development I did not expect in 2024:

Irish liberal-lefties who are obsessively pro-migration becoming insanely paranoid that the country is being infiltrated at all levels by foreigners.

It’s literally Freudian. 🇮🇪

As I keep saying: YIMBYs are mostly just terminally online kids - often in tech or other silo-work - with no industry exposure or even experience with, say, bank mortgage conditions and how you can use them to build a property portfolio. 🏠

Unclear to me where analysts like Thomas L. Friedman have been hiding for the past two years. US-Saudi relations are terrible. Saudi has joined the BRICS and reopened diplomacy to Iran. Why are boomers pretending this isn’t happening? Truly delusional levels of cope.

Problem isn't the absolute number but the US rate being higher than other countries. The system of USD hegemony and perpetual, stable trade deficits requires that US interest rates are lower than other countries. Otherwise USD goes haywire, trade deficit balloons - death spiral.

This dynamic, caused by long-term US addiction to USD hegemony, is particularly nasty given that tariff and industrial policy is aimed at improving US competitiveness and the country's trade deficit. Any incremental gains on this front are decimated by USD moves upward. 🇺🇸💲📈

To understand how bad the US structural inflation problem is compare with Poland whose inflation peaked around 17% (!). Polish inflation now 𝒍𝒐𝒘𝒆𝒓 than US inflation. The cause? Biden's lunatic fiscal policies and a politicised Fed willing to accomodate. 🇺🇸📈