culpritus [any]

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Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: October 20th, 2020

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  • The closing paragraph really gives the game away, but can’t expect any better from The Economist:

    In the process, the West has been abandoning its commitment to a bottom-up, market-based approach to setting technical standards.

    So in the process of being spooked by China, the world’s largest manufacturer of electronics, having some influence on standards, the West refers to letting the biggest pile of capital set standards for profit as a ‘bottom-up approach’.

    “We are being forced to undermine a system that has been very effective and that we have profited from for a long time,” laments Mr Rühlig. In more ways than one, China is making the West play by its rules.

    China now being more capable at playing the same game they been playing for decades is framed as a terrible injustice. They are crying that they used to be able to set standards that relied on privately owned intellectual property that generated easy profits for years or even decades.










  • Stephen Stanley, chief US economist at Santander Bank, said that any impact was likely to be small. “The biggest deflationary force in goods prices here of late has been used vehicles, which has nothing to do with China,” he said.

    BYD, China’s biggest carmaker, recently announced price cuts of between 5 and 15 per cent for its electric vehicles in Germany, after Mercedes-Benz warned late last year that its profits were being hit by a “brutal” price war in electric vehicles.

    joker-amerikkklap


  • Citigroup analysts said this month that falling prices in China could help to hasten moves by central banks in emerging markets to cut interest rates this year, particularly in countries that consume relatively large shares of Chinese goods.

    “We as investors are only just starting to connect the dots” on how falling prices imported from China might play out across markets, said Luis Costa, global head of emerging markets sovereign debt strategy at Citigroup. “The question is the magnitude.”

    deng-smile






  • Here is the relevant section:

    Over many years, the United States has criticised NATO Allies for not spending enough on defence. Rightly so. And I commend the U.S. leadership on this important issue. But things have changed.

    All Allies have increased defence investments. Adding an additional 450 billion dollars. NATO Allies have committed to spending at least 2% of their GDP on defence. And many are exceeding that target already. For example, this year Poland will spend more than 4%. No other Ally spends more.

    With more money, we are boosting our defence industry.

    NATO creates a market for defence sales.

    Over the last two years, NATO Allies have agreed to purchase 120 billion dollars’ worth of weapons from U.S. defence companies.
    Including thousands of missiles to the U.K, Finland and Lithuania, Hundreds of Abrams tanks to Poland and Romania, And hundreds of F-35 aircraft across many European Allied nations – a total of 600 by 2030. From Arizona to Virginia, Florida to Washington state, American jobs depend on American sales to defence markets in Europe and Canada.

    What you produce keeps people safe. What Allies buy keeps American businesses strong. So NATO is a good deal for the United States.

    Ladies and gentlemen,

    The Heritage Foundation stands for the power of ideas that keep America strong. NATO is an incredibly powerful idea. That advances U.S. interests. And multiplies America’s power.


  • The total death toll in Gaza since October 7 has increased to at least 28,340 Palestinians, while an estimated 67,984 have been injured.

    Israeli media reported that in the early morning of February 12, two Israeli hostages were recovered by Israeli forces in Rafah, marking the first time hostages had been taken in a military operation.

    The Zionist Entity’s actions clearly show that they value the life of 1 citizen as equivalent to ~15,000 Palestinian lives. That’s just simple logic and math.