Politico says Trump's diesel deal "is actually a relative pittance compared to what would be needed to meaningfully bring prices down, market analysts said."
There are also questions of how much more diesel Russia can ship out given that Ukraine has already destroyed a large number of that country’s fuel refineries. This is now the third time Trump has announced plans he said would cut diesel prices down to size but that upon closer look don't live up to the hype. More diesel flooding the market from European allies? [But no]. Allowing freight carriers to use tax-extempt "dyed diesel" that farmers already have access to? A great, big meh. Overall, the past few weeks have shown "the White House flailing across all manner of desperate measures" to bring down prices, Rory Johnston, oil analyst at analyst firm Commodity Context, wrote yesterday.
They decided on this a full four days after he signed the Graham sanctions package into law. This smells to high heaven, but I'm 100% sure that the Republican led congress won't do anything to stop him.
This is good for Europe imho, stokes efforts to invest domestically in military production capacity while investing less in US treasuries. The more it’s proven publicly the US cannot be trusted, the faster this goes. Also, second order, speeds electrification, and therefore energy sovereignty, globally.
That is true. At the same time: the USA used to be a formidable ally and it is all happening too fast to be able to adjust properly. But a lot of people have been saying this since Grozny: that our collective response should have been far harsher.
Meanwhile: Trump can still do a lot more damage than he has done so far and it does not seem to me that there are any guardrails around this. November will be very interesting, it is essentially the moment when it will be decided whether the USA will step back from the edge or jump.
Better to get stabbed in the back when you can do something about it versus when you cannot. You cannot trust the US electorate, full stop. Derisk and decouple accordingly.
Worst case, you don’t end up like Ukraine: trying to cash promises made by those who said they’d protect you. The cost is cheap, a bit more of annual EU GDP into the future.
At least it is clear now. The USA that stood for something is over and done with. There are a couple of things that really get me:
(1) It is all so blatantly false and yet people seem to lap it up.
(2) The people that expect the rest of the world to put Trump in his place, he is their problem, the rest of the world can only deal with the fall-out.
(3) The people that claim that because they didn't vote for Trump that they are not responsible. If you're not protesting or striking then you too are responsible. All these feeble excuses have no weight, either you concede your responsibility or you do something about it.
And last but definitely not least:
(4) This could be over tomorrow. But apparently the rot is so extensive that all checks and balances have failed because the lot of them are bought and paid for or have checked their conscience at the door.
"30 S&P 500 stocks hit new lows, while only seven reached fresh highs. The last time the index advanced at least 1% to within 1% of a new 52-week high as new lows outnumbered new highs was December 21, 1999, a few months before the Dotcom Bubble top."
This is an except from an upcoming book called Valley of Death: How Big Tech Is Fueling the Future of War, which promises to show "how a new military-industrial complex is arising from the cradle of Silicon Valley," with vast implications for both the global balance
The book argues Silicon Valley is "rebooting" its relations with the military world, "as the Pentagon aims to spend more than a trillion and a half dollars next year and invests in new technologies like AI".
The Senate passed in a few years ago[0]... then the House did nothing. Now the House passes is and we have to hope the Senate does something again. If only Congress could get on the same page and do these things at the same time.
Passing the senate back then was because of shenanigans; not popularity.
They played tricks with the “unanimous consent” procedure where senators didn’t know it was happening until after it was too late to object. Multiple senators said afterwards that they were opposed to it.
The documents do not come close to proving that “Fauci Funded Wuhan Lab Research That Sparked COVID"... The documents released by Gabbard contain nothing remotely resembling proof on the question of how the virus originated – and certainly not proof for the bolded claim on the director’s website that “Fauci Funded Wuhan Lab Research That Sparked COVID.”
There are also questions of how much more diesel Russia can ship out given that Ukraine has already destroyed a large number of that country’s fuel refineries. This is now the third time Trump has announced plans he said would cut diesel prices down to size but that upon closer look don't live up to the hype. More diesel flooding the market from European allies? [But no]. Allowing freight carriers to use tax-extempt "dyed diesel" that farmers already have access to? A great, big meh. Overall, the past few weeks have shown "the White House flailing across all manner of desperate measures" to bring down prices, Rory Johnston, oil analyst at analyst firm Commodity Context, wrote yesterday.