US US Politics General - Discussion of President Biden and other politicians

 

[Absolutego]

Blackrock et al would buy up that housing instead, but the death of the petrodollar is the death of the American Empire.

I understand that, but the bugmen in SF, LA, Portland and Seattle would not. Which is why it's the natural propaganda path to push, and why I'll be on the lookout for this argument showing up in far left rhetoric.

 

[soy_king]

Any politispergs like @Gehenna care to explain in detail the nasty political and economic issues for the US if the petrodollar is undermined? Economics isn’t my forte.

The only reason I don't think they'll fully go for the Yuan is the fact that it's a manipulated currency, which means that any reserves the Saudis hold can be devalued at a whim by the CCP or artificially kept less valuable than what their value should actually represent.

Loss of the petrodollar would drastically reduce the value of the dollar overnight, as much of its value is based on the faith people have in its buying power. The main reasons the petrodollar is still a thing is because the US represents the largest petroleum market and the dollars value is more reflective of economic reality than the overtly manipulayed Yuan, so it makes more sense to use the dollar, for now.

 

[Idiot Asshole]

View attachment 3074442

https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-arabia-considers-accepting-yuan-instead-of-dollars-for-chinese-oil-sales-11647351541

Biden is going to go down in history as the dipshit who flushed nearly a century of American financial dominance straight down the shitter.

Here's a link to the full article for those who can't get past the paywall

Spoiler: Full article

Saudi Arabia is in active talks with Beijing to price its some of its oil sales to China in yuan, people familiar with the matter said, a move that would dent the U.S. dollar’s dominance of the global petroleum market and mark another shift by the world’s top crude exporter toward Asia.

The talks with China over yuan-priced oil contracts have been off and on for six years but have accelerated this year as the Saudis have grown increasingly unhappy with decades-old U.S. security commitments to defend the kingdom, the people said.

The Saudis are angry over the U.S.’s lack of support for their intervention in the Yemen civil war, and over the Biden administration’s attempt to strike a deal with Iran over its nuclear program. Saudi officials have said they were shocked by the precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year.

China buys more than 25% of the oil that Saudi Arabia exports. If priced in yuan, those sales would boost the standing of China’s currency.

It would be a profound shift for Saudi Arabia to price even some of its roughly 6.2 million barrels of day of crude exports in anything other than dollars. The majority of global oil sales—around 80%—are done in dollars, and the Saudis have traded oil exclusively in dollars since 1974, in a deal with the Nixon administration that included security guarantees for the kingdom.

China introduced yuan-priced oil contracts in 2018 as part of its efforts to make its currency tradable across the world, but they haven’t made a dent in the dollar’s dominance of the oil market. For China, using dollars has become a hazard highlighted by U.S. sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program and on Russia in response to the Ukraine invasion.

China has stepped up its courtship of the Saudi kingdom. In recent years, China has helped Saudi Arabia build its own ballistic missiles, consulted on a nuclear program and begun investing in Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s pet projects, such as Neom, a futuristic new city.

Meanwhile the Saudi relationship with the U.S. has deteriorated under President Biden, who said in the 2020 campaign that the kingdom should be a “pariah” for the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Prince Mohammed, who U.S. intelligence authorities say ordered Mr. Khashoggi’s killing, refused to sit in on a call between Mr. Biden and the Saudi ruler, King Salman, last month.

It also comes as the U.S. economic relationship with the Saudis is diminishing. The U.S. is now among the top oil producers in the world. It once imported 2 million barrels of Saudi crude a day in the early 1990s but those numbers have fallen to less than 500,000 barrels a day in December 2021, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

By contrast, China’s oil imports have swelled over the last three decades, in line with its expanding economy. Saudi Arabia was China’s top crude supplier in 2021, selling at 1.76 million barrels a day, followed by Russia at 1.6 million barrels a day, according to data from China’s General Administration of Customs.

“The dynamics have dramatically changed. The U.S. relationship with the Saudis has changed, China is the world’s biggest crude importer and they are offering many lucrative incentives to the kingdom,” said a Saudi official familiar with the talks.

“China has been offering everything you could possibly imagine to the kingdom,” the official said.

A senior U.S. official called the idea of the Saudis selling oil to China in yuan “highly volatile and aggressive” and “not very likely.” The official said the Saudis had floated the idea in the past when there was tension between Washington and Riyadh.

It is possible the Saudis could back off. Switching millions of barrels of oil trades from dollars to yuan every day could rattle the Saudi economy, which has a currency, the riyal, pegged to the dollar. Prince Mohammed’s aides have been warning him of unpredictable economic damage if he moves ahead with the plan hastily.

Doing more sales in yuan would more closely connect Saudi Arabia to China’s currency, which hasn’t caught on with international investors because of the tight controls Beijing keeps on it. Contracting oil sales in a less stable currency could also undermine the Saudi government’s fiscal outlook.

The impact on the Saudi economy would likely depend on the quantity of oil sales involved and the price of oil. Some economists said moving away from dollar-denominated oil sales would diversify the kingdom’s revenue base and could eventually lead it to repeg the riyal to a basket of currencies, similar to Kuwait’s dinar.

“If it is (done) now at a time of strong oil prices, it would not be seen negatively. It would be more seen as deepening ties with China,” said Monica Malik, chief economist at Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank.

The Saudis still plan to do most oil transactions in dollars, the people familiar with their talks say. But the move could tempt other producers to price their Chinese exports in yuan as well. China’s other big sources of oil are Russia, Angola and Iraq.

The Saudi move could chip away at the supremacy of the U.S. dollar in the international financial system, which Washington has relied on for decades to print Treasury bills it uses to finance its budget deficit.

“The oil market, and by extension the entire global commodities market, is the insurance policy of the status of the dollar as reserve currency,” said economist Gal Luft, co-director of the Washington-based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security who co-wrote a book about de-dollarization. “If that block is taken out of the wall, the wall will begin to collapse.”

—David S. Cloud contributed to this article.

Also bonus

"price its some of its"
Right in the very first line. The absolute state of modern journalism. Get an editor faggets.

 

[Damocles_Sword]

I think our inept leaders are too conflicted to do much of anything if saudi starts taking yuan. Won't attack the saudis, they did 9-11 for the same reason an un-neutered dog humps your leg, and can't attack china because the money from their chauffers and the child pussy will dry up. We're at the stage our government is so corrupt it can't act to protect the country's interests.

 

[AnotherPleb]

This is already the state of affairs, in a more indirect manner - With most US allies indirectly relying on US military force projection for defense, and US economic hegemony to keep their little slot in the global economy, they've always had the risk of the US fucking them over in the back of their minds. This just moves it from an indirect risk of inaction, to a direct risk of action.

Not that I actually think the US would try to regime change the saudi's. They'd gleefully dead mans hand the entire oil economy there on the way down, and everyone knows it. A large coalition of world powers would likely directly oppose such an action. This isn't like Ukraine where for the most part its the geography that matters in who cares about it. Threatening global energy security directly hits every sub-superpower player hard.

The people in charge are no longer skilled statesmen or businessmen however; they are rootless elites that recklessly believe they can flee from the results of their actions. Saudi Arabia outright snubbing America in those talks while cozying up to China with these retards in charge would certainly provoke a response.

If one thinks they're not too dumb to try that, remember how they handled Afghanistan. They don't plan past the very next moment and that is a dangerous place for the guiding hand of the American Empire to be.

I understand that, but the bugmen in SF, LA, Portland and Seattle would not. Which is why it's the natural propaganda path to push, and why I'll be on the lookout for this argument showing up in far left rhetoric.

The moneyed interests bankrolling the Far Left would never push that rhetoric, and with White Man Bad being the main narrative it's unlikely for that talk to take place among tankies. Weirder things have happened in the past two years though so it's not completely counted out.

The only reason I don't think they'll fully go for the Yuan is the fact that it's a manipulated currency, which means that any reserves the Saudis hold can be devalued at a whim by the CCP or artificially kept less valuable than what their value should actually represent.

Loss of the petrodollar would drastically reduce the value of the dollar overnight, as much of its value is based on the faith people have in its buying power. The main reasons the petrodollar is still a thing is because the US represents the largest petroleum market and the dollars value is more reflective of economic reality than the overtly manipulated Yuan, so it makes more sense to use the dollar, for now.

The idea of the Yuan being accepted for oil is dangerous enough by itself and America is already doing its utmost to make sure Russia can't sell their oil there. Russia may hate the Chinese, but war makes for strange bedfellows.

Reply bug @Idiot Asshole

Also bonus

"price its some of its"
Right in the very first line. The absolute state of modern journalism. Get an editor faggets.

Even the notion of pricing oil in Yuans would have been slapped down hard four years ago by Trump. The Kingdom of Saud and the Middle Kingdom are sensing weakness and are pouncing upon it.

I think our inept leaders are too conflicted to do much of anything if saudi starts taking yuan. Won't attack the saudis, they did 9-11 for the same reason an un-neutered dog humps your leg, and can't attack china because the money from their chauffers and the child pussy will dry up. We're at the stage our government is so corrupt it can't act to protect the country's interests.

Money talks. It is why nobody attacked the sauds after 9/11 as they were still willing to play ball and sell oil in dollars. If this goes through the elites will try their best to manufacture causus belli for a Saudi war.

 

[verissimus]

View attachment 3074442

https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-arabia-considers-accepting-yuan-instead-of-dollars-for-chinese-oil-sales-11647351541

Biden is going to go down in history as the dipshit who flushed nearly a century of American financial dominance straight down the shitter.

Welp, there goes our pull in the Middle East. Keep in mind, just recently the Iranians just attacked one of our consulates in Iraq.

 

[CrippleThreat]

View attachment 3074442

https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-arabia-considers-accepting-yuan-instead-of-dollars-for-chinese-oil-sales-11647351541

Biden is going to go down in history as the dipshit who flushed nearly a century of American financial dominance straight down the shitter.

And here I lie, laughing as I remember when some folks even on the Right disliked Blumpf for being buddy-buddy with the Saudis. For good reason, I'm sure, but it's wild looking back.

 

[Kane Lives]

The people in charge are no longer skilled statesmen or businessmen however; they are rootless elites that recklessly believe they can flee from the results of their actions. Saudi Arabia outright snubbing America in those talks while cozying up to China with these retards in charge would certainly provoke a response.

If one thinks they're not too dumb to try that, remember how they handled Afghanistan. They don't plan past the very next moment and that is a dangerous place for the guiding hand of the American Empire to be.

The moneyed interests bankrolling the Far Left would never push that rhetoric, and with White Man Bad being the main narrative it's unlikely for that talk to take place among tankies. Weirder things have happened in the past two years though so it's not completely counted out.

The idea of the Yuan being accepted for oil is dangerous enough by itself and America is already doing its utmost to make sure Russia can't sell their oil there. Russia may hate the Chinese, but war makes for strange bedfellows.

Reply bug @Idiot Asshole

Even the notion of pricing oil in Yuans would have been slapped down hard four years ago by Trump. The Kingdom of Saud and the Middle Kingdom are sensing weakness and are pouncing upon it.

Money talks. It is why nobody attacked the sauds after 9/11 as they were still willing to play ball and sell oil in dollars. If this goes through the elites will try their best to manufacture causus belli for a Saudi war.

God, and you'll know they'll fumble the fucking false flag too and leave the US looking like the imperialist Chinese and Russian propaganda are painting the US as. The US can still win any wars it starts, of course, and the media can be counted on to whitewash any atrocities, but it WILL be a little hard to excuse away leaving Riyadh as a flaming ruin.

EDIT: Huh, and Wikipedia says the KSA has the second highest military spending in the world as a share of GDP. How the fuck are they doing so poorly in Yemen?

 

[AnotherPleb]

God, and you'll know they'll fumble the fucking false flag too and leave the US looking like the imperialist Chinese and Russian propaganda are painting the US as. The US can still win any wars it starts, of course, and the media can be counted on to whitewash any atrocities, but it WILL be a little hard to excuse away leaving Riyadh as a flaming ruin.

Oh, absolutely. They could try counting on Mossad to do the false flag as Israel is the only ally in the region the Biden administration has failed to piss off so far.

Huh, and Wikipedia says the KSA has the second highest military spending in the world as a share of GDP. How the fuck are they doing so poorly in Yemen?

Simple, military doctrine in arabic countries is absolute dogshit.

 

[Absolutego]

Oh, absolutely. They could try counting on Mossad to do the false flag as Israel is the only ally in the region the Biden administration has failed to piss off so far.

Israel's closer than ever with the KSA post-Abraham Accords, and is reportedly freaking out over the concessions Biden's staffers are making to secure the Iran Deal 2.0. I wouldn't count on their help if Biden decides it's time to liberate the Arabs again.

 

[AnotherPleb]

Israel's closer than ever with the KSA post-Abraham Accords, and is reportedly freaking out over the concessions Biden's staffers are making to secure the Iran Deal 2.0. I wouldn't count on their help if Biden decides it's time to liberate the Arabs again.

Israel relies on the area around them being unstable as they're surrounded by nothing but enemies. Do they count on a military that's proven itself unable to handle Yemen, or one that bungled Afghanistan?

It's a hard choice, but America's the one that's opened their wallet time and again to fund their military.

 

[Absolutego]

Israel relies on the area around them being unstable as they're surrounded by nothing but enemies. Do they count on a military that's proven itself unable to handle Yemen, or one that bungled Afghanistan?

It's a hard choice, but America's the one that's opened their wallet time and again to fund their military.

I think if we decide its time to glass Riyadh they wind up going Switzerland on that conflict. Especially if a prospective intervention starts after the Iran Deal's particulars go public.

 

[AnotherPleb]

I think if we decide its time to glass Riyadh they wind up going Switzerland on that conflict. Especially if a prospective intervention starts after the Iran Deal's particulars go public.

Israel might not be in that position and America will demand that they take sides.

 

[Jeremiah the Bullfrog]

Any politispergs like @Gehenna care to explain in detail the nasty political and economic issues for the US if the petrodollar is undermined? Economics isn’t my forte.

I heard on the radio this morning that approximately 80% of American Dollars are held by foreign countries.

If the yuan replaces the dollar then all that money is freed up and reenters circulation.

So basically, if this happens you’re getting hyper-inflation.

But don’t worry, Joe Biden will shit himself and do nothing.

 

[Mr Cuddles]

It has nothing whatsoever to do with religious thought or creed. It is simply egotistic tyranny disguised as something egalitarian to hoodwink the people.

It's not religious thought. It's a religious thought process.

Look at every woke piece of shit out there. You can't change their mind on things, because they hold those beliefs as a religious belief -- unflinching, unchanging. They work backwards from there to justify it. Logic and reason need not apply.

America's racist, white people are evil, black people are victims, gender exists. Show them a racist black person and they will literally flinch and look away because it doesn't fit the framework of their religion. Point out they have historical facts about America wrong and they will literally shout over you to prevent you from speaking.

I'm going to have to go more with verissimus on this one. Voter ID is only so vehemently opposed by the democrats because unsecure elections favour them in the current climate. The same is true with mail in voting, 15 years ago you could see prominent politicians, Biden included, tell the dangers of voting machines and voting by mail... Now they have almost complete dominance of NGO support and legacy media any irregularities are going in their favour.

Yes they have some stupid beliefs, but they are a lot more calculating regarding politics than they let on. I've seen the hulkster say it's only a matter of time with the immigration that Texas goes blue. He understands why mass immigration both legal and illegal is to his (democrats) benefit. This isn't just religious zeal, it's far nastier. Honestly at this point I despise them.

 

[Ow The Edge]

God, and you'll know they'll fumble the fucking false flag too and leave the US looking like the imperialist Chinese and Russian propaganda are painting the US as. The US can still win any wars it starts, of course, and the media can be counted on to whitewash any atrocities, but it WILL be a little hard to excuse away leaving Riyadh as a flaming ruin.

EDIT: Huh, and Wikipedia says the KSA has the second highest military spending in the world as a share of GDP. How the fuck are they doing so poorly in Yemen?

Look on the bright side: if we're lucky, they might accidently blow up that retarded black box that muslims worship.

The Saudis are doing poorly in Yemen because their military is full of Saudis. If there are any people fatter, more complacent, and less militarily capable than a modern American, it's a modern Gulf Arab. You can throw all the money and fancy toys in the world at a military, but you can't make it any more capable than your own people are.

 

[HTTP Error 404]

We all need to remember that Bill Maher is the guy who said we need to create a recession to get Trump out of office and to punish his political supporters, and this was pre Covid. He has some good points, but he's a sociopath just like the rest of them.

One of the first pied piper events I remember was Ann Coulter being on his show explaining how real Republicans thought Trump was the only viable candidate that could win against Hillary. A position that was so stupid at the time she was openly laughed at for the requisite 2 minutes of hate.

A year later and he was literally pausing his show to spit out the latest DNC talking points on Trump. For example, making sure everyone knew that Donald Trump was a "Dark" candidate. That was not normal, because he was so daaarrrk. Or dedicating his entire show one week to making sure we knew that oh hey did you know HITLER ate sugar?

He's a product, targeting those leftists who think they're too independent and too smart to fall for same shit that keeps the wokies and the true believers in line. He keeps them lockstep marching to the orders of the uniparty, just like all the rest. There's a reason he hasn't been canceled despite the ravenous howling of the progressive wing.

 

[CharlesBarkley]

Bill Maher is a boomer, and like all boomers, he is so ingrained in "Republican all super catholic oppressors and democrats pure and love everyone and fight bigoty" train for so long that his brain can't comprehend that things change over time. This nigga like all dinosaurs is stuck in the past.

 

[Aldeland]

Richard Nixon did nothing wrong when it came to watergate. He had every right to spy on these fuckers.

I could be wrong but didn't he not really have much of an idea what his people where getting up to and when they got caught, he stepped out in front of it? I could've learned this from a Nixon apologist mind you so I have no clue. Everything blends together these days in regard to sources.

 

[Open Window Maniac]

Let's talk about an interesting case of Dem self-sabotage. There was an attempt to fix the Dems' upcoming Leadership drought. Here in NY, however, they fucked it up to competition standards. So buckle in for a glorious case of Establishment vs Establishment.

While a lot of people floated that Anthony Weiner was being groomed to be a successor to the likes of Schumer, there's another side to the story you guys aren't so familiar with: He was being floated periodically because he wasn't cut from the same cloth as the other modern Dems. The hope was that he'd get in, be beholden to those who got him up there, and his history of actually representing his constituency sometimes would allow the old machine to keep thrumming along, put a good PR face forward. In essence, a quiet admission that the shit Obama was doing was going to blow up in the establishment's face.

Needless to say, a huge chunk of the establishment hated him, especially because Weiner, in fitting New Yorker fashion, wasn't afraid to get in a punch-up. He'd push the pulpit the way those floating wanted most of the time, but he'd happily break ranks and caucus with Republicans if it meant getting shit done that his constituents wanted. That shit, as we say, could not stand, especially because it meant potentially fucking the base slightly less. Needless to say, Weiner being exposed as having sent people pictures of his weiner was pretty much bog standard "get rid of the dipshit threatening us" tactics for the establishment Dems.

But it's the timing of when it happened that's interesting: This happened immediately after Weiner put up the Honest Services Restoration Act, a bill that had bipartisan support. While it died in committee soonafter, the bill would have mandated that if congressional representatives had financial or familial ties to a given subject in a bill, they were required to disclose it publicly. Suffice to say, this was something the establishment Dems and RINOs alike would have killed their families to stop from happening, let alone swat some little upstart Dem with an amusing name.

So with Weiner out of the picture, an attempt was made to go with another up-and-coming NY Dem with broad constituent support at the time, this time one who was more willing to toe the line. They went with Joe Crowley, another NY rep with a similar profile who, interestingly enough, was actually in office when Weiner got nuked, almost like it made it easier for the staff floating Weiner to go float Crowley instead.

Over the next few years, while Crowley was being developed for the position, Obama allowed the Progressives to run amok. In 2018, AOC primaried him and successfully stole his spot, riding on literally the most progressive spots in NY when the bulk of NY wasn't really paying attention. The establishment had sealed its own fate by destroying its own way out of the mire, via its own coterie of useless idiots.

When he first got busted for doing that back in 2011, I thought people were making fun of him when they were calling him Weiner. I didn't know that was his actual last name.