Not even the institutional guys know where the economy is actually heading. There was a large likelihood of recession in '22 Q4, and in Q1 '23, and there hasn't been a technical recession. I wouldn't be so quick to say that we're reading into a recession even though it's the speculative notion. Best way to describe the economy now is uncertainty. Perhaps a lot of the institutional guys don't know where to put their funds and pooling their resources into crypto to ride out a recession in case one does actually happen but that's as speculative as the recession talk.

Who knows?

I don't consider missed investment opportunities with the use of hindsight to be some perverse business acumen. How many people have "followed their instinct" only to lose money by getting involved in business matters they were grossly unaware of?

If your "instinct" is based on reasonableness with some level of familiarity with a businesses operations and profitability, that's enough to invest. Venture capitalists/angel investors won't have intricate knowledge of all the businesses they're investing in -- they do understand the fundamentals of the business model though.

I've been following Farage for some time and it was only a matter of time before the "regime" found him too credible of a threat and would retaliate against him.

Wouldn't surprise me if all the banks are colluding amongst one another at the directions of the British government to ensure he's left financially isolated. The Canadian truckers had similar experiences during their COVID protests against Trudeau when their accounts were frozen.

Nothing short of narrative control and weaponizing the financial institutions for the government's gain. Will likely have the opposite of the intended effect.

Russia might bring out the nukes before "WW3" is declared.

No one is willing to sacrifice their security and safety over Ukraine or Russia. NATO will gladly supply arms to Ukraine to curb Russian aggression and that will be the extent of their support. I recall the lunacy in the early days of the initial invasion of people calling for a no-fly zone to be established over Ukraine -- that was a ticket to WW3. Thankfully, the West didn't cave to the military industrial complex (for once!)

Past records are important but any bans these politicians try to implement will have to go through the court systems. And there's a big problem.

Alito and Thomas are the most pro-2A members on the court and they're effectively the only two people in the entire United States keeping gun rights maintained.

Thomas and Alito are getting old, 73, and 75 respectively. Say the democrats win in 2024 -- would Thomas and Alito be able to make it until 2028 before a Republican would have an opportunity to get into office? And that's assuming the Republican candidate wins in '28.

'24 might see a conservative SCOTUS vacancy.

Conservatives could technically afford another liberal on the court for 5-4 decisions but Roberts is unpredictable (good job Bush!)

Who determines how much taxes you pay? It's the government. And who elected the government? Its you and your fellow citizens. Government gets the reputation of being an ominous authority detached from the interests of their constituency where people seemingly forget it was they themselves who elected that body in the first place. Yes, it's immoral to not pay the taxes you're entitled to pay. If you don't like the tax rate, the answer isn't to avoid paying taxes, it's to petition your government for a lower tax rate.

ChatGPT won't mimic human reasoning if you ask it to. It explicitly is disallowed from making moral or ethical judgement. But I don't think it'd do a good job at that anyways.

When the next iteration of AI enters the market that actually mimics human reasoning/judgement, that's when things get a bit concerning. Upload it onto a weapons system to avoid human casualties and you enter a new state of warfare. Assume China has already entertained the idea. Supposedly they spend a great deal of resources on AI R&D, so who's to say they don't already have something like this in production.

The application of cryptography for currency uses might be "new" relatively speaking, fine. But I'm not articulating a country keep its reserve entirely in crypto. They're welcome to diversify with different assets and securities including fiat currencies. A prudent decision would be to have the plurality of the reserves be held in Bitcoin. This solves the volatility issue.

If Africans really wanted a restart, adopt decentralized government and adopt bitcoin as a national currency. Who controls the African people? Africans in government. They can't rely on the people they elect to maintain important affairs, so don't rely on them at all.

What do they have to lose?

There's a reason for this, and it isn't because billionaires gamed the system.

COVID was the biggest systematic wealth transfer from the lower and middle class to the upper class ever seen, and it was entirely government sponsored. The billionaires didn't have to ask for it -- bureaucracy gave it to them for free. No lobbying, no campaign contributions required.

The government essentially told businesses that they must comply with COVID lockdowns and regulations or cease operations. The large corporations owned by the wealthy were able to make adjustments to their business operations, especially those involved with digital commerce, while smaller businesses were decimated. The smaller businesses couldn't afford the increase in operating costs either with much of the labor force being paid to stay home. Large corporations had the capital to manage, and with smaller businesses closing, their competition was reducing.

Can't forget the stimulus checks. Where do you think much of that went? Straight into the pockets of corporations as consumers flocked to spend the free money the government printed for them. Billionaires face unfair scrutiny when the government created an anti-capitalistic environment. Ask them why.

Your source is Oxfam. Can't imagine where their political views may lay.

Wait for the Q2 GDP report for the U.S. before we get an idea of where things are headed. If the U.S. enters recession, it usually triggers a domino effect depending on the resilience of the particular economy. The U.S. has too large of a GDP and roots across the world which make economic activity rather centralized.

I've been predicting the economic doomsday scenario for the last two quarters and it hasn't come yet. I'm guilty of pessimism to the extent a skeptic would be but it does seem the economic indicators as of late have been more aggressively pointing towards a recession than before. Particularly job layoffs in the tech sectors is what's been of interest -- the tech industry might be in a bubble that's independent of other sectors, also something to consider.

We won't truly know till the reports are out.

I'm well aware of the military industrial complex, and those who might profit from war.

That being said, some of the most ruthless and deadly wars were fought over centuries involving religious groups where nobody was spared -- long before any such complex existed. Humans are inherently tribal and don't need incentive to participate in barbarism. Conflict between groups doesn't end. And despite that, we still live in the most peaceful and prosperous time human history has ever experienced.

Easy to get lost with news headlines because the news cycle doesn't end.

I'm a proponent of a purely capitalist economy, and even someone that believes in an absolute state of capitalism, we would concede that some level of regulations are required.

OceanGate was subject to no regulations. There wasn't a single certification board that was willing to certify the vessel, nor was there an insurance company willing to offer them coverage because the vessel was assemped seemingly out of a hardware store. Sure, *zero* regulations are disastrous. But no one's arguing for total lawlessness absent of legal structure and regulatory framework. The current crypto frameworks are burdensome by design, ie overregulated.

It should be a right and could be established as one if people were inclined to actually care about the modern surveillance state the government has created for them. Mindlessly handing over as much information to be stored permanently in a server somewhere not having the slightest clue of how that info is weaponized against them.

And how could anyone forget when the CIA participated in mass scale surveillance through global covert hacking programs: https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/

They still do!


China sits on the U.N. human rights panel, if you would believe it.

Using 3rd party payment processors ruins the point of taking crypto in the first place IMO. Having to deal with a 3rd party holding your funds is too risky. I suppose if it meets the needs of your customers and there isn't any other way of accepting crypto currency then it might serve a utility. Reality are that the fees are going to be significant and you'll need to factor them into operating costs. The suggestions in this thread might mitigate fees to some degree but they're unavoidable.

The vessel looks like it was built by a university student for a school project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClkytJa0ghc&

Shoddy craftsmanship meant that after a few pressurization cycles this thing was bound to have structural issues. CEO was utterly delusional, took pride in this vessel being built like a piece of junk, as if it gave a rustic essence being assembled at the back of a hardware store. The company and CEO are responsible for all of this. Their death, including his own, are entirely on him. He gives me silicon valley "tech bro" impressions.

See PM Modi address U.S. congress, his second time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcDhvR3oeiE

Modi is a nationalist, and you will recall there being some tension between the Biden administration and Modi after India began buying cheap Russian oil. Socially, India is conservative and they've had historical conflicts with Muslims; naturally, "squad" members AOC, Rashida Talib, and Ilhan Omar boycott the speech over Modi's alleged religious oppression.

India seems like the odd one out in BRICS, allied with the U.S. but in close partnership with Russia and China.

Hillary violated 18 U.S.C. § 793(f)


Gross negligence does not require intent, only that she should have been aware that her conduct was negligent. And we're left to ask why Trump chose not to appoint a special prosecutor despite campaigning on it.

Now, Trump finds himself in a similar position. He kept documents that he knew he was not in proper possession of (mishandling of classified information).

I was watching his Fox News interview with Bret Baier and have never seen such incompetence from a defendant in a criminal proceeding before, practically admitting to underlying elements of the crime on national television. Though if Trump gets convicted, would he be offered a diversion program like Hunter Biden was offered for 1.2M USD in tax fraud and gun related charges? Doubtful.

Realistically there'd be two things I'd do:

Starting off by dissolving central banks would be the immediate course of action. Unfortunately they are so heavily centralized and embedded in the modern economy that it'd would be impossible to remove them outright, so you would need to start with limiting the power of central banks. Setting reserve requirements, controlling interest rates, banking regulations and such, would all need to be taken back to the legislature instead of appointing executives to handle these matters by the President which is how most countries handle central banks. Doing so would take fiscal matters and make them more controllable by the constituency.

Second, limiting money printing and capping it at some proportion relative to nominal GDP. What this exact figure is could be worked out by the legislature, but it must be abided by.

Communism is bad, and by proxy that also makes China an adversary for the U.S. Whether people might agree with that or not might vary, fine. But if the U.S. has interest in ensuring they get their chips manufactured from Taiwan independent from Chinese intervention, then it would also be in their interest to reject the One China policy. China was never actually blocked from manufacturing their own chips.