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Notes -
Inspired by a comment from Twitter;
Everyone is talking about the US relative decline, but they are really flexing his power in a way that we have not seen from Iraq
In one year they;
Destroyed every possible reconciliation between Europe and Russia
Became a next exporter of natural resources and the ones from who a lot of allies depend
They basically sent a fuck off to Germany, and the Germans not only are not complaining, but are applauding
They strongly limited the military of power of Russia with few money.
China is slowing her growth, and they created a ring of allies in the Pacific
The cultural grip on the West is becoming stronger, and the US successfully fused Neoliberalism and Leftism in a zombie ideology who is, against all odds, successfully working
The pro-Atlantist view have never been so strong.
I doubt that these strategies will work or be healthy in the long term, but it is incredible to see how an ill and polarized country can still do whatever it wants without any reaction.
Also , the collapse of Euro, Yen, AUD, and Pound, and the surge of US dollar. Even when things seem to be going badly here, things are worse overseas, like higher inflation, worse energy shortages , more unrest (like in Iran now).
I was hoping one of the resident fin* people here with connections to London would have a top level on what's going on with the pound in particular. Seen some analysis that the new governments financial policies were a mismatch for ground level economic realities especially combined with energy subsidies for the coming winter. Then a much further downstream technical analysis of how a volatile bond market might have almost nuked pension funds.
At a very high level, the sterling/gilt crash is mostly driven by what finance Twitter is now calling MRP (short for Moron Risk Premium). The UK Deep State has a reputation for basic competence (Dominic Cummings thinks this is undeserved, but most investors disagree with him), whereas the clique of right-wing Brexit-supporting Tories that put Truss into power has a reputation for badly botching the technical aspects of Brexit. So when the Truss ministry publicly blows off the Deep State while simultaneously embarking on a questionable economic policy, investors worry that the British government is no longer going to display basic competence. It doesn't help that bankers can see the UK regulators visibly struggling to cope with onshoring financial regulation post-Brexit, which also creates a stench of Brexity incompetence. (This isn't actually a competence issue, it is a workload issue. The UK needs more bureaucrats as a fully sovereign state than it did as an EU member, but it is politically unacceptable to hire them).
When the government doubles down by saying the crisis is everywhere and not just the UK, blaming the remoaner IMF, attacking bond markets as woke etc. this obviously makes things worse.
At a semi-technical level, https://ukandeu.ac.uk/whos-afraid-of-fiscal-dominance/ is a good essay explaining to laymen what the scenario is that investors dumping the pound are worrying about.
I will do a separate post on the gilt market problem.
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