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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.
Oh, it's getting real bad here. The £2 billion 45%->40% tax cut that the proles have gotten into a tizzy over really isn't causing much of the issue, it's more the huge additional borrowing for nat gas without enforcing a windfall tax plus the fact that the BoE is gonna start selling their QE gilts back into the market at a lower rate than it bought them at very soon (the costs are indemnified by the Exchequer, it's gonna add another £150bn plus to their outgoings, more than 2x the gas subsidies too).
The UK has fucked up big time, and you can't even say it's all the fault of Truss+Kwarteng, those gilts purchased during the pandemic were going to have to be sold at some point given how bad inflation was getting.
The big problem with the 45% tax cut is that it makes it politically impossible to cut spending (certainly, investors think it does, which is what is moving markets). If Kwarteng had announced only the corporate and middle class tax cuts while promising to find offsetting spending cuts in the next couple of months, he might have been believed.
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