mcliu

Isn’t Georgia still a sovereign country? Why didn’t Putin take over Georgia? France brokered a peace deal, only 300 killed on both sides. Why can’t we do this with Ukraine? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War

Yes sir!

I find this chart kind of fascinating. 3 companies doing essentially the same thing but somehow one of them manages to underperform by miles.

Everyone wants a short war that achieves its objective.. but history suggests that things rarely go as planned. How would work visas work unless you keep track of everyone that's going in and out of the country?

Actually they are not: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/03/25/1164819944/live-free-and-die-the-sad-state-of-u-s-life-expectancy Also the life expectancy gap is widening against comparable countries.. Education continues to fall behind:

Majority of Americans were in favour of the Iraq war in the first year too. What happens if this conflicts lasts 10 years and costs $2T? It's hard to quit a war once you get dragged in.

I think ValueArb suggested that having open borders with Mexico was a better solution since it promoted circular migration. I'm just saying, if it's possible with Mexico, it should be possible with Canada.

Same issues in Canada. The leadership here has given up on fixing the real problems (housing, healthcare, drugs, poverty, education, infrastructure) and instead just distracts everyone with "social issues".

$100B here, $100B there, and soon your country is $33T in debt. Don't forget, it's not only military aid, the West is also funding Ukrainian government expenditures and essentially keeping the whole country afloat.. My gripe with your border is that if Mexicans can cross freely into the US, Canadian should be able to do the same. The lines at the Can-US crossings are long and annoying!

Fox spins narratives against Biden. CNN spins narratives against Trump. Both spinning narratives against China & Russia. While the article is BS, the premise that the US wastes too much resource on costly foreign intervention instead of fixing domestic issues is not wrong.. The US is facing: Record high debts, deteriorating health, opioid/fentanyl crisis, failing infrastructure, poor roads, poor airports, poor subways, poor trains, major homelessness and crime problem in urban areas, weak & inconsistent public education. Why is this happening in the richest & most powerful country in the world?

Canada's stuck in a tough place. No growth, high debt, high inflation. Cut rates = weak currency, more imported inflation. Raise rates = credit crisis, negative growth. Only positive is the strong oil prices and production but that's also being dismantled by poor policy. https://www.blogto.com/city/2023/08/hundreds-lining-up-apply-ontario-mcdonalds-job-market/ Decade of stagnant GDP per capita: Record household debt to gdp and debt to income:

Prioritizing foreign wars over well-being of citizens seems somewhat late-stage empire. https://www.foxnews.com/media/biden-rebuked-ignoring-deadly-maui-wildfires-prioritizing-ukraine-american-people

Do ghost cities actually exist or is it just Western propaganda? For example: CNN reports in 2017 a subway built to nowhere: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/chongqing-china-metro-station-nowhere/index.html#:~:text=Next station is ... nowhere,the middle of a wasteland.&text=Pristine and barely used%3A Very,according to a station employee. Today there's an entire city built up around the station:

This is what the US should be focused on. Drugs, immigration, education, infrastructure. Instead the media and policy makers try to distract with cultural issues, "social justice" and foreign wars.

Deposits are up because they closed MUFG acquisition ($80B deposit) on Dec 1, 2022. 2nd table on page 2 shows the impact. https://ir.usbank.com/static-files/30f7fc8a-1e69-4f59-8b2f-64033271c990 MUFG deposits down around 10B and USB backing out MUFG also down around the same amount.

This is the likely the outcome and has been China's strategy for many decades. The whole Taiwan declares independence and China declares war is some Western fantasy for folks that have little understanding of Chinese history and culture. There's no parallel here. Taiwan is recognized as a part of China by most of the world. Logistically, it's far easier to resupply Ukraine through Poland than to resupply Taiwan. And Taiwan has only 1/2 the population of Ukraine while China has 10x the population of Russia. The Taiwanese are very pragmatic. In 20 years, faced with the choices of destruction or 1 country 2 systems, the latter is an obvious choice.

It is hard to replace the world's financial system, but I think the USD closer to a crisis than it's ever been. First, spending in the US is out of control and debt and deficits are spiralling. The last time the US defaulted (1971) there was no alternative system. Second, US was the largest trading partner for the world at the time. Today China is the largest trading partner for most countries. Third, foreigners used to trust US property protection but that trust is being eroded by the weaponizing sanctions and arbitrary confiscation of property.

What peace? Since the end of WW2, the US has been continuously involved in multiple wars around the world. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change#1945–1991:_The_Cold_War https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change#1991–present:_Post-Cold_War It is not fear of US or USSR that kept either side from war. It is fear of mutually assured destruction. In a war between superpowers, everyone dies. People seem to have forgotten this.

It's not too late for the West because there's such a head start, but we need to stop focusing on frivolous/fringe issues and wars and start fixing the core like addiction/healthcare, education, infrastructure. Totally agree. Nuclear war is THE biggest threat to humanity and this whole proxy war is pushing us closer. The US needs to stop all its wasteful foreign adventures and start fixing domestic problems. Vietnam, then Afghanistan & Iraq were a colossal waste of resources. Is it really a coincidence that shortly after you exit Afghanistan the Ukraine war starts? Or is the military-industrial-political complex pulling strings to create the next conflict?

Trump is a brilliant politician:

I think BAC's CET1 of $185B already includes AOCI losses from AFS but not unrealized HTM losses ($85B including). If you include AOCI USB is at $43B and maybe ~$35B with unrealized HTM losses.

Too hard pile for me. It's not really a short thesis (despite the dramatic title) but more of a pair trade. I think it's fair to question why USB should be valued higher than WFC when it's far more capital constrained.

http://www.holdcoam.com/wp-content/uploads/Presentation.pdf The Unsafest and Unsoundest Of Them All – U.S. Bancorp (Ticker: USB)

I think there's a degree of hindsight bias in using Korea and Japan as benchmarks since we already know they were the best performers. Wouldn't India (similar population) or Russia (similar ideology) or a basket of Asian countries (Philippines, Thailand, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, etc.) be a better benchmark? It's like using Apple or Google as a benchmark instead of the S&P 500. I agree with you that China might have gotten here sooner without the 50-70s. However, once again that's with the benefit of hindsight. In the 1950s, communism was a relatively new experiment and nobody knew the outcome. USSR was a superpower then and China sought to emulate that model. But even prior to the CCP, China was poorly managed for hundreds of years, latter half of Qing to end of KMT, which might be why people turned to the CCP in the first place. Obviously the data is very sparse prior to the 1900s, but the trend shows that China was in decline for a long time. This is possible but it's too early to judge.