changegonnacome

Guess one might classify the current Trump BTC rally as one of these moments!?!

Yeah these are increasingly outlandish with ever higher hurdles IMO....but totally understand.......BTC keeps confounding expectations.......like a growth stock with higher and higher multiples....what begins to be required for it move higher over time are increasingly ever more implausible scenarios.......but the holders think past is prologue cause a bunch of implausible things have ALREADY happened.

Not really I'm with @Gregmal - things are 'worth' what people will pay for them (obviously).....whether its BTC, gold or a baseball card.......certain items without underlying cash flows......are pure games in predicting future mass psychology/interst which drives future supply/demand which drives price.......will an artist's reputation grow in time driving future demand such that their art will appreciate in value or not etc. Indeed even things with cash flows.....need to be assessed for future demand...which is a function of mass psychological attidudes.....i.e. is this a product or service that will be prized as highly or not in the future. A corset manufacturer in the 1800's had intrinsic value based on its cash flows.......but that intrinsic value was predicated on corsets remaining an item of fashion value in the minds of society....it turned, over time, that value went to almost zero. BTC is like this.......its a game in predicting future mass psychological attitudes towards it....the story and its ability to resonate is the value if you we're trying to pinpoint it............ its why finding out Satoshi was a 15yr old obese dork kid is not entertained by the believers......as it diminishes the story...........BTC'ers say we're early....7% of the US population have been interested enough in the 'story' to participate by purchasing BTC in some form or another.....you need only a view on whether the adoption rate will increase or decrease over time to have a view on the future price path......for what its worth.......BTC looks like a story where all the big catalysts have already played out.....but I've never been good at guessing future mass psychology re: assets with zero discernible cash flows today......not a game I'm good at so I dont play.....but it doesn't invalid it as means by which to speculate.

Everything old is new again! Looks like we might need to relearn an important lesson from a hundred years ago about what happens when you allow your economy to become a casino. Folks would do well to read about blue sky securities of the 1920's............which was the last time we allowed thousands of 'coins' then called shares to come to market with a story attached from snake oil promoters to be sold to the gullible public with near no controls, no registrations and disclosures while providing 100 to 1 leverage to the end purchaser. Out of it of course we got the Great Depression........and then the 1933 act which put controls around the selling of investment contracts to the public and then the 1934 act which created the exchanges, broker-dealers & clearing house infrastructure that created the most robust capital markets in the world.

CNC

CNC

Watching this too.......keeps dropping....getting to £67 now......minus 34% year to date......great company, lousy price the last couple of years.....

I think this is a fair assessment - monkeys inside the machine do unpredictable things.......what I would say in Mearsheimar's defense and in the defense of realist theory broadly in international security studies......is that it (realism) has the highest base rate of any of the competing theories in attempting to predict the future of state level conflicts.......that's not to say it is highly predictive but rather to say that amongst all the frameworks one could use to approach this dastardly problem of prediction it is the best.

Some debate obviously on the causes or reasons for the initial 2022 invasion.....I've got my theories (NATO/US 'puppetism'), others have theirs (the Catherine the Great theory)....but the competing theories can't be more different in a way.......an imperialist & a national security NATO 'red line-ist' are two very different beasts to deal with in a 'peace' negotiation. An imperialist who encountered way more resistance than they ever expected so was under prepared to achieve their military aims.....takes a win with a small 'w' (Donbas/Crimea), concedes on NATO, takes some marginal incremental territory and goes home to rebuild their military forces to try again later.....a (temporary) peace deal should be 'easy' to do with an imperialist .......a country/leader driven by genuine existential national security concerns rooted in NATO/US encroachment....will not fold on a red line issues like NATO membership. As we enter the end game here - we are going to get our answer......the 'tell' so to speak, IMO, has already come from Zelensky right at the beginning of this conflict in March 2022 in his most early kite flying for a negotiated settlement (see below BBC link)....we in the West might be confused about Putin's invasion motivations given our information is filtered through our own version of (un)controlled private media (that nevertheless manufacturers consent to borrow a Chomskyism). Zelensky has a clearer eyed view than anyone on the causes and the solutions to Ukraine's woes....and HIS solution to this war, offering permanent Ukrainian neutrality, speaks more clearly to the origins of this situation than a million WH briefings, NY Times and CNN pieces. 28 March 2022 - "Zelensky says Ukraine prepared to discuss neutrality in peace talks" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60901024

Its a deal! And totally hear you on the stamp duty......the UK and Ireland are literally punching themselves in the face from a capital markets point of view attaching stamp duty to share purchases

Yep its a time of polarization....if you arent for me, your against me type thing.....the world is wonderfully more complex place than that....but we've regressed to the most extremes of language to in effect shut down anything that might cause us even the slightest cognitive dissonance..........in the past debate, ideas seemed looser and more fluid...the overton window at a micro individual level was wider......now in the age where we get to curate our own news feeds....we shut down cognitive dissonance at the fountainhead because we can....by labelling somebody far-left or far-right......anti-semitic or racist...conspiracy theorist or whatever......its fast-food for the weary mind not interested in assimilating or assessing ideas in conflict.

Correct - it is an untenable position...to seek national sovereignty from those that might grant it......while out the other side of your mouth you whisper dreams of their destruction. Nation states chief responsibility is to ensure their survival over time......enabling the creation of a country on your doorstep that one day might come streaming across your border with guns and tanks is a dereliction of that duty.

So about 5 million Palestinian people disagree with you......to say nothing of the c.3bn people globally who live in the 145 nation states who've decided that the Palestinians are indeed a people and so by extension recognise Palestine as a State. The funny thing about nationalism....is it doesn't technically require a blood line......or a history per se in a geography....nationalism is reflexive....it exists because it is believed by enough people, in a particular concentrated geography......we all think of ourselves as American or Canadian....yet none of our forefathers we're here 550yrs ago....they were in Europe....so funny that these ethnic history lessons go back thousands of years to try and prove or disprove an what American nationalism....was architected and imagined in British colonies by ethnic Europeans.....it was created out of thin air in the minds of the people who lived here. The European Union....is a 1970's era attempt to create a hybrid nationalism which sits above the nation states of Europe...that you could be both German and European at same time...its a neat cognitive trick to attempt to stop the wars of the past.....we'll find out if it works in about another 200yrs.....Northern Ireland is an example of the same......at the heart of peace agreement there is kind of reflexive & flexible nationalism....at its heart is the idea that one can be.... British or Irish or both at the same time....its a kind of attempt at ala carte nationalism not seeking to deny anybodies idea of who they might be. But anyway If I take your theory on face value....what I would say is that if the Palestinian 'people' never existed by history or geography.....they most certainly exist now.....their 'struggle' real or imagined is a pretty good petri dish for a nationalistic origin story/narrative to emerge & multiply as a meme...indeed if you go back far enough we were all just primordial soup and so nations & nationalism are relatively new idea across the arc of time....as I said the big idea of the last 500yrs is nationalism......and in some ways modern Israel then (if Palestinian never existed) helped birth Palestinian nationalism.....and now five million of them are there and they aren't going away. I agree - I think Israel would be crazy to create the sovereign State of Palestine on its doorstep.......and as the leader of that country I would not pursue any process that has this as near or medium term objective..........the stakes are too high for 'my' people.....I think the probabilities that that State would turn around in time and become an existential threat to Israel are just way too high to roll the dice on. The uncomfortable reality with that strategy is that (1) another Oct 7th is inevitable in time because, as I've said, nationalistic aspirations cannot be 'destroyed' via military operations they just reconstitute later and (2) if your pursuing a ONE state solution which is the logical reality of a non-two state solution....its very hard for Israel to claim to be a liberal democracy....one human, one vote is kind of the on/off filter on that definition......given that the one state solution functions only as a Jewish state at the democratic exclusion of the Palestinian populations who live in greater Israel then well you get what you get. But I mean who cares if we call them Palestinians or not.....lets call them Arabs then....but actually lets forget the ethnic classification....they are, I think we can agree, human beings?....and they live in a country where via regionalization and kind of ethnic gerrymandering....they've been effectively excluded from sovereign state level democracy....albeit devoled but limited autonomy has been granted to them....but as I've said devolved autonomy..or 98% soverignity.....doesnt butter nationalisms parsnips...it is a hungry beast hell bent on 100% People can call that what they want....the kids on college campuses call it apartheid....which seems to trigger a certain generation who like to be on the side of the angels and we're re: South Africa, ANC & Nelson Mandela.....the cognitive dissonance is too much for these folks re: Israel / Palestine so they go into mental geographic & historical gymnastics to get where they need to be psychologically & morally...example above....Palestinians, are not Palestinians, they are just Arabs...Response:..ok, fine...they are Arabs living in Israel...then give them a vote....but you can't while preserving a jewish state...and so the circular argument continues. In this regard perhaps I find myself in an unusual position which I hear very few people articulate or openly admit too. I recognize the Palestinian people as a people and their aspiration (not their methods) for sovereignty has legitimacy under a kind of self-determination / democratic philosophy I have. I'm not some fringe minority here....145 countries of the 190-odd countries in the United Nations recognizes Palestine...or about 3bn global citizens...I mean thats alot of people who have come to an incorrect conclusion if so. Yet and this is the big yet that I hope helps some folks not dismiss me as some kind of anti-semite.........I recognize and support fully the State of Israel....its creation and its continuation....the Israelis are my kind of people......but that does not stop me from also identifying Israel as operating a de facto apartheid state which does not fit my or any definition of a liberal democracy. The facts just won't comport with any other definition or conclusion. Israel is more akin to a theocratic state - ala Vatican city & ironically Iran...and they should go ahead, cut the bullshit and be unapologetic about that. It has never really been a secular democracy as it claims - there was a time when perhaps it could pretend to be but that is long gone just given the demographics inside its borders that had to change. This decidedly undemocratic governance structure is the only one that now makes sense.....to protect the overarching goal which is a Jewish homeland for Jews. So I fully support the theocratic state strategy for Israel which in practise is a one state solution......pragmatism recognizes it as the best of alot of terrible options that is open to them as we sit here today......which yes in day-to-day operation results in let's call it kindly a 'democratic deficit' in the area again we might call to keep the peace 'Greater Israel'. IMO - they should continue this strategy until such a time as the threat dynamics in the Middle East change wholly for the better..their survival is at stake......and should act like it until Iran's theocratic regime collapses, Qatar terror funding ends and the vast majority of the Palestinian population living in Greater Israel have a miraculous conversion to peace etc. What I despise most re: the Middle East situation......is the relentless spinning...& twisting of facts......by all sides....nobody can quite claim perfect divinity there........cause this is real life in all its complicated glory...of course I have 'my' side and its Israel.....without a second thought...if I had too.....I'd put on a Star of David & rush into to help my Jewish brothers against the jihadists..I find the Muslim culture & philosophy with its tilting to brutality against women & minorities repulsive..but you know you won't catch me lying to myself around the reality on the other side of the ledger either which I support.

I'll take your pivot to a cockmammie theory about Jordan being some defacto Palestinian nation state as a kind of acknowledgment that you concede to my points above re: nationalism & Palestinian aspirations in the space........the Palestinians aspire to a nation state....because there is no nation state....by your theory...we've already got a two state solution in Middle East which makes me laugh....you should let Bibi know....the day after problem has been solved.

@Dinar your response calls out two sovereign nations…who actually have a nation….does that nation extend to every inch of the land they might like…..no….but they have a nation…a homeland….a sovereign one recognized by the UN. So sorry your argument on the face makes no sense….the Palestinians aspire to any nation and don’t have one….at all….like do folks realize Gaza isn’t a country….its a controlled territory…with devolved authority…but make no mistake about it….the reason people talk about a TWO state solution….cause currently there is only ONE - Israel. Sovereignty is a funny thing…..99% is rarely enough….ask the US colonies in the 1700’s….especially the Charter ones like Connecticut….CT looked a hell of a lot like the Gaza/West Bank <> Israel relationship from an administration point of view….but total self-determination inside a nation state is the end point of nationalism.

You can't destroy nationalism..its an idea....indeed it might be the truly BIG idea of the last 500yrs....to say your going to destroy Hamas is to say that somehow you might be able to destroy the Palestinians aspiration for national self-determination inside a sovereign vehicle recognised as country.......not some self-governing autonomous region......or municipal authority.....these are the diet cokes of nationalism....outsourcing the mgmt of Gaza to Egypt & Jordan doesn't cut it either......true national sovereignty is full sugar Coke....and everybody can tell the difference. Hamas is the violent expression of Palestinian nationalism...the paramilitary/terrorist wing of Palestinian nationalism...I think its possible that you can quiet down the violent expression of that nationalistic aspiration...shrink it for a while..but only if those that have chosen diplomacy as a vehicle to that nationalism can show genuine progress.....which requires of course Israel to come to the table with a workable plan which somewhere down the road ends in a Palestinian state. The great irony of course is that USA should understand nationalism better than anybody being a former British colony that engaged in a violent struggle to break free.......and the Jewish state is the ultimate expression of the BIG idea I spoke about.....the issue of course is one I sympathise with the Israelis.....which is what country in its right mind....already in a bad neighbourhood.....would willingly create another sovereign country right on its doorstep that has a high probability of becoming a existential threat over time. In this respect......the strategy Israel is pursuing...as brutal as it is...is of course highly rational and optimizes the most important variable which is the long run survival of Israel.

Precisely......nationalism creates a cognitive blind spot in most everybody...you can see it on this thread..very little self-reflection on any role we in the West may have played.....we are completely innocent benign participants.........of course our nation's intentions are always good...yet everything Russia/Iran/China does however benign (weather balloons perhaps) is really part of some wider nefarious plot to get us. In the case of Ukraine of course we only wanted to help them join the 'West'....and in Ukraine's case I'm going to say that chiefly the motivation was indeed a do gooder one....that the US 'project' in Ukraine was that of a kind of evangelical liberal democratic project...it meant no ill intent towards Russia..that it pissed them off was kind of a bonus though......the issue of course....is not whether your intentions are benign or not...once you edge up to your chief rivals borders.......your rival, who's main concern is existential survival....is ultimately forced due to that existentialism (which is at the root of national security)....to interpret benign moves as really acts of conspiratorial aggression.....when the stakes are as high as they are in international security......your action interpretation options boil down to one answer....whatever is happening here is part of wider plot to destroy our country and way of life. The old story of Europe (except Nazi germany) is waves of increased defense spending...predominantly benign in nature....triggering paranoia in your neighbour....which leads to a ratcheting of spend and with it even greater suspicion.....and where at a certain point one rival decides that actually the best next defensive move is a good offensive one and pulls the trigger on an overt act of aggression which escalates. The second misjudgment apart from the very common and more understood nationalism blind spot.....and I see it oft repeated in this thread....is the Hitler effect......its analogues to what someone recently called the Amazon effect in investing....the tendency to see a future Amazon everywhere .......which drives a lot of growth investing optimism. The reality - Amazon is a deeply unusual company, with a deeply unusual leader born at deeply unusual inflection point (birth of the internet)......that confluence of events & people is a once in a 200yr event......to see Amazon like opportunities everywhere is really crazy idea......but people do it all the time and use it in their reasoning. Well in international politics & security studies......there's the same phenomenon.......I call it the Hitler effect....Hitler was deeply unusual person driven as he was by grievance & anger.....that he could rise to be leader of a country speaks to how unusual a time it was......that that country fell under his spell even more so given they came out of the great depression better than anybody else in the world........is a fluke of timing & the central keynesian re-armanant industrial policy he chose.........Hitler was once in 200yr phenomenon (like Amazon)......on top of all this he was congenital aggressor....jumped up on speed and hell bent on imperialism while building a jewish murder machine... this is a once in a 200, maybe 300yr psycho event.....yet every enemy we've faced since then we transpose the Hitler template on to them. It's the same here with all this nonsense around Russia....and Putin's imperial aspirations. Its lazy 'hitlerization'....like Amazonificiation in investing. The Hitler effect, like the Amazon effect...is really a heuristic error....and that is to see the second coming of Adolf Hitler everywhere you look....in Putin, in Xi....in Saddam Hussein. This heuristic error is all over this thread......Putin the congenital aggressor....invading to take over Ukraine in March 2022....hell bent on Ukraine first....then re-constituting the USSR next (poland etc.)......then onwards to Western Europe if we let him.....you can't do a deal with him (appease him!) as every deal is only a stepping stone to him scaling up his military. The problem for these folks - is the evidence just does not fit .......the paltry capability of Russian military capability during this war (men/machinery/artillery)....demonstraties irrefutably that Russia pre-March 2022....had a military barely equipped to defend its homeland.....this was not a imperialist expansionary war machine Putin had been secretly building to fulfil his imperialist dreams. Secondly the Ukraine invasion....designed, we say in the West, to invade, conquer and occupy Ukraine..then on to Poland perhaps after ...its a laughable theory....190,000 troops, maybe 250,000 at the top end amassed over the border in Belarus the day before the invasion .....give me a break......not enough bodies to occupy half the city of Kiev....christ I've been to rock concerts with more people. Like the Amazon effect.....the Hitler effect in international security is a kind of cognitive distortion which when married to the cognitive bias inherent in nationalism (that we all suffer from)....is exactly what Munger might call a lollapalooza effect.....people's brains are so scrambled re: Putin & Russia....that they can barely see or think straight.....Putin is Hitler v2.0, we are allies on the side of the angels, Russia is Nazi Germany, comprising on anything with Putin makes you Neville Chamberlain & of course god forbid that when Putin goes on a rant about Western encroachment into Russia domain & US interference & imperialism globally that he might even have a sliver of a point that has validity.

In one sentence - Zelensky kind of sums up how he contributed to getting his country into the desperate situation its in today...and it seems like the cause is his complete lack of pragmatism...the above is a nice sound bite..........but the reality is that independence & sovereignty.....are ideals that once they leap off the page are constrained by reality & realpolitik.....Ukraine is independent...in the same way that Canada is independent & free.....but like Ukraine, Canadian sovereignty is constrained by its geographic position & power dynamics of its neighbour.........for example......Canada is technically free to host Chinese military bases in Ottawa if it wishes.....in reality that can never happen....or it can happen but only temporarily....which is kind of the same thing. Zelensky's extreme pivot to the West and outright rejection of the East....was a terribly poor demonstration of political leadership....pragmatism might be the single most important quality in a political leader.......idealism will get thousands of your fellow countrymen killed. As we get further into this war.....with Russia making recent territorial gains into the Donbass.......while Ukraine drives tanks around empty fields a few hundred miles north in Kursk.......I hope we in the West help Zelensky with his pragmatism skills.......a small country sandwiched between two opposing political/military systems....should be eating pragmatism for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Sure - I mean the oldest defense is to have a good offense.....when Europe isn't fighting amongst itself......the Red mist becomes the boogie man to worry about. The post-1994 dream might have seen the EEA, if not the EU expand Eastward to econcompass both Ukraine & Russia.......Europe's lack of energy (but industrial knowhow) and Russia's energy riches are natural bedfellows...they could and should be best of friends...like the USA and Canada are....but they aren't. I know many on this thread can't quite believe that the US would be so viciously pragmatic in its overseas defense strategy.....but a strategy of keeping Western Europe & Russia apart which IMO has underpinned the post-Cold War era.....is an important and ultimately clever case of divide and co-opt.....a combined EU-Russia has hell of alot of things going for it as an economic & regional powerhouse.......and an economic powerhouses are but a step away (as we see with China) from being another type of powerhouse that global superpower might worry about.......the big problem for the US is they've scored a HUGE own goal by over-egging this strategy. The greatest tragedy yet to be realized coming out of the Ukrainian situation is by pushing Russia so firmly into China's grip.... we've effectively handed resource deficient China direct access to enough oil and natural gas for a thousand years. The billions we've sent to Ukraine in aid....is not the true cost of this war........the true cost is making China & Russia two peas in a pod.....not today.....but we'll rue that outcome in years to come.

Indeed - the under appreciated issue with nuclear proliferation.....is a regional despot undergoing regime collapse used to be a local regional phenomenon that we, in the West, kind of cheered on from afar watching on TV.....situations like the one with Russia have a much fatter tail risk now.....morons ignore the tail & advocate for escalation dominance at all junctures like it's the 1920's or something.....cause they haven't quite calibrated their risk management framework to take account of the new tails.

The real exam question is which unsustainable war machine & economy is going to collapse first?......Ukraine's or Russia's....the math would say Ukraine's but they've got the West wild card.......and I don't discount the fact that Russia (like the USSR before it) can on the surface look very much stronger than it is.....only to collapse in astoundingly speedy way that takes everybody by surprise....such is the nature of totalitarian regimes...they implode at the of speed light compared to liberal democracies that tend collapse slowly in full embarrassing view.

Good overview - when laid out like this.....the Kursk incursion (the tiny yellow mark 300 miles north of the Donbas) is either a work of military genius or madness.....we'll find out by November.....when perhaps the final 1/3 of the Donbas might fall......evacuating Pokrovsk as the Ukranian's are now is not a good sign

Agree - think I said somewhere above - that this is now more like Gorilla warfare.....or a counter-insurgency......but what it tells you....Kursk in particular.....is that Ukraine itself knows that it can not be militarily successful in the South East.....it is not winning back that territory.. The BIG problem of course......is that the story which precipitated the West's contribution of capital and equipment..........was that Zelensky sold us a story about a counter-offensive that could be mounted of such success that it would bring Russia to the negotiating table begging for an end.....scuttling a few hundred miles North of the battle field....and driving across empty fields into Russia and taking some undefended villages and towns is not the painful and costly to Russia counteroffensive that would bring Putin to the negotiating table that 'we' were hoping and paying for.

Yep Kursk is an embarrassing annoyance….soon to be reclaimed and where Ukraine will pay a high price in terms of equipment and maybe men. I kind of get it - Zelensky comes from showbiz….and Kursk is showbiz writ large in the theatre of war…it broke through into Western news headlines….and that’s its value….all things equal it might allow Western politicians to send a few billion more of aid with Kursk hung out as a morsel of progress…when in reality no progress is being made at all (at great human and monetary capital) where it matters in South Eastern Ukraine.