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Thursday, March 06, 2025

It turns out that abandoning allies and tossing out security guarantees is bad for business. While U.S. defense stocks are slumping, European defense stocks are rising quickly because the markets have concluded that those governments will be spending lots more on defense. And every government around the world knows what happened to Zelensky last week in the Oval Office. The conclusion that many leaders will draw from the altercation that Trump and Vance had with Zelensky is that U.S. security guarantees-a key reason why countries tend to buy U.S. weapons- are not going to be a convincing argument anymore. Since Trump's inauguration, shares in the six biggest U.S. defense companies have fallen by an average of 4 percent. Meanwhile, shares of Europe's largest defense groups - including Germany's Rheinmetall - "have surged" by almost 40 percent in the same period. read more


Wednesday, March 05, 2025

Traders are starting to price in the possibility that the U.S. economy might fall into a recession - and one Wall Street veteran says that might actually be the Trump administration's plan. read more


Thursday, February 27, 2025

Trump, during an Oval Office meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, tempered his comments about Zelensky, including a social media post last week in which Trump called Zelensky a "dictator with elections." When asked by a reporter whether he still believed Zelensky was a dictator, Trump responded: "Did I say that? I can't believe I said that. Next question. read more


Friday, February 21, 2025

Trump announced Wednesday that the Resolute Desk has been temporarily removed from the Oval Office to be "refinished," a touch-up that occurred just days after Elon Musk's son seemingly picked his nose and wiped it on the historic piece of furniture. read more


Thursday, February 20, 2025

Big US contractors Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and L3Harris have all lost about 10% over the past month. It's a very different story in Europe, though. read more


Comments

Don't let Krasnov see this.
bsky.app
#21 | Posted by reinheitsgebot

You could tell that was AI because Putin would never kiss Trump.

The Democrats have provided nothing to counter the issues (imo, mostly lies) the Republicans have raised regarding trans-sexual people.
Yes, people. Regarding the topic of trans-sexual people participating in sports ...
My current view is ... Should the big-business of sports adjust itself to how humans are?
Or should humans have to adjust themselves to how the big business of sports views them?
Stated differently, why are we allowing corporate interests decide who people are?
#2 | Posted by LampLighter

It's not just big businesses that care. Plenty of women sacrifice quite a bit to excel in their sport.

This isn't about kissing Trump's ring. Newsom has national aspirations and even Democrats don't support trans women in women's sports.

NYT poll finds majority of Democrats oppose transgender athletes in women's sports
A recent New York Times/Ipsos survey found the vast majority of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, don't think transgender athletes should be permitted to compete in women's sports.

Of the 2,128 people who participated, 79% said biological males who identify as women should not be allowed to participate in women's sports.

Of the 1,025 people who identified as Democrats or leaning Democrat, 67% said transgender athletes should not be allowed to compete with women.

Among 1,022 Republicans, that number was 94%.
nypost.com

There is a reason that males and females are segregated in pretty much every sport involving physical strength. If that is not patently obvious, I doubt there's anything I can do to change that (although I once posted a breakdown of the single-digit to double-digit differences in males-females in muscle mass, lung capacity, heart size, height, weight, etc and noted that many sports come down to tenths of a second difference in separating winners from losers).

As Newsom focused on, this is about fairness to the women competitors.

Trump's abrupt change of course away from Western allies and Ukraine has an even more fundamental unintended consequence: Washington's security guarantees, which underpin its arms exports, have become worthless.

"I'm not going to make security guarantees beyond very much," Trump said last week while trying to force Ukraine to sign a deal that the Kyiv Independent reported would give the United States 50 percent of revenues from Ukrainian state-owned natural resources. "We're going to have Europe do that," Trump added, because "Europe is the next-door neighbor."

But security guarantees are the unbeatable sweetener that Washington has historically used to clinch most deals. Many countries, including a large number in Europe, have bought U.S. weapons precisely because they came with U.S. security guarantees. The guarantees were not just the sweetener: They were at the core of the deal.

"When countries buy weapons, they consider the equipment, and thus the manufacturer, and thus the country, because these things matter with equipment that you use for many years, up to 40 years," Limmergard said. "And U.S. foreign military sales have depended a lot on America offering security guarantees."

In other words, buying U.S. weapons was a way of buying the United States' friendship and protection. After months of agonizing debate in 2021, still nonaligned Finland chose to buy U.S.-made F-35 fighter jets to replace its aging fleet of fighter jets, even though Gripens from Sweden"Finland's close friend and neighbor"would have been cheaper. Although the F-35s have undisputed capabilities, it was lost on nobody that the Finns' $9.4 billion deal also included U.S. benevolence and security guarantees. Indeed, the deal was managed through the U.S. government's Foreign Military Sales program.

But with Trump now openly appearing to side with Russia and President Vladimir Putin, even the most generous buyers of U.S. weapons can no longer be sure that their money will result in Washington's benevolence and protection.

El Rey Dotardo II will get his recession in about six months. As far as 'engineering' the matter, it's like engineering a bar fight. In the end, it's a mess, lots of people are hurt, and no one wants to go back to that bar. The problems with the Dotard's strategy include (1) US consumers and businesses will no longer trust this maniac, so spending will remain very low for an extended period, (2) no spending means no new jobs, which means many of the unemployed will be on the dole longer than normal, and once they run out of state benefits, spending will fall more and hardship and pain will grow, (3) our erstwhile foreign trading partners will avoid the US like they would a pile of dog droppings on the sidewalk, meaning less demand for any US products, from software to winter wheat, and (4) interest rates will certainly fall, as a function of lack of demand for capital. No one building or buying homes, no one buying a Maria Bartiromo model Dodge Ram, no one buying McDonald's value meal. Just as a train wreck involves an engineer, the US economy will wreck soon enough, thanks to the engineer clowns now at the helm...

#5 | Posted by catdog

All of that is a small price to pay to save Donald Trump millions on his business loans.
President Trump will personally benefit from the Fed rate cut he pushed
The recent Federal Reserve interest rate cut has clear political benefits for President Trump, but it appears the cut will be doubly beneficial to him, as he also now stands to save millions in loan payments in coming years as a result of the rate cut.
www.citizensforethics.org August 2, 2019

Russia-First-Trump-small

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