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  1. #101
    Quote Originally Posted by Mormolyce View Post
    I wouldn't call the aims of Iran rational but sure, they're probably down the list of America's self-inflicted enemies for now.
    I think Iran pretty clearly plays crazy when its convenient for them.

  2. #102
    Deleted
    The US is at war with Iran. The US has always been at war with Iran.

    The US is friendly with Iran. The US has always been friendly with Iran.

    The US is at friendly with Iraq. The US has always been friendly with Iraq.

    The US is at war with Iraq. The US has always been at war with Iraq.

    The US is at war with Islamic State. The US has always been at war with Islamic State.

    .......

  3. #103
    Quote Originally Posted by tollshot View Post
    Just like auld mad Ronnie, history repeating?
    Yes, exactly. And that absolves the Obama administration how?

  4. #104
    Over 9000! ringpriest's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Skroe View Post
    I wouldn't jump the gun with parallels between 2008 and 2016 when it comes to the economy. You forget that unlike 2008, which was the height of the commodities boom, oil sub $30 means an invisible multi-hundred billion dollar stimulus in Americans hands. I mean I hate throwing in personal stories here because they're usually worthless, but I've gone from paying $3.40 for a gallon of oil for home heating in our cold, New England winters, to $1.65 a gallon (and dropping). To put it bluntly, this is a joke. It used to be about $450 per delivery. It's now about $204. It costs thousands of dollars a year to heat my home and I'm going to pay, in part due to the mild winter so far, maybe a third of a few years ago. It could be about $1200 total. Thats thousands of spending dollars.

    But besides my little story there, the global economy is in a different spot. There is no big US debt bubble (there is a huge Chinese one, but US exposure is limited). The dollar is strong and interest rates are being raised. They'll be raised in June again I bet. The US economy is pretty much the only engine in the world at the moment.

    So everbody's 401ks lost 2-5% last week. Big deal.
    I'm not talking about the stock market, I am talking about commodities (and their financialization) - "Why Oil's Collapse Could Ultimately Be Worse than the Housing Crisis"
    Oil and gas companies borrowed heavily when oil prices were soaring above $70 a barrel. But in the past 24 months, they've seen their values and cash flows erode ferociously as oil prices plunge — and that's made it hard for some to pay back that debt.

    This could lead to a massive credit crunch like the one we saw in 2008. With our economy just getting back on its feet from the global 2008 financial crisis, timing could not be worse, especially in an election year. It makes you wonder: How could this happen again? Quite easily, as it turns out.

    Industry fundamentals are being misunderstood.

    A $30 Nymex West Texas Intermediate crude price on a screen is the price paid when that barrel is delivered to Cushing, Okla. However, the producer of that same barrel in the Permian Basin will receive only $27 per barrel. Lesser quality crudes such as West Texas Sour might only fetch $15 a barrel. When prices were above $100 or even $60, those margins mattered less. With oil around $30, it's a much bigger deal.

    A similar problem exists with lender's reserve values used for credit judgments. Notwithstanding the persistent decline in oil prices, commercial banks still use escalated price decks. These often mirror or exceed slightly, the forward price curve on the Nymex. Today, a $30 WTI barrel is forecast by the futures market to be sold at $39 per barrel a year from now. Those escalations become very significant, again, because of the margin squeeze.

    With global oil demand flat, or even declining somewhat, OPEC price "hawks" producing all they can, OPEC price "doves," Saudi Arabia and its near neighbors producing to regain market share, and inventories at record highs — is a price escalation likely? The banks believe it is.

    No matter how you cut that cake, there will be a flood of hard defaults with bank lenders and bondholders over the coming few months.

    Significant year-end losses and write-offs are also coming, and very likely more write-offs in the ensuing quarters. Auditors will likely start to qualify their assessment of whether firms are a viable "going concern." Those also constitute an event of hard default with most lenders. These specific events of hard defaults with a senior lender generally will create a cross-default on other debt styled securities.
    And the money dumped into oil-derived securities is just one of several bubbles - the "great" state of the US economy is, IMNSHO, largely illusory, a result of the massive amount of liquidity pumped out by the Fed for years. If anything, the coming crisis will be worse than the last one; (which is exactly what should be expected after massive consequence-free bailouts).


    Quote Originally Posted by Skroe View Post
    Again, I'm only going to speak personally here. I have my reservation about "the Clintons", but I'd be fine with her as President. I'd vote for her. I believe she'll be competent and surround herself with competent, centrist people. The thing about Massachusetts Republicans like myself is the way we win here is because we're highly technocratic. Big Government versus Small Government? Stupid philosophical argument nobody really cares about. What Americans really want is effective, efficient government. Not too big, not too small, providing the services they want and a good price and well run. Lean and mean. This is a vision of moderation, which is why Massachusetts is one of the best run states in the union. The large Democratic presence here is progressive while highly technocratic republican governors act as a moderating and efficiency force.

    I can't vote for any of these Republicans. They're unqualified (Carson). They're serial liars and absurd self promoters(Cruz). They'd be unacceptable to our allies and global image leading to our isolation (Trump). The believe fundamentally stupid things (Rand Paul). They haven't learned from recent history of the past 15 years (Bush). Or they know everything they say is bullshit, but they say it any way because they're in to deep (Rubio... see his performance on The Daily Show last year... very insightful).

    But neither can I vote for Bernie Sanders. His ideas are offensive to me. His foreign and security policies, such as they are, is unbelievably uninformed and naive. His taxation plans would directly impact my family and I plainly will not vote against my economic interests. Even on health care... I DO WANT Single Payer Health Care because it DOES work in nearly every other developed country. But Bernie Sander's vision for it is more of the same overpaying bullshit wrapped up in a new stupid box. He would expand Medicare and entitlements without targeting the core problem which is cost of services because market forces have failed and will continue to fail to control costs. He does not say, my preferred path, which is to emulate Japan, and bring insurance companies and providers into a room every 2 years, and tell them in what range services will cost.

    Bernie Sanders is all feel good fluff that born since 1992 morons on Facebook and Twitter share quotes of, and then start calling themselves "Democratic Socialists" without ever knowing what that means. It doesn't remind me of Obama 2008. it reminds me of Ron Paul 2008, when lots of weed smokers who wanted their hobby legitimized decided to throw in their lot with "Doctor Paul" and his "We are all Austrians Now" economics, overlooking his decades of anti-abortion/anti-women's rights extremism and long history racism. Anything to get their weed legalized though!

    Bernie Sanders? To these folks, he's the Ron Paul but of deliverance from Student Loans and Health Care costs. You just have to look at his statements on Defense Spending to see he's a politician like any other: "we should look for some judicious cuts" however "except the F-35 program". Why? A Vermont base is one of the first in the nation with F-35s and it's been very popular there.

    Bernie Sanders is not a terrible person like Ted Cruz. Far from it. He is an ideal Senator and the kind of person that this country needs to act as a check against forces pulling in the other direction. But his beliefs and positons disqualify him as President, which is a job far bigger than the progressive cause crusader he has promised to be. That was Obama's failure. He only ever cared about using the Presidency to focus on the causes he found important, that the ones he didn't suffered to a degree that hadn't in prior administrations. It wasn't incompetence. It was attention.

    <amusing segue about alternate voting options snipped for length>
    (I'm a Cthulhu supporter myself, but I'm not sure what to do this year - old squid-face took one look at the Republican candidates and went back to R'lyeh.)

    I sort of agree with you about Clinton and the Republicans, in the sense that I see Clinton as an eminently generic status quo politican (obviously we disagree about the merits and stability of the status quo itself) - Clinton is as qualified to be President as most of her predecessors (the glaring exception being Obama himself), while the Republicans are all terrible. And not terrible in the "I disagree with them" sense of the word, but the "they'd be both less capable than Obama and worse for the country" sense.

    As a strong lefty, I know I'm supposed to like Bernie (and I do, as a person), and I do agree with a lot of his ideas, but... he's basically just pushing what I think of as the "sane billionaire" position; not fundamental reform, let alone justice and a return to a republic / democracy, but just the simple acknowledgement that the bus that is the United States is headed for a cliff, and we should carefully turn the wheel and/or apply brakes, instead of stepping on the gas, (terrifyingly, that position is very much a minority one).

    What all this means for Iran and the US... idk. If a crazed Republican gets in, it's probably war - war that we'll lose even if we "win" it, because the direct and indirect costs will far exceed the practical gains (if any). Such a war will likely be a strong contributor to a US collapse, China dominant (presuming they don't collapse on their own) scenario. Even if someone as comparatively sane as Hillary or even Bernie becomes President... I think the Saudis are still going to collapse, and there's going to be a loud faction in the US against any sort of rapprochement with Iran on any basis, from realpolitik to rational humanism. Whatever happens, the Middle East (including) certainly isn't going to get much calmer or more stable, global warming all on its own would see to that.
    "In today’s America, conservatives who actually want to conserve are as rare as liberals who actually want to liberate. The once-significant language of an earlier era has had the meaning sucked right out of it, the better to serve as camouflage for a kleptocratic feeding frenzy in which both establishment parties participate with equal abandon" (Taking a break from the criminal, incompetent liars at the NSA, to bring you the above political observation, from The Archdruid Report.)

  5. #105
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    Quote Originally Posted by Skroe View Post
    If this is referring to what I THINK it is referring to, in 1978 the Shah's regime paid for a contract for 4 Spruance Class Destroyers. This is no minor sale: the Spruance class was the backbone of the US Navy in the 1970s and 1980s and they would have been by far the most powerful ships in the Persian Gulf. Because they were late-build Spruances, this "Kidd" subclass was the most advanced of the family, and equipped for hot climates. Their weapon systems were advanced for Spruance's as well.

    When the Shah was overthrown the following year, the Navy kept the 4 ships (still being built) and put them in the fleet. And because they were the latest Spruances and optimzied for warm climates, modernized the hell out of them and had them serve exclusively in hot regions. But until the first Burkes arrived in the 1990s, they were among the most advanced Surface Combatants and ASW ships in the fleet.

    As the Navy started to procure more and more Burke's in the 1990s and 2000s, it sought to rapidly remove the Spruances from the fleet in order to protect Burke production and cut operating costs. Spruances could have served until 2020 easily, but all were retired early. Not just early. In order to avoid a repeat of Reagan reactivating mothballed ships, the Navy rapidly sunk every Spruance it in target exercises. How fast? It sunk them all within a couple years of decommissioning.

    These 4 Spruances lived on though. Instead of being sunk, they were sold to Taiwan, where they'll serve for decades.

    This is the largest military contract, at least that I know of, that occurred just before the Sha was overthrown, so my guess is this represents the bulk of the suit.
    I think the US is trying to tie most of the loose ends with Iran and move their attention to the pacific. Middle East has been given too much attention for too long, meanwhile China has been growing powerful and is now emboldened enough to threaten America's interest in that region.

    a war with Iran fixes nothing, it just throws US into more debt and the war costs will racket up leaving US economically weak to completely and thoroughly counter China in the coming decade. this was pointed out years ago that the US is changing it's focus from the middle east to the east of Asia. It's not that they're "scared" of Iran or anything, but China is just a bigger threat and a war with Iran would drag the US into several more years of ground invasion/military operations throughout the middle east to effectively destroy Iran's military capabilities. and nothing short of occupation can systematically change Iran's regime and nature.

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