There are Catholics who argue that Francis and Leo are not real Catholics and will argue Trump is the chosen one. Some are my family members. I am as always speechless.
Yeah. Trump fits the definition of "the whore of Babylon" to a T (a sex maniac coming from New York) and not only they are unable to even imagine it, they think the exact opposite.
I hear similar from my own Mother. I don't know the extent of what she believes, because I don't want to ask, but there is a strong rejection of Leo among the American right. It seems as simple as challenging Trump to a degree, and retroactively finding justification for invalidating the pope. I suppose I could dip into her media diet and find out myself.
With my family members, it is useless for me to bring up the fact that Ratzinger/Benedict supervised the revised Catechism. They don’t believe in that categorically.
Threatening the holy father is not something I entirely expected, but when you couple that with statements like "We have the military power to do what we want" it becomes rather terrifying.
They may be vastly overestimating how much military power lets them do whatever they want, but it's plenty for throwing one hideous narcissist vengeance tantrum when the frustration hits.
Dont forget Nvidia technology was condsidered too sensitive to be exported to China....until the Trump administration decided they could export it if they paid a 10% export tax.
The part of this you're missing is that China doesn't want it [1].
Why? Because China will make their own. This has been obvious to me for at least 1-2 years. The US doesn't allow EUV lithography machines from ASML to be exported to China either. I believe the previous export ban on the most advanced chip was a strategic error because it created a captive market of Chinese customers for Chinese chips.
China will replicate EUV far quicker than Western governments expect. All it takes is to throw money at a few key ASML engineers and researchers and the commitment of the state to follow through with this project, which they will.
I'm absolutely reminded of the atomic bomb. This created quite the debate in military and foreign policy circles about what to do. The prevailing presumption was that the USSR would take 20 years to develop their own bomb if it ever happened.
It took 4 years.
And then in 1952 the US detonated the first thermonuclear bomb. The USSR followed suit in 1953.
this is inacccurate, tesla was the first mover in china's EV market and held by far the largest market share for over a decade. obviously that was in large part to elon hiring chinese systems engineers to build out the first super factories and using chinese robotics tech. but ever since losing those key early leaders, tesla has completely fallen behind.
Under normal circumstances this would end up in court, but when this administration ignores court orders it doesnt like Anthropic would effectively have no legal recourse.
Netflix win this by losing. Paramount has massively overpaid for Warner Brothers, and taken on a crippling amount of debt. It was existential for them, they had a failing studio and streaming service which they hope Warners IP and HBO can compensate for.
Let's not forget that Warner Brothers has been a bit of an albatross and never made money for anyone, that's why it's passed through so many different hands. Time, AoL Discovery to name a few.
Now Paramount are going to be sitting there with a mountain of debt, while Netflix and Disney are relatively debt free and very profitable and cash generative.
The US will be able to keep issuing as much debt as they like as long as the Dollar is the global reserve currency. Its when that stops being the case they'll be in trouble with hyperinflation being the most likely outcome.
The US will keep issuing debt as long as people are willing to buy its debt at a reasonably low price. Which people keep doing.
For a long time that was because people were justifiably convinced that the US would honor those debts, which it could do because it kept producing even more stuff every year, and would never even think about threatening to default. Here in 2026 I cannot imagine why they are continuing to, except inertia.
> in 2026 I cannot imagine why they are continuing to, except inertia.
Because there is no where else for that debt to go. No one else wants to take on so much debt.
Meanwhile there are a bunch of asset managers who are paying the mortgage on their beach home in the Caribbean with the bonuses they earn by investing in US debt. If the US defaults on that debt 10 tears from now that means they still earned 9 years of million dollar salaries, and anyways they won’t be blamed for something the entire industry suffered from at that point.
If they do the prudent thing and ask for a higher price they will end up investing fewer dollars which reduces their 2% commission on invested capital, money that might go to their international equity golfing buddy instead.
Entities where the money is managed by the investor itself (for example, foreign national governments) do indeed appear to be cutting back.
Because everyone has a lot of dollars and they need to earn a return, so its either the Eurodollar market or US debt. US debt is safer. But its true to say that people are more and more reluctant to buy longer dated bonds and are turning to shorter and shorter maturities which is another problem for the US government.
And that's the interesting question - how long will the dollar remain the global reserve currency? Apparently the recent spike in Gold prices is partly because of de-dollarisation:
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