No, the shareholders are not going to care as long as the money rolls in. I am sure shareholders of Lockheed Martin are not happy with the CEO right now, because this will cut into THEIR profits. Trump is already messing with the military industrial complex - and shareholders don't like it, and definitely not the Pentagon perhaps, let along the CIA and NSA.

What the US only produces is death - because that is all it has now, if only Ike were alive to see his nightmare come true.

Actually, currency is not "tied to" anything! Currency is nothing more and nothing less than a unit-of-exchange. It doesn't correspond to any physical unit: you can "buy something" with a tap of your phone or a swipe of your credit card. As long as people agree to accept it, because it results in a net-change in bank-account balances that they also "agree to accept," the system works.

But, as you say, USA is abusing the system by generating millions of US Dollars every minute, not because the financial system needs liquidity, but, "to buy things for itself."

Sovereign nations must provide enough currency-units to allow the day's transactions to be denominated in their currency, but this is not "carte blanche," even though historically the USA (in particular ...) has treated it as such.

If there is anything-at-all positive to be had from "a Trump Presidency," I hope that it will include there being someone who will acknowledge that "the Emperor has no clothes," and might then do something about it.

I have no idea why the Chinese (for example ...) have been content to accept "nothing but US Dollars" in exchange for their goods and services for so very long . . .

. . . but, at the same time, why did we turn our backs on the tens of thousands of now-shuttered factories which used to produce(!) "anything that the world could ever want," right here? Why did we decide that it was "better" to hang our entire future on suppliers who were 10,000 sea-miles distant? Why have we been so resistant towards giving these folks some domestic competition?

Maybe it is an oversimplification on my part perhaps - and in that case things like gold in of itself is only valuable to us like all precious metals - but not for any other lifeforms on this blue spinning ball. Paper money with an assigned value is good, I would rather have that than carry around $20, $50 or $100 worth of gold(or in this case a wheel barrel of 1-2 petrol-filled barrels - because yea it would be very impractical.

Unfortunately though again, there is at least to me a very fine line here - and there is also a reason why said currency cannot just come into existence without stringent requirements - because then any nation can say 'yea well this new currency will be worth $2 or €4 or £10 because I said it is' - obviously you will have the British and everyone in in the Eurozone say: "Based on what, and why is your currency suddenly worth more than everything else only because you said so?"

Right, and completely unregulated - thats why other nations are bringing up the idea of dumping the dollar as the reserve currency - which makes sense this is printing massive amounts - and still expecting everyone to take a $1 as having the exact same power and value as a $1 when in fact it shouldn't.

The US effectively has carte blanche though.

The Chinese HAVE to accept the US dollar because at this point we are indebted to them - however it is also complicated because it is neither in China's interest for us to default on our debt - but it is in our interest at this point, because other than Japan previous to the Chinese - nobody else in the western world WANTs to put their money in the dollar - particularly after the 2007-8 financial crisis.

Well, it looks like relations between Russia and Turkey are getting warmer....

"Russian and Turkish jets have carried out their first joint strikes on so-called Islamic State (IS) inside Syria, the Russian defence ministry says."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38667895

This does happen in real life, it's called Redenomination.

Sure - but its just that there usually is an accordance - nobody can seriously expect a currency to be worth more than another simply arbitrarily without negotiations - governments and economists also take measures that will either value or devalue currency - I noticed that in the link Zimbabwe is on there - yea , what is the REAL value of the Zimbabwe Dollar?



So Trump does have his work cut out for him - and of course there is still a chance that it can go all wrong and the hawks are successful in their own schemes - it is rather worrying that Trump may seem to be also signaling that he may be disregarding the One-China Policy, but hopefully that will be nothing.

This video also discusses NATO rather strangely - I do feel that NATO is obsolete as well - but at one point one of them mentions essentially some kind of 'alliance' with NATO and Russia - which is rather bizarre since NATO has been antagonistic from Russia's point of view anyways, so thats.....Weird.

Having an unlimited supply of money has its downside. In Germany between the wars, they thought they could claw their way out of bankruptcy by printing unlimited supplies of money. The result was that the currency collapsed.

Right we all know how that went, Hitler comes in invents the Jewish bogeyman as the cause of their trouble, and then well yea we know the rest. The US is doing the same thing, although not to the same extreme extent, the US is always conjuring some kind of threat - for either intervention or otherwise. Sure all nations have their own interest and they act accordingly, but and I know I keep shitting on the US - they are the ones since the beginning of this century and at the end of last; as been acting the most belligerent and always having some kind of excuse/bogeyman. This cannot go on forever.

Everything the US has been doing someone even inside warned about - Ike for the industrial complex - etc.

If that threat is genuine, simply hit the site with a few well-placed cruise missiles and be done with it. You're not going to launch the damned thing. Nor are you going to be allowed to keep it: it's not safe for someone like you to have such toys.

We're not going to do a "pre-emptive strike." But if we see you getting ready to do something stupid, we're gonna blow the equipment to smithereens.

Then, start a serious diplomatic effort to de-fuze what's been percolating on the Korean peninsula. Someone hit the Pause button on a war, fifty years ago, and kept it there. The power of the North Korean government exists only because they're still frozen in [that] time, and they seem to be idiots.

An entire generation of Koreans on both sides have defined their country by a war that ended never-ended fifty years ago, and "that's no way to live." The North Korean government, such as it is, derives its power from posturing and chest-thumping ... but with very dangerous equipment. The young people who live there now have never been allowed to know of anything else.

It's going to take a serious world diplomatic effort – probably led by China, because "they're next door" – to go in there and take the car-keys away from the babies before they hurt themselves, and/or us. Build roads through the DMZ (which has now turned into a nature preserve), dig up the land mines, haul the weapons away, and tell the soldiers on both sides to just go home and rediscover what it's like to be something other than a soldier.

This is not "an invasion." (Any military action will be countered by sufficient military force to protect the diplomats, but no one wants to seize the Korean peninsula.) It's going in to take the car keys away from a dangerous drunkard, and to teach these people that they are actually part of a world that does not in fact consist 100% of "enemies of North Korea." We can all see that there's a smoldering hot fire there, and we're gonna go in and put it out before the people who are saying stupid things actually manage to do something stupid.

I doubt North Korea will agree to get rid of their nukes as long as other countries (namely, the US), keep imposing their "democracy" through bombs; which is an absurdity itself, since democracy has to rise from the people themselves, not as something imposed from the outside with violence by a foreign country. Just look at Libya and the entire Middle East: one of the "reasons" (public reasons, that is) the last two US administrations gave for getting involved there was democracy, and I think it's pretty obvious the results are catastrophic.

Just get in there and take away their "nukes!" Non-governments like this one, can't be trusted with such toys.

These guys are stuck in 1954. The North Koreans, in particular, derive their political power from the idea that the entire planet is their enemy, and it's quite clear that they make world-threatening gestures just to attract attention ... or to re-ignite another "Korean War," which they imagine would play itself out just as it did in the early 50's and which would "make them feel very important again."

The Chinese should be first, because the Korean Peninsula sticks out from China and is surrounded by it. (Furthermore, "this is your problem, because more-or-less you created it in the first place.")

"We're not going to 'invade' you. (We don't want your wretched real-estate.) We're not going to treat you to another War, partly because we are aware that this is exactly what you want. We are going to 'stop' you from continuing to childishly threaten the rest of the planet. We're going to take the rest of your people out from under your thumb, so they can 'have a life,' while we send you to your room without any supper." 1954 was 63 years ago, in case you haven't noticed yet.

Don't make the "toy$" if you can't take the "armageddon," all for none!

Pencils for power popole and do not think you can teach your own two year olds!

There is a ring of truth to that statement. When the US weaponised atomic energy, at that point the proverbial genie is out of the bottle - and inevitably other states would then acquire it (USSR, PRC).

As far as the DPRK is concerned - it is more complicated to the fact that the Korean War has been on the world's longest pause - and is still going on technically. Yes it is not good that the DPRK is openly boasting about having nuclear weapons, but at the same time this is just one of many things to come back and bite us all in the ass. You also have Pakistan being provided weapons by the US, and India by Russia - so that is another flashpoint there. Israel is known by anyone to have nuclear weapons, though they will not officially confirm or deny it - Iran supposedly states they just want nuclear energy - and are helped with the Russians on that - and the fact that they are in the background has kept Israel in check from striking at Iran, because they know the Russians have signed a mutual defense treaty, so if there were a strike on Iran it would be as if Russia were attacked, which makes sense - I mean ever notice WHY even the US has not dared to go at Iran even though they are on both sides of Iran - Iraq and Afghanistan.

Back to to the DPRK though - it is the same chess game that has everyone in check unfortunately. The PRC does not want a refugee crisis on their own border, so they are actually walking a tight rope of trying to reign in the Kim regime, yet not letting the country from all out collapse. Again, it is actually in nobody's interest for a reunification of the peninsula. Think about it, if the DPRK would collapse yes the ROK would have technically won - but economically it would be a nightmare for the reunification process - and then the PRC would be faced with a peninsula that has total allegiance to the US. So yes I think the PRC would be the most worried about the Kim regime.

I have also stated this before in other threads - but again if there were a nuclear strike from the DPRK - it would not be against the ROK - because actually that would not make any sense. The actual likely target would be US territories itself (Guam, or the west coast of the US) - if not that most likely Japan because, well history, and that is the only time Japan can respond since their constitution only allows for self-defense.

Also:

That is more likely, but again we just don't know. This new Kim has only been in power for just a few years now - so it is all speculation - which is probably what makes it that much more terrifying. It is likely that the regime will collapse on itself if more purges are continued by Kim - and the further defection of high ranks. Again though nobody is taking into account what will China do. Either they will do nothing, or they can do what the USSR did back in the 1950s when Hungary briefly overthrew the pro-Soviet government. They could just go in and try to install another person, though it might not be a Kim, who knows.