while losses like these are large and indicative of poor lending practices for mortgages, there was more at play for the 2008 market implosion. It wasnt just defaults on mortgage-backed securities, but the widespread failure (fraud imo) of rating agencies giving these MBS good ratings, the trillions of dollars of derivatives betting on those false ratings, and the failure (fraud imo) of regulatory bodies to identify and mitigate any of this. A mortgage crisis is surely happening but i doubt the fallout will be anywhere near 2008. but i stopped paying attention to financial regulatory policy in the early trump years after he undid the measly measures obama put in place post-crisis so your guess is as good as mine
I know people who see and acknowledge this kind of thing but fell headfirst into the ruzzia bad narrative following the smo, absolutely scoffing at the idea that the western press isn't free or independent. I have a really hard time getting americans to carry over any skepticism from one "media event" (for lack of a better term) to another. its infuriating.
Any other substacks you might recommend? I'm wondering if I can curate a feed, it would be with it too sign up
This is wild. I would imagine you shed some turnout for an incumbent, but this is a reduction over 50%. My vibes based analysis to this point expected this, but the results are so much more extreme
i received an exceptional rating for my year end review, which is accompanied by a 3.25% raise this year. im glad my hard work made me 0.15% richer ahead of inflation!
i actually checked the wh.gov and the TTM inflation for december 2023 was 3.4%, so im not actually richer lol. also 2022's TTM was 6.5%. The average person's income must be 10% higher than in 2021 just to keep up with inflation
My wife's a hopeless radlib, maybe demsoc. I am very open about my politics and she doesn't care for the most part. I have tried to convert her but she's got somelib hangups and can't accept the historical necessity of violence. so we mostly agree until i say some 
shit, then she just sighs and calls me crazy. love her
Everything remotely bad is attributed to Russian/Chinese subterfuge. I'm reminded of the nordstream explosion. every liberal in my personal life was convinced russia sabotaged their own pipeline. no amount of common sense or evidence could override the decades of propaganda. 
I think you've got the right idea. A lot of the people I know that are into golf just like hanging out outside with friends. Sure a few of them are well off, but I think the appeal as you age and have kids has more to do with being the 'third place'.
there are comments in this very thread that are doing that lol
My wife is a lib, and won't convert despite my best efforts. Her opinions are mostly good, but there are some real dogshit ones. I think it's a good reminder that people don't always agree, and you have to find a way to live with that
We are so happy, she's the best partner I've ever had. I shudder to think what my life would be like if I disqualified her for not being ml
well said. this type of liberal pacifism isn't pacifism at all, but rather a preference for the slow, abstract violence of the status quo to revolutionary violence. I'm reminded of the twain quote you had in the mega a few weeks back.
I feel as though anyone with an appreciation for history must acknowledge the necessary role of violence (or the threat thereof), in the slow march of progress
its so hard not to feel alienated or experience derealization
Absolutely. The way that I have been able to break through with the liberals in my life has been by comparing it to the Nat Turner's rebellion, the Haitian slave revolt, or the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Sure, you can sit here comfortably in the imperial core and talk about how no violence is acceptable, but could you honestly blame the slave or the ghettoized for their violent uprisings? Especially since any attempts at negotiations or peaceful protest have been met with violence in this case - the 2005 ceasefire and the march of return.
Abhorring violence of this type is liberal idealism at its finest
At current interest rates, 5% down, and an 800 credit score, you're monthly piti is still like 2,700. Assuming you make that 92k/yr, and are traded at 22%, you're monthly take home is 5900. That's 45 percent of your monthly income. "Affordability" is for dinner heavy lifting here
im curious if anyone's met the call to condemn hamas with a simple 'no'. how did it turn out for you?
Could you make an argument for why the war merely accelerated de-dollarization? What evidence is there that countries were turning away from holding USD reserves or moving towards international trade not denominated in dollars? Factionalism in the US government, led mostly by a trump administration, might have lowered confidence in US generally, but how has that impacted US economic hegemony?
Quoting this pro-western piece in TabletMag:
This is a more devastating moment of clarity than it might seem at first glance. The promise of economic sanctions was never that they would punish people and corporations in authoritarian countries in order to provide vicarious emotional satisfaction for Western voters; the hope was that sanctions could simultaneously strengthen diplomacy while more or less replacing military force as an instrument of coercion. Western domination of key technologies, banking, trade routes, and international institutions like the IMF, World Bank, and the Paris Club—so the thinking went—would allow us to impose our desired outcomes not only on irritant regimes like Cuba, Venezuela, and Myanmar, but also on peer-competitors like Iran, China, and Russia. And we could do it all without having to fire a shot.
The success of the Russian economy at resisting the sanctions regime is directly related to the emerging multipolar world. Those peer-competitors like China, but also "irritant regimes" like Cuba are all watching things develop with great interest.
As an aside, I don't think anyone here is doing math with human lives and saying that the blood spilled is "worth it". That's un-charitable, at best. It's more of a material analysis - history, international relations, expanding russian economic influence on the EU, and politics has wrought war. Many on this site, myself included, wish for the war to end in a way that doesn't result in the complete collapse or subjugation of the russian state because it would be net negative for anti-imperialism and the global south. But importantly they still want the war to end.