Chronicles of 2026 - the next chapter

Coffee
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I forgot US markets were closed today. In retrospect it should have been obvious that he was going to drop something big over the long weekend!

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:backhand_index_pointing_up: told you so, Chronicles of 2026 - the next chapter - #72 by cubanpete_the_swiss

BTW: being unpredictable gets more and more difficult. But as long as the world shows him that it works, why change?

Futures went down like 1% last night:
https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/equities/sp/e-mini-sandp500.quotes.html

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Yeah, that’s borderline market noise, though.

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On yahoo/fortune:

EU has a $8T ‘Sell America’ bazooka to hit back at Trump

‘Europe owns Greenland. It also owns a lot of Treasuries.’ The EU’s most potent weapon may be in financial markets.
(Ihre Datenschutzeinstellungen)

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Yeah, there’s an article on FT commenting on this:

Could Europe really leverage its $12.6tn pile of US assets?

Hard to force owners to sell:

These stocks and bonds are actually overwhelmingly held by the private sector: thousands of insurance companies, pension plans, banks and other institutional investors, and millions of ordinary people. Some of the money is held on behalf of investors elsewhere in the world. For example, much of Belgium’s holdings are actually in Euroclear.

Also:

A thing that people often forget is that every seller requires a buyer, and it’s unclear who would be willing to take the other side of any European fire sale of US assets.

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It doesnt need a buyer to absolute tank US bonds and skyrocket yields. That’s kinda the point actually to not have sufficient buyers (at current levels and worse) and tank it.

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Yes, but a fire sale would cause as much pain on both sides (investors, pension funds, etc. would have to take a massive haircut), so not sure what the gain would be. (and strong EUR / USD devaluation likely lead to economic crisis by itself, regardless of whatever else is happening)

What would be more likely and is already happening (and cause long term pain to the US), is a slow decoupling. But that will take years to fully play out.

(the first point is also still valid, most of those assets are not under government control)

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It is always the lender that gets f..d.

That is why I prefer to have debt. Historically debt is always forgiven, since the day they invented interest. Check José’s coin or the wonder of compound interest.

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I don’t think EU will do that. In my view tariffs should be dealt with tariffs. EU can respond with like to like tariffs and call it a day.

Trying to tank US bond markets and engineer a crisis in US will drive public opinion against Europe inside US. Then US will have a pretext to declare Europe as enemy and go after things EU can only get from US

Without payment systems, IT infrastructure and not even energy resources, EU doesn’t have much leverage and will come to standstill.

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Well, my portfolio was actually up today. Having a big slice of gold and gold miners helped weather the Trump storm!

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Weren’t you the guy that didn’t believe in gold a few years back ? :rofl:

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How many times has the High Court postponed the announcement on whether or not the tariffs were illegal? What a great democratic state the USA is!

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Did I already mention that I like Michael Burry? Anyway, here’s his Twitter post from an hour ago that I enjoyed reading.

One reason Greenland is strategically important to the US is in fact twofold:

  1. It’s the best place to set up anti-missile defenses to intercept ICBMs coming from Russia / China

  2. It’s a very good place to set up offensive missile capabilities to threaten Russia / China

The WSJ had a good graphic out a few days ago showing the trajectory of missiles from ICBM sites around Russia to the US would fly overhead or near Greenland, which also happens to be almost directly beneath where those missiles would reach their highest points (“apogee”) which is when they are most vulnerable to interception because they are traveling at their slowest speeds.

If you throw a ball into the air you’ll see the same effect - the ball is slowest at its highest point.

And for an intelligently guided missile capable of trying to evade interception, you have an even better chance to shoot it down from a point directly beneath it since that is the closest path to the missile (i.e. least amount of warning time for the missile to realize an interceptor is coming).

This above is all courtesy of our resident rocket scientist Phil.

The US already has the right to dot Greenland with military installations, and I imagine that extends to intercepting ICBMs. Though Europe might object for some purposes.

image
image1290×1362 218 KB

(Source)

Just a data point, not a political view of mine or encouragement for you to discuss this politically.

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Nope

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I’m looking out of my window, and Earth definitely looks flat to me, your map is so 2010


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I’m not sure what his point is, similar to how the US has nuclear deterrence in Europe, I’m sure everyone is fine if they want to set something up in Greenland to protect themselves (and other NATO countries are happy to help).

(Trump has clearly said he’s only interested in owning it)

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Not political also half uninformed.. I thought the US has plenty of permissions of plant, maybe build stuff in greenland. Maybe it was just about men and not buildings. Not sure.

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You sound like a straight shooter to me.

Sorry, couldn’t resist. :wink:
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I like Burry a lot. Also, yes for Russia. China, though?

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I’m not sure what his point is, either, but I am so glad you were in the room where everyone said they’re fine for the U.S. to set up something in Greenland and that other NATO countries are happy to help.

Equally impressed by your confidence that Trump always does what he says.

I admit, though, I have not read The Art Of The Deal 


Anyway 


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