Thursday, April 6
The US Dollar is in Trouble
Last week, China and Brazil reached an agreement to settle trades in one anothers’ currencies. Over the past 15 years, China has replaced the United States as the main trading partner of resource-rich Brazil, and as such that shift may have been inevitable. But within the context of recent circumstances, this appears to be another in a series of recent blows to the central role of the dollar in global trade.
As the world’s reserve currency, the US dollar is essentially the default currency in international trade and a global unit of account. Because of that, every central bank, Treasury/exchequer, and major firm on Earth keeps a large portion of their foreign exchange holdings in US dollars. And because holders of dollars seek returns on those balances, the ubiquity of dollars drives a substantial portion of the demand for US government bonds in world financial markets.
The switch from dollars to a yuan-real settlement basis in Chinese-Brazilian trade is only the latest in a growing trend. Discussions of a more politically neutral reserve currency have gone on for decades. The profound economic disruption experienced by Iran, and more recently Russia, after being evicted from dollar-based trading systems like SWIFT, however, have led many nations to consider imminent contingency plans. India and Malaysia, for example, have recently begun using the Indian Rupee to settle certain trades, and there have been perennial warnings about Saudi Arabia and other energy exporters moving away from the dollar. On that note, China also recently executed a test trade for natural gas with France settled in yuan. READ MORE...
Stellarator Reactor
- With the promise of fusion on full display after a U.S. lab achieved “ignition” late last year, fusion companies are raising capital to bring this next-gen green energy to life.
- Magnetic confinement reactors, such as tokamaks and stellarators, are the leading fusion concept, and are designed to contain super-hot plasma long enough to sustain fusion reactions.
- Although tokamaks are more abundant and easier to build, the company Type One Fusion just received millions to bring its stellarator reactor to market.
Fusion reactors come in all shapes and sizes, but can mostly be separated into three groups, defined by how they contain the super-hot plasma needed to combine lighter nuclei into heavier ones.
The first is gravitational reactors (a.k.a. stars), which are impossible to recreate on Earth. The second group is inertial reactors, which essentially fire a bunch of lasers at a small pellet and contain the resulting fusion reaction by sheer inertia for only 100 trillionths of a second. This is the concept that finally achieved ignition last December. But it’s the third group—magnetic reactors—that’s arguably the most promising.
Magnetic confinement fusion uses superconducting magnets to contain hot plasma long enough for a fusion reaction to take place. These magnets are absolutely critical, as they keep the plasma from touching any of the other materials in the reactor, and no known material can withstand the over-100-million-degrees-Celsius temperatures required for fusion. But even this kind of fusion divides into a further two camps: tokamaks and stellarators. READ MORE...
Wednesday, April 5
Diminishing Importance of Traditional Values
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Americans in the nation's capital reacted to the country's changing principles, with some disheartened and frightened by a recent poll that found values like patriotism and faith have become less important to the nation over the last 25 years.
"It's sad," Sherry, from Alabama, told Fox News. "They don't believe in what we stand for."
But Michelle, from Virginia, said Americans should be proud to have a country full of diverse and evolving values.
"We're supposed to be different," Michelle said. "We're not supposed to be the same."
Sherry, from Alabama, says Americans no longer believe in what the country stands for as patriotism and faith drop in importance, according to results from a March survey. (Megan Myers/Fox News Digital)
Core principles once central to Americans' values receded in importance this year, according to a Wall Street Journal-NORC poll published Friday. The share of respondents who said patriotism was very important dropped 32 percentage points compared to a 1998 poll, and those who said the same of religion decreased by 23 percentage points.
"It seems we're moving away from some of the things we hold closer and moving towards others," Jay, from Atlanta, told Fox News. "As times move on, people want different things."
The importance of having children dropped from 59% in 1998 to 30%, according to the poll. Meanwhile, respondents who considered money a top priority increased to 43%, up from 31% a quarter-century ago.
Americans told Fox News their top values, ranging from work and family to hard work and independence. (iStock)
Several Americans walking in the nation's capital shared their top values. READ MORE...
We Are Getting Ready
Fall was not really that cool and Spring was not really that warm... but, it is better than freezing temps and wind.
We put out our deck furniture yesterday even though we have not yet opened our pool. While the weather is still not the best, we will probably not be spending much time out on the deck for another couple of weeks. More than likely our pool will be opened by the end of this month.
Our first trip to Myrtle Beach will take place during the last week of May and before families start bombarding the coast. We stay in an ocean view condo that has a bedroom, bath, kitchen, dining table, living room, balcony. We typically eat all our meals in the condo except for dinner.
Back to East TN: While some of the trees are still trying to get their summer leaves, the weather is mild, without humidity but has a faint breeze. It is a perfect time to be outside working.
Our three cats are spending more and more time on the screened-in back porch with the nice weather and our walking is now done outside around the neighborhood instead of inside... where we would walk around a concrete oval track... 16 revolutions was a mile... and, it was boring unless one watched the pickle ball players on the basketball courts.
Senior citizens paid a dollar a day to use the facilities or they could purchase a pass for $25 that gave one 30 visits.
I spend most of the year inside the house as my treatments prevent me from gettng too much sun exposure. I am usually wearing a T-shirt and flannel PJ bottoms... except when it gets warm, I usually wear shorts. Every so often I wear sweats but most of the time they make me perspire.
Being retired is an easy life and one that I would not recommend because if you are retired, then you are probably experiencing numerous health issues which ain't that much fun... Still, I wake up when I want to and shave every other day. I've even been known to take an afternoon nap.
De-Dollarization
This week Brazil and China (above) reached a deal to trade using their own currencies rather than the US dollar. The Chinese are fulfilling their vow from February to open up a clearing house to settle yuan-denominated trades in Brazil, having previously announced similar clearing houses in Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and Laos.
In many ways, this development is inevitable. As of 2021, China accounts for 31.3% of Brazilian exports and 22.8% of their imports, the most of any country. The United States comes a distant second, accounting for only 11.2% of Brazilian exports and 17.7% of imports.
China has been Brazil’s largest trade partner for fourteen years. At a certain point, both parties were going to raise the question of why their trade should use a third party currency.
The same day that the Brazilian trade deal was announced, another major story hit global currency markets: China settled its first LNG trade in yuan. This development alone would be important enough to bear scrutiny given that much-vaunted status of the US dollar as an energy currency — the ‘petrodollar’ — but reading beyond the headlines reveals something even more surprising.
The same day that the Brazilian trade deal was announced, another major story hit global currency markets: China settled its first LNG trade in yuan. This development alone would be important enough to bear scrutiny given that much-vaunted status of the US dollar as an energy currency — the ‘petrodollar’ — but reading beyond the headlines reveals something even more surprising.
The trade was not settled with an energy company in some far-off Middle Eastern country, but instead with TotalEnergies, the French supermajor. With revenues of over $182bn and more than 100,000 employees, TotalEnergies is by far the largest company in France.
This energy deal suggests that ‘yuanisation’ will not be confined to the global periphery. Until recently, suggestions that the BRICS+ countries would dump the dollar and move to new currencies was met with derision. The Brazilian trade deal puts that scepticism firmly to bed.
This energy deal suggests that ‘yuanisation’ will not be confined to the global periphery. Until recently, suggestions that the BRICS+ countries would dump the dollar and move to new currencies was met with derision. The Brazilian trade deal puts that scepticism firmly to bed.
But it now appears that the yuan is making inroads into Europe. While the speed of this change is shocking even to those of us paying attention, these developments were presaged by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s controversial visit to Beijing last November. READ MORE...
Tuesday, April 4
Human Life Span
Scientists have long debated the greatest possible age of a person, with previous studies placing the limit at up to 150 years. But in the past 25 years, no one has surpassed the record for the world's oldest person, held by Jean Louise Calment, who died at age 122 in 1997.
"This has led people to argue that the maximum life span has been reached," David McCarthy(opens in new tab), an assistant professor of risk management and insurance at the University of Georgia, told Live Science.
In a new study, McCarthy and his colleagues say they've uncovered evidence that this longevity record will be broken within the next four decades. The team did not propose a maximum age that humans can live to, but rather, they used a mathematical model to project what mortality trends might look like in upcoming years.
However, not everyone agrees with the team's conclusions, experts told Live Science.
In the study, published March 29 in the journal PLOS One(opens in new tab), the scientists analyzed mortality data from hundreds of millions of people in 19 countries who were born between the 1700s and the late 1900s, up to 1969.
They tweaked an existing mathematical model to explore how the mortality rates among people ages 50 to 100 differed in people with different birth years. They then used this information to predict the ages that people may reach in the future. READ MORE...
Invasion of Privacy
Without my knowledge or approval, whenever I perform a google search on an item I am curious about, information about that item shows up on my phone, on my facebook account, and on my news feed.
If I am curious about hydrogen cars, then I get ads about hydrogen cars.
If I search for hearing aids, then I get ads about hearing aids.
If I am curious about what an EV is selling for, then I get ads for EVs.
I disregard the ads and it is no big deal, except for the fact that someone is tracking me and what I am looking at and then trying to sell me those items... If I was browsing in a shopping mall, they would not be able to do that.
When I am approached like that, when it is uninvited, then the last thing I am going to do is buy from you... just for spite, I will buy from someone else who did not pester me.
This may be the weay the world is right now, but I am not going to play their games.
Lots of people admire the pesistence of someone who pesters people... and, I don't deny that those who pester might one day become very wealthy as a result, but not from me.
This invasion of privacy is going to come back and haunt us one day... but then it will be too late.
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