
Europeans' trust in US as world leader collapses during pandemic - Farbodkhz
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/29/europeans-trust-in-us-as-world-leader-collapses-during-pandemic
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sschueller
How did it take that long after everything the US has done in the last 20
years. In what exactly is/was the US a world leader? Making money? It sure
wasn't justice, Healthcare, infrastructure, human rights, poverty,
homelessness etc. List goes on and on.

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dx034
Hollywood is an extremely powerful marketing tool, exporting the American
patriotism around the world. Movies that involve the military also tend to
paint a very positive picture of the US military. And those movies and series
is what kids and teenagers around the world grow up with.

Whereas to see poverty, homelessness or infrastructure problems you actually
have to travel to the US.

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agustif
CIA will edit those scripts to be lookin' good too.

Fock!

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dx034
Not sure about CIA but heard the military let's film studios use equipment (up
to tanks and planes) for free as long as they have a say on how they are
portrayed. That's a powerful incentive.

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tibbydudeza
The EU should put on their big boy pants and forge their own path independent
of the US .. WW2 and the cold war are relics of the past.

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snogaraleal
The EU can't even keep itself together. Think about that for a second.

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taejo
I think it would be better to compare opinions now to already-surveyed
opinions before the pandemic; it's easy to say that you lost trust during the
pandemic even if you had low trust before it started.

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AznHisoka
Absolutely. all surveys should have data before an event. Otherwise there is
no benchmark to compare your results to.

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fallingfrog
Before coronavirus I thought that the dominance of the United States
internationally would last another 20 or 30 years, but now it seems that it
might all fall apart much sooner. It wouldn’t surprise me if the US dollar
lost its position as the world reserve currency as the result of all this,
especially given that the fed is directly propping up the whole financial
system with trillions of dollars out of thin air. That can’t continue forever.
Plus, the whole world has gotten a look behind the curtain, and they can now
see how corrupt and useless our political system has become, how desperate and
angry the populace is. Our failure to deal with coronavirus wasn’t because the
government didn’t want to deal with the issue. The failure happened because it
is unable to. Most declining empires follow the same path.

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snogaraleal
I'm from an Italian-Spanish family from South America (grandparents emigrated
to the New World during World War II), and I lived in Europe for 5 years
(studying abroad).

When people think of currency, they tend to focus on the supply side (monetary
policy) and forget to look at the demand side (necessary liquidity).

There is as much dollar-denominated debt outside the US as there is within. As
counter-intuitive as it sounds, the crisis is creating more demand for US
dollars, not less. This is why the Fed expanded the "dollar swap line"
program. The "eurodollar" system is often overlooked, yet one of the most
important drivers of the global economy.

Compare the policy of the Federal Reserve with the ECB (Eurozone) and the PBOC
(China). And you will see why not only will the US dollar not collapse, in the
coming years it may get so strong it could lead to a new Plaza Accord.

The Central Bank of Norway had to restart intervention in foreign exchange
markets for the first time in decades. Norway, the #1 most developed nation in
the world, experienced a dose of monetary reality on the 22nd of March (look
up NOKUSD).

The so-called "rising power" of China is as marketable as it is absurd. Every
other quarter there is a story of the PBOC injecting liquidity and lowering
the capitalization requirement for banks. Needless to say, the Yuan still pegs
to the US dollar for a reason.

Public opinion and mainstream media are divorced from financial reality, and
we don't know if this is due to hysteria or sheer incompetence.

The surprise comes with the realization that the noisy political infighting of
the American political class is orthogonal to almost everything.

The US may be a disaster, and simultaneously be the best in the world. Trump
may be an idiot, and simultaneously be the smartest in DC.

Moral posturing isn't a substitute for good banking.

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curation
Europe has 400 camps and 47 000 refugees (pg 106 Necropolitics A. Mbembe) so
they need to activate the imaginary split between themselves and the failing
Empire in hopes they can recuperate enough power to step into it and take
charge.

