Octopus Overlords

• Israel attacks Iran
• Pakistan destabilizes India
• Brazil can't prop up Argentina
• Russia and Ukraine cut the pipes
• Japan collapses
• Mexico runs out of oil
• U.K. loses its credit rating
• China overextends
• Greece defaults
• American recovery stalls

The Preacher wrote:Are Top 10 Countries too big to fail? /shiver

LawBeefaroni wrote:Papaconstantinou.

The Preacher wrote: ↑Tue Jan 26, 2010 6:38 pm From the pages of Business Insider (albeit from their December '09 pages ):

10 Looming Geopolitical Disasters

• Brazil can't prop up Argentina

This is the rub of Argentina. It’s an Italian car of a country; on its surface, graceful and sleek. But under the hood, it keeps breaking down. In short, Argentina looks great but just doesn’t work.
...
As if trapped in Bill Murray’s “Groundhog Day,” Argentina is doomed to a repeating history of financial emergencies. You can almost set your watch to it, and, worryingly, the intervals between implosions are growing ever shorter.
It did not start this way. In the 19th century, history books questioned whether Argentina or the United States would emerge as the New World’s great power. Buoyed by vast European migration and fertile land that made it a global breadbasket, Argentina had more cars than France and was richer than Japan.

Jolted by the Great Depression, Argentina emerged from it relatively rapidly, only to run into a brick wall named Juan Perón.
...
The ensuing collapse of 2002 would rank among the worst financial implosions of modern history. Overnight, savings in pesos lost two-thirds of their value. Unemployment shot above 20 percent. Malnutrition, unheard of in a nation that once fed the world, took root in the devastated interior.

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the Perónist ex-president, took the helm a decade ago, ushering in a new era of fudged financial data and populism. Thus, the year 2014 brought another recession and debt crisis. Four years later — and now under President Mauricio Macri — Argentina sought the largest bailout in IMF history to try to stay afloat.

But inflation is again soaring. The peso is worth nearly a tenth what it was six years ago against the U.S. dollar. As Marci tries to undo Fernández’s populism — stripping away, for instance, heavy subsidies for electricity — the Argentines are feeling the pain.

Senior administration officials told The New York Times that several times over the course of 2018, Mr. Trump privately said he wanted to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Current and former officials who support the alliance said they feared Mr. Trump could return to his threat as allied military spending continued to lag behind the goals the president had set.

In the days around a tumultuous NATO summit meeting last summer, they said, Mr. Trump told his top national security officials that he did not see the point of the military alliance, which he presented as a drain on the United States.

At the time, Mr. Trump’s national security team, including Jim Mattis, then the defense secretary, and John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, scrambled to keep American strategy on track without mention of a withdrawal that would drastically reduce Washington’s influence in Europe and could embolden Russia for decades.

Now, the president’s repeatedly stated desire to withdraw from NATO is raising new worries among national security officials amid growing concern about Mr. Trump’s efforts to keep his meetings with Mr. Putin secret from even his own aides, and an F.B.I. investigation into the administration’s Russia ties.

Kraken wrote: ↑Tue Jan 15, 2019 1:48 am Howzabout "Trump pulls US out of NATO"?

Senior administration officials told The New York Times that several times over the course of 2018, Mr. Trump privately said he wanted to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Current and former officials who support the alliance said they feared Mr. Trump could return to his threat as allied military spending continued to lag behind the goals the president had set.

In the days around a tumultuous NATO summit meeting last summer, they said, Mr. Trump told his top national security officials that he did not see the point of the military alliance, which he presented as a drain on the United States.

At the time, Mr. Trump’s national security team, including Jim Mattis, then the defense secretary, and John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, scrambled to keep American strategy on track without mention of a withdrawal that would drastically reduce Washington’s influence in Europe and could embolden Russia for decades.

Now, the president’s repeatedly stated desire to withdraw from NATO is raising new worries among national security officials amid growing concern about Mr. Trump’s efforts to keep his meetings with Mr. Putin secret from even his own aides, and an F.B.I. investigation into the administration’s Russia ties.

Congress wouldn't let him get away with it, but even an attempt is Putin's wet dream.

Kraken wrote: ↑Tue Jan 15, 2019 1:48 am Howzabout "Trump pulls US out of NATO"?

Senior administration officials told The New York Times that several times over the course of 2018, Mr. Trump privately said he wanted to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Current and former officials who support the alliance said they feared Mr. Trump could return to his threat as allied military spending continued to lag behind the goals the president had set.

In the days around a tumultuous NATO summit meeting last summer, they said, Mr. Trump told his top national security officials that he did not see the point of the military alliance, which he presented as a drain on the United States.

At the time, Mr. Trump’s national security team, including Jim Mattis, then the defense secretary, and John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, scrambled to keep American strategy on track without mention of a withdrawal that would drastically reduce Washington’s influence in Europe and could embolden Russia for decades.

Now, the president’s repeatedly stated desire to withdraw from NATO is raising new worries among national security officials amid growing concern about Mr. Trump’s efforts to keep his meetings with Mr. Putin secret from even his own aides, and an F.B.I. investigation into the administration’s Russia ties.

Congress wouldn't let him get away with it, but even an attempt is Putin's wet dream.