The EUR absolutelly is - the EU is a big stable open economy with large Financial Markets a freely trading currency and deep Treasuries markets.

It’s not by chance that over the last 2 decades mainly the EUR has taken a bigger and bigger slice of foreign exchange reserves away from the USD, with by 2025 the EUR being roughly 1/3 the amount of USD reserves (see here).

(That said, looking at that data, the EUR and USD foreign currency reserves have barelly moved since 2017)

Agree on the RNB not being ready - China’s currency isn’t freely traded and neither are their treasuries, and access to mainland Financial Markets is highly restricted. That’s reflected on the above mentioned foreign exchange reserves where the RNB is but 1/10 of the EUR reserves.

The end of the USD Reserve status is going to cause an absolute shitload of harm in the US (at the very least, huge inflation) but how much damage is it really going to cause elsewhere?

The US isn’t a keystone nation in most manufacturing processes anymore, nor does it produce anything that nobody else does: Modern day America mainly exports Social Media and enshittification. Even things like cloud services are provided by datacenters all over the World with the ones based in North America serving North America.

The greatest value of the US for the rest of the World is as a big consumer market for their exports, not as an essential provider of anything which is physically bound to it.

Absolutelly, there would be damage, especially for any nation left holding US Treasuries to the end (especially in the worst scenario of a US default), but “absolute shitload of harm” outside the US, that doesn’t seem likely: if the US magically dissapeared today a bunch of multinational companies would see their Revenues fall maybe 15% but otherwise things would just keep on working because very little the US makes is key.

Granted, countries for which the US is a disproportionatelly high export market like Canada and Mexico would suffer a lot economically, plus Israel would collapse without America’s propping up, but beyond that …

That really depends on whether or not there is a tipping point were an exit from the USD becomes a positive feedback cycle were states ditching it cause more states to do so (which is probable, IMHO), and if so how far we are from it.

I don’t think we know enough to be able to say that there’s no such tipping point or we’re far from it and, similarly, we can’t really say there is for certain such a tipping point and this action by the UAE would be enough to reach it.

All we do know is that over the last 2 decades the USD has decreasing as a fraction of foreign 1currency reserves in most of the World.

Should’ve figured out long ago from what repeatedly happened to the Kurds that America doesn’t give a shit about any they call “allies” other than Israel, especially Trump’s America.

It’s even better: it’s supposedly the same mythical being, but one side thinks Jesus was Their last messenger and is even Their son, whilst the other disagrees.

They’re fighting about who was and what was the nature of the last spokesperson from their mythical being.

They’re furious that the White Jewish Supremacists are also racist against White non-Jews rather than only against non-Whites.

In all fairness, “This is false, Trump is lying” is by far the most likely thing when he says anything that makes him look better (or at least less bad).

IMHO the most likely scenarion is that Trump was played by Netanyahu, later figured it out or was told that he had been played and now is lying about not having been played in the first place.

In my own experience in Britain during the Leave Referendum, lots of Indians are conservatives and even Indian-Nationalists and they absolutelly are anti-Immigrant in the country were they themselves are immigrants as long as they think it’s other immigrants that will suffer rather than they themselves.

In fact, this is a general rule, not just for Indians: immigrant rightwingers are no less calously selfish or relishi the hurt of others they see as lesser than local rightwingers, though granted people do usually bring along cultural faces from their country, such as for example a normalized perspective on discrimination against people from other casts for those from India.

Never assume that just because somebody is an immigrant they’re inherently better (or worse) than the locals - the main difference between them is how much power they have in the country they live in and expectations informed by the culture they grew up in, not in Moral, Ethics or Principles.

Keir Starmer will go down in History as a supporter of XXI century Nazis and their Holocaust.

Next to Starmer doing anything and everything in the service of ultra-racist Fascists actively committing a Genocide that’s becoming a modern version of the Holocaust, Chamberlain just looks like somebody who made a minor mistake.

I’m making the bet that if the government changes, I will have time to adapt. (Yes, I could be wrong.)

The thing with data is that once it’s out, it’s out.

If tomorrow whatever you do today starts getting deemed a perversion or even a crime, the data related to you doing sent out today will at the very least put you at the front of the list of people to be investigated for it.

Best to have as little as possible about me and my activities (no matter how innocent) out there in an easy to access form, IMHO. If I have to trade a bit of convenience for it, so be it.

I’m an European (specifically from an EU country). I was born still in a Dictatorship, before the Revolution which brought Democracy, and I grew up hearing the stories of Censorship and the Political Police arresting people for criticizing the local Dictator.

I don’t know who your “we” is, but it sure as hell ain’t me or most of my countrymen.

A mandatory Government app on your phone is the kind of thing that rings alarm bells in people’s minds around here because it stinks of Dictatorship and is a wet dream come true for a Political Police.

I lived elsewhere in Europe, so I can understand that people in countries which have long been stable and Democratic (say, The Netherlands and all of Scandinavia), have no memory of Authoritarianism and think that the Authorities only ever act for the greater good (which is why, for example, Swedes have zero concerns about every single payment they do ending up in a database), but pretty much everbody from Southern and Eastern Europe have either direct memories or heard the stories of just how bad the Authorities can be and just how bad it is to let them know what you’re doing.

Clearly, if you’re really from Europe (and not just a paid propagandist or troll), you’re not from one of those countries which freed themselves from some dictatorship or other recently enough for most people in that country having themselves or their parents been alive during the dictatorship days.

One thing is some kind of passive ID, be it in a card or in digital format, another very different thing is software running on your devices which is capable of automatically reporting to the authorities everything you do.

As the US is showing right now, it doesn’t take much to go from absolutelly legit activity - say having an abortion - and innocent apps with some kind of “phone home” ability - say something to help women track their periods - doing no harm to anybody, to extreme prison sentences (for murder, even) and said apps being used to catch and prosecute women for it.

Anybody who has even just heard the stories from their parents and grandparents about whatever the version of the Stasi in their country used to do in the Dictatorship days would be profoundly against any “report to the authorities” software even if it’s sold by politicians as “think of the children”.

If this is not the most crooked EU Comission ever, it’s a pretty close second.

PArTY A GoOd oNLy DOeS gOOd, pARty B evIL OnLY dOEs bAd.

(Switch A and B around for the other group of tribalist simpletons)

It’s not about America.

It never was.

The Democrat Party in the US is not anti-Fascism as their support for Zionism and plenty of other Fascist ideologie abroad as well as their unwillingness to stand fast against Trump shows.

The situation in the US is akin to a decades long one-two tactic being played by two of the same team (team Oligarch) on their way to score for them and against everybody else, which has NOTHING AT ALL to do with anything in Europe, except for what’s going on in Britain.

His is entirelly a “some of you might suffer and I’m willing to make that sacrifice” perspective, and he and his family have surelly made more than enough money frontrunning his proclamations to cover any costs he has from higher fuel price rises, so he is alright.

I’m wondering if the final collapse of an Empire being triggered by going into a war they cannot win which accelerates their Economic and social collapse, to serve the wishes of a much, much smaller country, is actually Historically unique.

Sure, getting some populist leader who then proceeds to mismanage everything and ends up doing some stupid shit with massive consequences that final torpedoes the once imperial nation down, is pretty common in History, but doing said “stupid shit” to serve the interests of a much smaller and weaker nation might actually make this unique.

That would require for me to know which carrier would be doing the final leg of the delivery when the package is in my country, which often I don’t and over time there’s even new carriers popping up.

A much simpler solution is to have a second mobile number which I give out for these things which is actually quite easy since I can just use a Pay As You Go SIM.

Might be worth changing the number AliExpress has on archive for me, though by now if the sold or leaked that info, it can’t be undone.

It’s used by the delivery people to contact me if they can’t find the delivery place or I’m not there. Also some of the local delivery companies will, for more expensive things, send the recipient an SMS with a code that you then give to the delivery person so that they know for sure they’re delivering to the right person (or somebody authorized by them).

It’s actually a pretty good way to solve a lot of problems with delivery, but it does mean I need to have a mobile phone number which ends up in the hands of at least two entities.