Iran Crisis ∩ Trump Politics Mass Debates Thread

[Russell Coight]

Who would be responsible for resolving the humanitarian crisis that would result and would it be achievable within the four-six week timeframe?

Who gives a fuck buddy. You resolve it, the UK can fit more immigrants. I have no sympathy for Islamic scum.

 

[AssignedEva]

I found a transcript of the leaked Trump speech, because I thought it'd be easier to read the speech than listen to Trump rambling aimlessly for an hour. I think I lost braincells as a result of reading it.

Anyway, interesting speculative piece in the Financial Times this morning about potential issues with US Treasuries. Non-US central banks have sold $82bn worth of Treasuries since the war started, so their holdings have dropped to the lowest level since 2012, but the article doesn't think this is big news ($82bn isn't massive in this market, and the foreign banks are likely just trying to increase liquidity). Long term asset holders also aren't showing any movement. The potential headache is hedge funds.

Spoiler: brief explainer

Arbitrage is the thing most people understand innately. You spot a shop is selling umbrellas for £9.99, but a shop around the corner is selling them for £10. So if you buy an umbrella from the first shop and sell it to the second you've made... a penny in profit, which is a huge waste of time. But if you can use your leverage to borrow £9.99 billion and buy a billion umbrellas, you'll make £10 million in profit. This is usually where hedge funds shine, because they have the leverage to make a lot of money on tiny price differences.

Basis trading hinges on futures. Farmer John grows onions, and currently sells onions for £9 a sack. Meanwhile Mr Groats the Grocer is looking at placing a purchase order for 3 months in the future. Mr Groats could make a deal with Farmer John that in July, he can buy 100 sacks of onions for £10 a sack. Farmer John's going to be happy if there's an onion glut, because it means he'll get paid more for his onions than he'd get on the market in July. Mr Groats is going to be happy if there's an onion blight, because it means he's getting onions way cheaper than what he'd pay on the market in September. Both of them are hedging their risk with this contract. But they're also willing to buy and sell with you.

The gap between the cost of onions and their futures price (£1) is the basis, and you can make money if you assume the difference between onions now and onions in September will narrow, which it normally does. So what you do is you buy 100 sacks of onions off of Farmer John right now for £900, and store them. You also write a contract with that says "I'll sell you 100 sacks of onions to you for £10 a sack in July" and sell that contract to Mr Groats for £1000, and he buys the futures contract because it seems like a reasonable deal. By July onions are selling for £9.80 and onion futures for delivery in September are trading for £9.90. The futures contract is a bit ropey for Mr Groats because he'd be overpaying for onions, so you buy it back off him for £990. You can also sell your onions at market price. So you make £80 (less costs incurred from storage) on the onions, and also make £10 on your futures contract shenanigans.

In practice this is offset in the market so you end up with a contract to buy onions for £9,90 a sack and another contract sell onions for £10 a sack, so you cancel them out and end up with 10p profit a sack. If you long the basis - buy loads of onions and sell futures - you're making a bet that onions will be in short supply in July and will cost more, so you've locked sellers into a disfavourable position. If you short the basis - sell off your onions and buy futures - you're making a bet that onions will be really cheap and you've locked buyers into a disfavourable position.

In the latter case, you've acquired lots of "sell onions for £10" contracts. Some investors did this in the 50s by hoarding onions and then flooding the market, bankrupting a load of onion farmers whose onions had become worthless, and that's why onions are no longer allowed to be traded as a commodity in the US.

Swap trading is the other aspect at play here. Imagine you want rental income. You could buy a house and rent it out. But if you don't want to do that, you find a property owner and say "I'll pay you £3000 a month and in return you give me the total rental income". If the rental market goes to shit then you want to be the property owner in this scenario, because you'll get more through the fixed swap payments than from the dynamic rental income. If the market goes well, then you want to be the swap contract holder, because the dynamic rental income is more than the fixed swap payments. If you notice a swap contract and rental income on a property are really mismatched but shouldn't be, you can make money by acquiring the house and waiting for rental payments to drop, or acquiring the swap contract and waiting for rental payments to rise.

Both basis trading and swap trading have been at play with Treasury bonds.

Treasury basis trading is usually buying a real Treasury bond and shorting the corresponding Treasury futures contract when the futures look overpriced relative to the bond, then profiting if the gap between them narrows. The real bond is a bit cheap compared with the paper promise tied to it, so you buy the real one, sell the promise, and wait for them to come back together in value. This is usually done at scale with massive amounts of borrowing. Treasury swap trading is betting on the difference between a fixed-rate bond interest payment and the dynamic interest rate. This works great in a calm market.

If these leveraged hedge funds panic about yield changes (how much the bond pays relative to its cost to acquire) and financing availability, then unlike foreign banks and long term asset holders, these hedge funds could panic and dump them all at once because they'd suffer from treasury bonds and treasury futures moving in different directions. This happened in 2020, which destabilised treasury liquidity, that then had downstream impacts on the cost of borrowing - threatening everything from savings to day-to-day business functioning to mortgages, and the Fed had to spend trillions of dollars to prevent that spiraling (there was also a hiccup in 2025 due to tariffs, but that was relatively minor). This is of particular concern because it appears Treasury basis trading (which more or less started in 2018) and Treasury swap trading (which is a relatively new thing) is occurring at much larger volumes now than in 2020.


The other piece in the puzzle is that the US needs to refinance a third of its entire debt next year, basically selling off new IOUs to pay off old IOUs. This is because they had to issue loads of short-dated debt to cover the covid response and then deal with the 2023 debt ceiling crisis where they nearly defaulted on their debt. The author's optimistic that Scott Bessent can keep doing his economic tricks to keep the market relatively calm, but if inflationary shocks start happening then the US may suddenly need to refinance in a market where the usual big buyers are either demanding much higher yields or backing away altogether. The whole credit supply could seize up in that situation, it'd get ugly,

 

[diroama]

The other Iran was thread is unhinged.

 

[Dagoth AMOGUS]

crybaby fags. sycophantic niggers say "yeah trump said it but he's a retard what do you expect". banal, retarded and mouthdrooling users ever.
trump ballwashing

You’re doing it wrong, the correct incantations are “pants shitting” and “penetrated by old man / senile pedophile”

Repeat until judgement day

pantsshittingpantsshittingpantsshitting

 

[AssignedEva]

The other Iran was thread is unhinged.

That's to be expected. It's a safe space for people who think Trump is doing a great job and the war is going well. The longer the war's gone on, the more people are realising this isn't the case, so the remaining ones who are nodding along and clapping at stuff like this:

have to be pretty unhinged to still be doubling down. One thing to look forward to will be just how unhinged it gets over the next few weeks, when Trump inevitably has to address his Easter Monday deadline and either throws even more petrol on the fire, or extends his deadline but this time he really, really means it.

 

[Dagoth AMOGUS]

DOES YALL KNOW HE IZ A PANTS SHITTING RETARD MUDDAFUGGA

 

[CaliforniaRaisin]

That's to be expected. It's a safe space for people who think Trump is doing a great job and the war is going well. The longer the war's gone on, the more people are realising this isn't the case, so the remaining ones who are nodding along and clapping at stuff like this:
Ver archivo adjunto 8799574
have to be pretty unhinged to still be doubling down. One thing to look forward to will be just how unhinged it gets over the next few weeks, when Trump inevitably has to address his Easter Monday deadline and either throws even more petrol on the fire, or extends his deadline but this time he really, really means it.

When he said 2 weeks ago the Strait must be open in 48 hours EXACTLY, with no threats, or he was going to obliterate all their power plants and then TACO'd is when he lost a lot of folks, I think. And then to mumble about talks and start dragging NATO and the EU to go get their oil instead?

 

[Russell Coight]

Ahh I see so this is where all the BRICfaces, europoors and democrats gather to circle jerk?

 

[Duane Dibbley]

When he said 2 weeks ago the Strait must be open in 48 hours EXACTLY, with no threats, or he was going to obliterate all their power plants and then TACO'd is when he lost a lot of folks, I think. And then to mumble about talks and start dragging NATO and the EU to go get their oil instead?

NATO/EU/UK should step up and help
We don't need their help, they're weak.
Why won't our allies help? We need them to open the strait
We don't need our weak allies, we will open the strait ourselves
We aren't opening the strait, our allies can do it. We don't need the oil.
Our allies are weak and need to step up
We don't need allies, we're leaving NATO, we can do whatever we want.
Etc, etc, etc.

How anyone can believe a word that this flip-flopping retard says is beyond me. And I liked Trump 1.

 

[Mister Fister]

Only retards use social media and I choose not to use it. Can you choose to have your holiday entitlement and modern worker rights?

Yes, it's defacto for skilled workers in the US even without the law, are you saying that you're unskilled labor?

 

[Dagoth AMOGUS]

NATO/EU/UK should step up and help

Well, yeah. They are our allies. They sent more troops to Greenland just to stoke a war than they have tried to help the USA, whom you should support and like over Iran and Israel.

Getting stabbed in the back by allies ≠ some kind of “loss” for derr dotard Drumpf but keep spinning it that way I guess, do you kid. If this were an actual war, the kind of borderline seditious journalism and sabotage you see by the left would be firmly shut down. Dems in the 80s actually tried to assist the USSR, and were never punished for that. What you’re seeing today is the same thing. Danged dirty rethugliKKKHAAAANs bad, USA bad when the DNC doesn’t have unilateral control, etc etc

 

[Prööt :DD]

Ahh I see so this is where all the BRICfaces, europoors and democrats gather to circle jerk?

Using those labels as pejoratives for dissenters doesn't even work. BRICS is either neutral or actively benefitting, every Euro country except Spain tacitly supports the US using their bases as staging areas, and the establishment Dems only have clerical disagreements while falling over one another to proclaim their hatred for Iran that's only eclipsed by Big Gay Lindsey.

 

[oh no its pipkun]

You blocked most of the oil making everyone's life harder and fucking up your own planting and harvest season
-Tanked the economy, worldwide

the Iranians were inspired by the houthis in the red sea when the europeans cucked and asked iran to mediate the issue. the europeans didn't designate them as terrorists and they kept the red sea closed for 2 now 3 years. so now iran decides to close the strait and the europeans, again, cuck.
if protecting the economy is important, our shitty allies would be helping out. when we get control of the strait there will be no love for the backstabbing euros who caused this conflict in the first place.

-DIDN'T get regime change

was this a goal?

-PROVED you'd be incompetent and defending Taiwan and green lighted that invasion

if the iran conflict was the taiwan conflict, the chinese politiboro would be dead. and the 3 gorges dam would be destroyed and nuclear radiation would be in the sea, land and air.

You bet your ass we did, so you better pay us the toll if you want to get through our strait.

we're gonna unblock it and give our asian friends all the tollless oil and our euro enemies will have to buy grey marked sanctioned russian oil. we will collapse euro manufacturing and make them a real vassle state.

You're paying the toll, actually

39 billions to be exact + stockpiles of munitions you'll need years to replace

that cost isnt just to open the strait, we are gaining modern warfare experience and developing new strategies. i can understand why the hohols want to join in, because even as support units, there are lessons to be learned.

 

[Prööt :DD]

Well, yeah. They are our allies. They sent more troops to Greenland just to stoke a war than they have tried to help the USA, whom you should support and like over Iran and Israel.

Getting stabbed in the back by allies ≠ some kind of “loss” for derr dotard Drumpf but keep spinning it that way I guess, do you kid. If this were an actual war, the kind of borderline seditious journalism and sabotage you see by the left would be firmly shut down. Dems in the 80s actually tried to assist the USSR, and were never punished for that. What you’re seeing today is the same thing. Danged dirty rethugliKKKHAAAANs bad, USA bad when the DNC doesn’t have unilateral control, etc etc

Sending a few dozen troops to Greenland was really stoking a war against an established ally, who was constantly signaling that they are going to use hostile military force to occupy a territory that they already have full military rights to occupy. To be honest I doubt the Democrats would do anything to oppose such a productive invasion, short of complaining about not doing a proper war powers resolution beforehand.

 

[Dagoth AMOGUS]

Sending a few dozen troops to Greenland was really stoking a war against an established ally,

I concur.

0:03

 

[Prööt :DD]

if the iran conflict was the taiwan conflict, the chinese politiboro would be dead. and the 3 gorges dam would be destroyed and nuclear radiation would be in the sea, land and air.

If you think the US has even close to the level of commitment to the defense of Taiwan as it does Israel, and against an actual nuclear power, I got a bridge in Guangzhou to sell you.

 

[PrimeRadiant]

Well, yeah. They are our allies. They sent more troops to Greenland just to stoke a war than they have tried to help the USA, whom you should support and like over Iran and Israel.

Getting stabbed in the back by allies ≠ some kind of “loss” for derr dotard Drumpf but keep spinning it that way I guess, do you kid. If this were an actual war, the kind of borderline seditious journalism and sabotage you see by the left would be firmly shut down. Dems in the 80s actually tried to assist the USSR, and were never punished for that. What you’re seeing today is the same thing. Danged dirty rethugliKKKHAAAANs bad, USA bad when the DNC doesn’t have unilateral control, etc etc

Lets see, you spent the last year running down and humiliating your allies, threatening to annex territory from them, actively funding and supporting separatists in one of the them, smashing them economically with huge tariffs, and now you expect them to support you in a stupid war you didnt even consult with them on? Fuck off.

NATO isnt obligated to help the orange retard and his kosher overlord in a pointless and stupid war that actively damages the economy of the world.

 

[Dagoth AMOGUS]

Lets see, you spent the last year running down and humiliating your allies, threatening to annex territory from them, actively funding and supporting separatists in one of the them, smashing them economically with huge tariffs, and now you expect them to support you in a stupid war you didnt even consult with them on? Fuck off.

NATO isnt obligated to help the orange retard and his kosher overlord in a pointless and stupid war that actively damages the economy of the world.

see, that kind of spoiled, selfish, pantshitting mush for brains attitude is exactly why America will leave NATO and Europe will be reclaimed by what’s left of Europe: Russia. And they will probably eradicate the browns for you. You’re welcome in advance.

You can support the red white and blue, or the white, blue and red. . And you will be happy.

 

[neger psykolog]

That's to be expected. It's a safe space for people who think Trump is doing a great job and the war is going well. The longer the war's gone on, the more people are realising this isn't the case, so the remaining ones who are nodding along and clapping at stuff like this:
Ver archivo adjunto 8799574
have to be pretty unhinged to still be doubling down. One thing to look forward to will be just how unhinged it gets over the next few weeks, when Trump inevitably has to address his Easter Monday deadline and either throws even more petrol on the fire, or extends his deadline but this time he really, really means it.

"with a little more time"

so what you're saying is we need 4 more weeks to flatten the curve?

 

[The Punished Mitch]

Strait is open for 50 years without incident, without so much as a toll. The US and Israel attack, strait is closed in response "those dang dirty Europeans!!!"

This is your brain on a steady diet of kosher sperm.