>>21964452

tyb

Bitcoin surges to record highs

The cryptocurrency has been rallying following Donald Trump’s US presidential election win

The price of Bitcoin has continued to rally, rising above the $86,000 threshold for the first time in history on Monday amid trader hopes that US President-elect Donald Trump will support the digital asset industry.

The flagship cryptocurrency was trading at around $86,295 per coin, up by more than 7%, as of 19:23 GMT. Bitcoin thus registered its second-best week of the year, according to Glassnode data. The price has more than doubled from about $37,000 a year ago. Aside from Bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies have also seen a surge in price.

At $1.7 trillion, Bitcoin is now the ninth-largest financial asset by market capitalization. Overall, the total market cap of all cryptocurrencies eclipsed $2.88 trillion on Monday.

“With the dust from Trump’s victory still settling down, it was only a matter of time before a run-up of some sort occurred given the perception of Trump being pro-crypto, and that’s what we’re seeing now,” Le Shi, Hong Kong managing director at the market-making firm Auros, told Bloomberg.

During the campaign, Trump made a range of promises to the crypto industry, including that he would make the US the “crypto capital of the planet” and insisting that all Bitcoin should be mined in the country. He even used Bitcoin to buy cheeseburgers and beer for his supporters at a New York City bar.

Trump also pledged to unseat US Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler, who has taken an aggressive approach to the crypto industry.

Some analysts say the crypto will continue to skyrocket and could even hit the $100,000 milestone by the end of the year.

“Through the year-end, I think it will really depend on Trump’s public commentary and whether he continues to spotlight digital assets as a priority,” Brian Rudick, managing director of research at crypto market maker GSR, earlier told The Market Watch.

“If he continues to reiterate his promises, Bitcoin is likely to continue to act well. If he’s completely silent through the time when he takes the presidency in January, that would not be a good sign, and Bitcoin could give back some of these gains,” Rudick concluded.

https://www.rt.com/business/607484-bitcoin-new-record-high/

How blind support for Ukraine broke Germany

The collapse of Berlin’s ruling coalition was the logical result of throwing ever more money at Kiev at the expense of its own country

Germans love stability. Their whole political system is designed to prevent change or, at least, to slow it down to a glacial pace. Germans also love to complain. That’s why they can’t stop grousing about the obvious stagnation (another word for “stability”) of their country. They also love compromises that to many others would seem foul and ineffective but appear reasonable and, again, stable to them. That’s why they are stuck between wanting nothing to change and everything to finally get better.

Yet, from time to time, that German system of national frustration recycling breaks down at the top. Such a collapse has just occurred. On Wednesday, November 6, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz dismissed Finance Minister Christian Lindner. He thereby also ended the so-called “traffic light” coalition that has ruled Germany – for bad and for worse – for almost three years.

Named after the colors of the participating parties, the coalition consisted of Scholz’s own “red” SPD party (the Social-Democrats, who are so centrist they might as well be conservatives), the Greens (right-wing NATO-fetishists and fanatic Russophobes who also like to ruin the economy), and the “yellow” FDP (center-right “free-market” liberals whose worst nightmare is taxation). Since former finance minister Linder is also the head of the FDP, booting him out in what the New York Times has rightly described as a “spectacular breakup” led to all other FDP ministers – except one who rather abandoned his party than his cabinet position – also exiting the government. This leaves the latter in existence but dead in the water, commanding only a minority in the federal parliament, and incapable of actually governing.

Now the question is what comes next. Or to be precise, when: Since the parliamentary opposition, mainly the centrist conservatives from the CDU, is not politically suicidal and therefore will certainly not provide majorities for Scholz and his rump government, early elections are inevitable. If the coalition had lasted its full term, they would have taken place at the end of September next year. Now they will happen some time in its first quarter.

When exactly is currently a matter of contention. In constitutional terms, how to get to these emergency elections is clear: Scholz will have to call a confidence vote in parliament to predictably lose it. This will allow the German president – mostly a representative figure – to disband the parliament and initiate the elections. (A hypothetically possible variant of this maneuver that would lead directly to the establishment of a new, CDU-conservative-led government has been ruled out, for now, by their leader Friedrich Merz.)

Politically, things are not so simple. Without going into excessive detail, the key fact here is that the constitution sets certain deadlines, but individual players still have room for maneuver. This means that Scholz is interested in delaying the elections until late March, which made him announce his confidence vote for as late as January 15. That was a transparently selfish and desperate attempt to skew a losing game in his favor. Unsurprisingly, his rivals insist on moving much faster.

The conservatives from the CDU, trying to profit from their own favorable polling numbers and the ruling coalition’s breakdown and unpopularity, plausibly argue that Scholz is “eine lame duck” (in Germano-English in the original, by the way; the German elite just is that way) and that the country is in crisis and cannot afford an excessive interregnum. Scholz’s former partners, now enemies, in the FDP also call on him to get a move on and “make room.”

This particular game for advantage-by-timing will play out one way or another. But since it won’t make a great difference, it is not very interesting. There are more important issues to discuss. Regarding the causes of the coalition collapse, there are many, of course, including that it was always a rickety contraption bringing together ideologically unsuited partners, represented by often dissembling and backstabbing personalities with immense egos. The premeditated and below-the-belt manner in which Scholz went after his former finance minister after kicking him out was, as the conservative Welt newspaper rightly noted, indecently demagogic. But it was also simply representative of the true, for want of better words, moral climate in that anti-team.

more…

https://www.rt.com/news/607465-support-ukraine-crashed-german-government/

Trump ally says ‘enemies-list’ rumor is a lie

Congressman Byron Donalds has argued that the president-elect is focused solely on Americans and on fixing their main issues

President-elect Donald Trump does not have any sort of blacklist of people that he is supposedly planning to punish after taking office, Florida Congressman Byron Donalds told Fox News on Sunday.

Several US officials and media outlets have been speculating that Trump has, as one described it, a “vendetta against people that he believes have crossed him” and that he plans to go after his critics and perceived enemies.

“There’s never been a set of threats like this made by a candidate for president of the United States,” Michael Bromwich, a former inspector general at the US Department of Justice told The Hill ahead of the November 5 vote, in which Trump beat his Democratic rival Kamala Harris.

However, Congressman Donalds has dismissed these concerns, arguing that Trump has never said he would make it his mission to prosecute his detractors.

“For the American people who have been listening to these lies from the Democratic left, I will tell you: This is not something that Donald Trump has ever spoken to, or he’s committed to, whatsoever. There’s no ‘enemies list’,” Donalds told Fox News.

The Republican added that Trump does not intend to focus his attention on going after his detractors and is instead committed to helping the American people and addressing the country’s top issues, such as securing the US-Mexico border, deporting illegal immigrants and improving the economy and energy.

“His focus is the American people, not some ‘enemies list’,” Donalds insisted.

Throughout his rallies, press interviews and social media posts, Trump has regularly spoken about a group of “enemies” within the US government that he has defined as “radical-left lunatics” that allegedly have been acting against America’s best interests.

During a podcast interview with Joe Rogan, Trump has also stated that these “enemies within” pose a bigger danger to the US than some of its foreign adversaries.

However, Trump has dismissed concerns from the Democratic party that he would try to prosecute his political opponents and has pointed out that, after winning against Hillary Clinton in 2016, he ultimately chose not to go after his Democratic rival, arguing that it would have “looked terrible” for the country.

Trump has claimed that the Biden-Harris administration, on the other hand, has weaponized the US Department of Justice, and has been using it to shut down its opponents, including the former president himself.

Earlier this year, a Manhattan jury found the Republican candidate guilty on 34 felony counts related to alleged hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels and to his role in the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill riots.

https://www.rt.com/news/607486-trump-no-enemies-list/

>>21964799

They knew.

They were in on it.

>>21964934

He's reading or it has been rehearsed.

Not natural.

Not an undercover video.

His acting sucks.

Like a bad commercial.

>>21964905

>>21964962

>>21965049

Sorry.

Don't know.