Tariffs and sky high audio prices.

Take a gander at breitbart.com and you will see. If I have to come up with a label, I’d call the "so many" "nationalists" those who think they are getting the shaft from everyone else, harbor great resentment, and have identified the scapegoats. Much like Germany after WWI.  

@mapman 

Ok, I think I understand. I too am concerned about extremism in any form, especially as a method of whipping up the electorate into a froth. 

As to Breitbart, I just can't seem to even explore what they publish. My path crossed with the central character at Breitbart many years ago and I would rather avoid any exposure whatsoever. Some things a shower won't wash off.

Extremism in audio? I've seen evidence that it is alive and well too. I've seen here on Audiogon where the different camps get all bent out of shape because someone loves their $500 amp while others get bent out of shape because someone else thinks their $100,000 amp is a great value. There is no one size fits all in anything but the person with the $100,000 amp doesn't care if there is a group of picketers out there, certain that anyone spending more than they have arbitrarily determined is the ceiling. The "fuser question", not unlike the "birther question", seems to have no common ground. There are only 3 categories on that front: They absolutely know the truth and have taken a stance, they do not absolutely know the truth but have taken a stance and finally, the "really, don't you have anything better to do than argue over something so trivial?" I'm going to let everyone in on the facts...

(1) fuses work (most of the time, they blow when they are supposed to)

(2) President Obama was born in this galaxy

Great discussion to wake up to, even with the expected snide remarks (looking at you, millercarbon) 😄

Great and level headed points from all even if there is disagreement. Were did all the comity come from? If only it could always be this civil.

The one boogyman that I want to address is the supposed hold that China has on us and how they can trigger something awful should they choose to do so. It's not so.

As of now, China holds about 5.6%% of our debt, Japan about 4.8%, and the rest of the world, about 18.9%. Whenever anyone sells off our bills, it's immediately scooped up by someone else. We are still the big dog and will continue to be world's reserve currency for the long term, foreseeable future.

China can't knock us down by itself: it would take every holder of US debt to collectively band together against us and who better to make that more than a passing thought than that certain someone who claims to be a nationalist but is a dyed in the wool globalist with business interest all around the world and acts like the world is his personal ant farm.

China needs to maintain larger reserves of US debt to prop up their currency (renminbi). Some even go so far as to describe China as a paper tiger that can stumble faster than Japan did with their downturn a couple of decades ago, not to mention what Asia, as a whole, went through in the late '90s.

China is doing now what we did back in the Savings & Loans scandal when we built more buildings than could be occupied, played fast and loose with regulation, and severely hurt the economy, setting the stage for the likes of Enron, pension theft, and one side of our political spectrum modeling themselves after the Soviets what with the denouncement of government, gangster capitalism, privatization of the commons and utilities, the rise of mercenary armies, and growing inequality.

It's a wild, wild, wild, wild, world.

All the best,
Nonoise