The CCP has long been building a database on people in all countries of strategic interest (U.S., UK, Austrlia, India, etc etc). And not just the prominent people. All the people. [1][2][3][4][5]
But hey, tell us again how China is only interested in the Chinese.
He broke the law. He fled the country to avoid the rule of law. He sought refuge in a country run by a criminal syndicate that is presided over by a madman ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As disgusting and insane as this invasion of Ukraine is, the current state of European treaties would not necessitate a world war as an outcome.
Putin, the evil war making scum that he is, has been explicit for DECADES that the armament and NATO flirtation with Ukraine is completely unacceptable to Russia, Russia sees Ukraine as a buffer zone against the West, and that Ukraine belongs in the Russian sphere of influence. History does not disagree with him. Ukraine was for centuries part of the Russian empire and then the Soviet Union. Ukraine has a large population of ethnically and/or culturally Russian peoples. All of these facts have been known and communicated for many years. In fact, these are some of the reasons Ukraine has never been on the path to NATO membership.
In other words, while we can and should condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it does not, per se, set us on a deterministic path to a world war.
Quoting Obama circa 2016:
"The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do."
I think you're not understanding. While a bunch of people losing money is bad, it wouldn't create another Great Depression, per se. A huge investment bank with millions of counterparties going under absolutely could cause massive, long term damage to both the financial markets and the real economy. For example, people losing their hats in crypto wouldn't cause commercial paper markets to dry up. A big IB going down almost did in 2008. That would have resulted in huge businesses that employed, collectively, millions of people becoming effectively insolvent. Now you're talking about a Great Depression. Big difference. This is where the keyword "systemic" comes into play–as in, this entity is a critical node in the system. Its collapse could jeopardize the system.
The difference (systemic vs non-systemic) is not just about magnitude, but also in who Lehman's counterparties were and the effects when those counterparties (those who were exposed to Lehman) could not get their expected capital (and the chain reaction of events that sets off throughout the capital markets and then the real economy). I remember reading some stat that claimed Lehman had derivative contracts with total notional value in the 10s of trillions.
Hi, could you please stop marketing here? You've posted a bunch of replies in this thread linking to your employer. It's nice that you're (sort of) disclosing your biases, but we really don't want HN to turn into marketing spam.
From my recollection of the 2008/09 financial crisis, systemic risks were those in which entities were deeply intertwined with one another on a massive scale, such that there failure would potentially bring down the entire system of finance. We're talking: retail banking (payments, savings, lending), commercial banking (idk?), public debt markets (bigco and gov funding), but most especially short term commercial funding. Again, going on memory, failure of short term funding (repo (?)) markets would have caused real, non-finance companies to become insolvent or at the very least massively impair their working capital positions. This has the knock on effect of reducing demand throughout their supply chains and major cost cutting (job loss). Etc etc. In other words, massive recession or even deep depression.
Crypto, on the other hand, seems to be mostly a casino, a big one, yes. But one that is not deeply intertwined with other parts of the financial system. Coinbase, for instance, is not systemically important. It doesn't (yet) have tendrils in so many important lines of business as did the megabanks of yesteryear.
You seem to misunderstand me. I don't make an argument for its "rightness".
Rather, war crimes will always occur in war. And the primitive instinct to stay alive, at almost any price, is programmed into us. When faced with existential threats to our loved ones, these ivory tower questions about the relative worths of lives (100:1? 10:1?) are exposed for the nonsense they always were. Our biological programming kicks in: "survive at any cost - protect your own – eradicate the threat". It is only subsequent generations, from upon high in their ivory towers and far removed from the threat, who are able to condemn the savagery of the survivors.
In other words, it is always best to not enter a war. Perhaps even if attacked. 9/11 and the U.S.'s insane and disastrous responses in Afghanistan and Iraq being the latest demonstrations.