White Glove Full Self-Custody and Node Set up service.

My book Choose Life is now available in audio.

GM.

Chapter 13 of Broken Money is called "Heavy is the Head that Wears the Crown".

It focuses on the US trade deficit and why it arises structurally. In short, since the USD is the global reserve currency (for reserve assets, international contracts, FX trading pairs, and cross-border funding), there is tremendous automatic demand for USD in the world compared to other fiat currencies.

To supply the world with that ever-growing need for USD to service all sorts of needs, the United States runs structural trade deficits with the rest of the world. That's how the USD spills out to the rest of the world for them to use. And the mechanism for that is that the overvalued USD boosts Americans' import power, reduces Americans' low-margin export competiveness, and basically forces open that trade deficit.

That trade deficit is the cost of maintaining the benefits USD system as currently structured. The fatal flaw is that those who bear the cost (e.g. industrialists in the Rust Belt) are not the same as those to gain the benefits (e.g. Wall Street and Washington DC folks). And those costs and benefits accumulate over decades, resulting in rising populism and pushback, which is now front and center.

The challenge that the administration faces is that they have identified a real problem, but are tackling the surface issues rather than the underlying structural issues.

Anyway, I uploaded that chapter 13 on my website for free reading:

today is the 15th day of the Lunar New Year which is mostly known for the lantern festival, which is nice family gathering enjoying savory Tang Yuans (湯圓) and lantern decorations are seen in many spots. However in the south of Taiwan (Tainan) there is a peculiar tradition called the Yanshui Beehive Festival (鹽水蜂炮) that happens on this day.

The other side of the view.