Comments by "seneca983" (@seneca983) on "Zeihan on Geopolitics" channel.

  1.  @truthmonster3290  What precisely makes him a war criminal?
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  2. Though I'd imagine they'd be transported without the fuses.
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  3.  @truthmonster3290  Only after the war in Ukraine is over.
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  4.  @truthmonster3290  I don't see an answer.
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  5.  @adwarfsittingonagiantsshoulder  The wording here is a bit misleading. Denmark did implement a tax on cows and the reason is that they emit methane (due to enteric fermentation) which contributes to global warming. However, most of the methane from cows come from burps, not farts. Also, I think the tax is just a flat amount per cow per year. The precise amount of methane emissions isn't measured (or at least I think it isn't but I'm not 100% sure).
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  6. "Finnland is the only country without a national debt" That's not true. Finland's public debt to GDP ration is in the ballpark of 60%. It's not worrisomely high but it's certainly not nothing.
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  7. "Our last war was 200 years ago, when we lost Finland" No, that one wasn't the last one. The last one was the one in which you gained Norway.
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  8. That's not much of a consolation and warmer summers also mean more energy usage due to AC.
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  9. Zeihan is always making overdramatic predictions that seem unlikely to become true.
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  10. 3:35 It was about 1/8th of the population, not 1/4th.
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  11. "Finns of today is not the same "heavy duty Finns" of yesterday who got their military education in the 1800's Tsarists army!" There probably wasn't that many Finns in the Tsarist army back then. Finland had it's own separate army. Then Nikolai II abolished it and tried to conscript Finns to the Russian army but that was fiercely resisted so he gave up.
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  12. 1:15 Where does that 5-10 years come from? You didn't give a source or a calculation. It just sounds made up.
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  13. EU and Japan have lower inflation and China has been experiencing deflation lately, so no.
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  14.  @let0atreides  "If US maintains or hikes, the EURUSD will go below 1." I don't think so. US has higher inflation.
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  15.  @let0atreides  At least in the long term, exchange rate movement should (roughly) correspond to inflation differential. Inflation in the US is higher than in the Eurozon which would seem to point to USD weakening relative to EUR.
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  16.  @timothykeith1367  Texas has its own grid that is not synchronized with the eastern nor the western grid of the US which makes it more difficult to transfer electricity in and out of Texas. Moreover, this isn't due to any technical reason but rather due to wanting to avoid federal regulation.
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  17. You should still note that gas prices are now a lot lower than they were a year ago and European storage levels are higher. Also, this time we're probably not going to see a half of the French nuclear reactors offline due to maintenance.
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  18.  @Livin-In-a-Box  Last winter Germany had only 3 nuclear power plants remaining in operation. Thus, their closure is a smaller effect than having all the French nuclear plants that were closed due to maintenance last winter back online now.
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  19.  @chriswusel7516  "Why germany would then need a plant to liquify exacly as a strong net importer please enlight me." I think you misunderstood Peter's argument. He's saying it would take 7 years for suppliers of LNG, such as the US, to build new liquefaction facilities and this limits how much more LNG they can deliver to Europe (and elsewhere) even if Germany could easily receive more. I don't know if he's correct or not but hopefully this makes it more clear to you what his claim was.
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  20.  @daryl9799  Methane is known to be a strong greenhouse gas.
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  21. Is it liquefaction or regasification facility? Peter was specifically talking about liquefaction facilities.
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  22. He also spelled "Karelian" as "Carillion".
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  23. 4:35 While I broadly agree with your take (though not all details) I don't think this particular point makes sense. Demographics don't for the Eurozone to run a trade surplus; the trade balance of the Eurozone is in fact in the negative. I'd say the Euro could function as a global currency (and to a degree it does) but the US economy is bigger and the US Dollar has an established status so it ends up being used much more. (Of central bank forex reserves US dollar has about 3x bigger share than the Euro.)
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  24. I don't think your analysis makes much sense. In the longer term inflation is largely determined by monetary policy so it's really up to what the Fed decides (in the case of the US). Even part of the pandemic related increase in inflation was due to the Fed creating a lot more dollars. Also, even if you want to argue the importance of real factors for inflation, you should note that many of the factors you mentioned should depress people's incomes which is disinflationary due to less money chasing the goods that are available.
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  25. The French aren't shutting their nuclear reactors, though many were down for maintenance last year.
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  26.  @windhoff1417  "You mentioned that a LNG facility takes 7 years to build, the Germans built two new facilities in a few months." I think you misunderstood him. He said that the liquefaction facilities take 7 years to build whereas Germany acquired regasification facilities. His claim is that the supply of LNG can't be quickly increased even if Germany were able to receive that LNG. I don't know whether his claim is correct or not but I hope this clarifies what his claim actually was.
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  27.  @Withnail1969  "the industrial savings have been achieved by shutting down plants" I don't think that's the case for all savings. Some of them have been done by replacing natural gas with propane or oil.
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  28.  @rickv1007  From what I've read, LNG tankers usually have turbine engines which can use both oil and natural gas.
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  29. He's not.
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  30.  @shugdee  He isn't. His degree is in political science, not economics.
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  31.  @shugdee  No, that one is in Asian studies (at least according to Wikipedia).
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  32. I don't think that's the case. I've seen Erdoğan's religious views on interest rates reported many times. I'd imagine it's fairly common knowledge among people who have followed news about Turkey or Erdoğan in recent years.
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  33.  @johnhughes2124  "the Icelandic steel industry which uses Geothermal power" I don't think they do. Iceland mostly uses Geothermal to heat homes. Maybe you're thinking of hydropower, which is also abundant in Iceland?
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  34.  @Tilten  "Sweden didn’t “gain” Norway by winning a war" But it did. In 1814 Sweden waged a military campaign against Norway. The Norwegians didn't want to fall under Swedish rule and resisted but they were ultimately defeated.
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  35.  @Tilten  "if Sweden "gained" Norway in a war, it was the Napoleonic wars" Fair enough. You can reasonably say that those were the main reason for Sweden gaining Norway though I would still say that if the Norwegians would have won Sweden wouldn't have gotten Norway. In any case, my main point (in my original comment) was that the Finnish War wasn't quite the last war that Sweden fought as both this campaign against Norway as well as the Swedish participation in the War of the 6th Coalition (which you mentioned) happened after the Finnish War.
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  36. "5-7 years to build an LNG terminal…Germany built 3 since the war started." No. Peter was specifically talking about liquefaction plants whereas Germany acquired regasification plants.
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  37.  @michall6376  That doesn't seem to have anything to do with my comment. Your original comment doesn't contradict what Peter said since Germany hasn't built any LNG liquefaction facilities and it wouldn't make any sense for them to do so since they're in importer of gas not an exporter.
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  38. I don't think the chances are that low because temperature keeps increasing. Thus it's not that uncommon for each year to be the warmest so far (since the beginning of record keeping).
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  39.  @marcbjorg4823  It can also be recycled.
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  40.  @marcbjorg4823  I mean, the material of the tetra pak can be recycled so you don't have to burn it.
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  41. 1:53 That's not true. Poland had its first democratic election in 1919.
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  42. Turkey's central bank's policy rate is currently only 8.5%, not 17%. Also, inflation is above 40% so in real terms the rate is something like -35%, i.e. negative by a large margin which is pretty insane.
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  43.  @devalapar7878  It is somewhat high but compared to the level of inflation it's low.
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  44. 0:20 Germany doesn't have the most land. France, Spain, and Sweden have more land than Germany.
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  45. 0:20 As a minor nitpick, even the "normal" monetary policy with interest rate instrument still uses the balance sheet. The way it works in the case of the Fed is that they choose a target for the federal funds rate which is the average rate that with which banks give overnight loans to each other. The Fed then has a bond trader who buys (or sometimes sells) short term government bonds thus creating (or sometimes destroying) new base money and expanding (or sometimes shrinking) the Fed's balance sheet (because these bonds end up on the Fed's balance).
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  46. Heat pumps unless you have district heating.
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  47. He clearly does not want it, quite the opposite. He's just predicting it. IMHO he's being a bit too pessimistic.
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  48. "Europe's energy "situation" would have been less dire if the US didn't go around blowing up pipelines" It likely wouldn't be. All deliveries through NS 1 had already been halted before it was blown.
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  49. 1:50 That's not true. Poland's first democratic elections were in 1919.
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  50. I think you're exaggerating a little. There is going to be a hit to industry but a lot of them have switched to alternatives like propane or oil for which prices haven't risen as much. Also, people using gas for heating are likely going to switch to something else like heat pumps meaning the need for gas next winter is going to be lower. It's going to be a bit tough but hardly fatal.
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