Dedollarization would happen.

It will be painful for countries which are vulnerable and ill prepared.

I honestly think there's a good chance it will happen soon. Trump is speed running "how to dismantle the US power and influence in one presidential term".

I am convinced he is a total Putin puppet and the only reason it doesn't always seem that way, is to be able to deny those allegations.

It's a bad time to sell, but anyone "buying the dip" will quickly learn what "catching a falling knife" means.

I think the road to the bottom still has some distance to cover.

Also, having been on the other side of such a situation: it's not cool to pressure or guilt trip your guests. Either be hospitable and let them do whatever they want, or don't invite them.

If people aren't hungry, then they aren't hungry. Maybe they are on a diet, maybe they misunderstood OP's intention and ate beforehand. Maybe they are recovering from something and don't want to eat too much.

And as for the two that did not showed up. It's a good practice to reconfirm the night before. Sometimes people forget. Sometimes life gets in the way.

If they did reconfirm and still didn't show up and did not have a good excuse, then I would start looking for better friends.

Hope OP has better success next time. I do understand that the situation sucks.

But it's also a situation that, in my opinion, is preventable.

Which is why the tax system needs to be reformed.

The political right actually has one good point that we on the left don't always appreciate: taxes on middle class people should be lower.

Specifically, very liberal tax exemptions on things like 401Ks, including the ability to transfer wealth across generations.

Combine that with higher taxes on the wealthy, and it will be possible to shift power to the middle class.

Consider the total market cap of the S&P 500, rounded up it's about 50 trillion. Divide that among 130 million households and each household should own about $400K in stock on average.

Full equality is neither achievable nor desired by most people, so a good scheme would be to let every household hold up to $1M in wealth, tax exempt.

And then progressively tax everything above that.

As a European, I am appalled that I didn't get to vote for Harris.

Gotta share the love man.

Can't save the cultists, yes, but Independents do care.

And even though Indies are a minority, they are still the ones who decide the election outcome in every swing state.

So, good strategy by the Dems.

Exactly. Democrats are falling in line and that's to be expected. They already voted for her as VP, so they should have no objection to her as President.

But independents and swing voters should still be undecided on her. Some might lean slightly towards her because she is younger and not a senile fascist, but overall, it should not be expected that they will support her at this stage.

Polling in September will be more accurate.

Trump v Clinton

Trump v Biden

Trump v Biden (again)

Is the USA really not capable of getting some actually capable candidates on the ballot?

The last time it was actually two normal people was 2012 with Obama v Romney. That's 12 years ago.

There are voters this election that were in kindergarten back then.

It's really a global problem and I do think it's an inevitable problem of capital saturation.

After decades of economic growth and peace, the developed world has an overabundance of wealth.

Some of that wealth chases the stock and bond markets and private equity and things like art and crypto and that's fine. Those are proper channels to act as a sponge to absorb wealth.

But some of this wealth is chasing real estate and commodities, which makes the basic necessities of life unaffordable.

Of course. And it will just lead to a situation where you will need to pirate a copy to be able to play it offline.

These schemes only give paying customers a worse experience than pirates.

It's not just Reagan. The same is happening all over the world, including Europe. And his policies were 40 years ago. At some point, we need to own our own problems.

The real issue is that the rich people worldwide have figured out how to mostly avoid paying taxes, while the middle class bears the brunt of taxation - which prevents them from becoming wealthy - and the lower class gets nothing.

That wasn't Reagan, it would have happened even if FDR had become an immortal vampire and had the New Deal lasted a century.

What we really need is to start taxing the rich and to greatly reduce taxation on the middle class. And we need to really get serious about it.

The US government can spend millions to track down and kill a Shepard in Syria, but they can't find the capital gains on Jeff Bezos portfolio.

It's unlikely that the details will be known before an agreement is reached.

But to your point, what really matters is whether the USA will force Israel to accept the proposal, or if the Israeli population protests harder against Netanyahu (but that's unlikely to reach the required mass).

Netanyahu wants the war to continue and will not accept any deal, unless his hand is forced.

Anyway, Israel was telling people to flee Rafah. My local news says they are probably doing that to pressure Hamas by panicking the Gazan population.

So, no, I don't think Israel will accept the deal.