Musing ...

Working on some great audio equipment at the moment, a REVOX A78 stereo amplifier and a SANSUI something (it is not in front of me right now)

It is a little hard to stay focused with everything else that is happening internationally at the moment ... I am very afraid of the impending global trade disaster that could be about to occur.

The USA administration refers to tomorrow, 2nd April, as Liberation Day but I have a gut feeling that for the rest of the world things are about to get a lot worse from the perspective of trade and international relations.

Sure, Australia has had very high tariffs on imported goods in the not too distant past but the applied tariffs were not used in a manner intended to inflict punishment or harm against other countries who had upset us. USA is now actively using tariff's as a weapon against those "it" does not like and I suspect that "things" are about to get much more unpleasant in the world of international trade relations, or any international relationships between countries for that matter.

Here is another of my favourite podcasts, informative and humourous ...

Another strange tale is all the talk at the moment about "rare earths" and yet they are not rare and not especially valuable, unlike Gold or Diamonds for example. In fact it seems to me that the push is to find countries within which to mine and process these metals that do not have strong environmental regulations because it appears that the processing is a very dirty business. So instead of creating sh** in their own backyards, countries are looking for other countries to trash.

Here is a very good podcast from Matt Bevan at the ABC ... it is well worth a watch and then do some of your own research, the information is very surprising.