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A Penguin Plays RULE THE WAVES

10.2 July 1900
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Mi nombre es Bondo.

Jaime Bondo.

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Italy has a lot of ships. It's good that we're friendly with almost everybody.

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Running a little on the red here to get those Furiosas out sooner.

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What the hell are you doing running intelligence you're supposed to be my Financial Advisor!

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Auditing.

Appraisal of reasonable costs.

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Okay fine the tax man always gets his due.
I respect that investigative spirit.
 
Might want to get the opportunity to sign some defence treaties as soon as possible. The jackpot would be with UK, it'd give you a time of relative impunity while you build up your fleet.
 
11.1 August 1900
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That's... not really all that impressive.

Good that we've got full intelligence on its capabilities though. As far as I can remember, the CSA doesn't even have 12-inch guns.

This is the third Oklahoma-class to be laid down.

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Their other battleship type is a Michigan-class.
USN ships seem to have standardized on 7.5 inch belt and prefer a very heavy secondary broadside battery.

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That is perfectly reasonable considering that main guns have very poor performance right now.
Really this brings up the question of how anyone even expects to sink each other's ships at all.

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The equivalent CSA battleship is faster and better armored but all weaker in gunnery.

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How odd, that looks like one of our old ships.

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For comparison's sake we give up one gun in exchange for speed and the thickest armor among all battleships in existence.

Of course, we only have two of these things and no hope of having more within the next year and both the CSA and the USN are laying down multiple battleships at this very moment.

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Okay. Correction. Among the thickest armor of all battleships in existence.
Although I'd say we're doing pretty well for two thousand three hundred tons less.

In fact this looks our battleship is the more compact version of this ship, just with casemate guns relocated into turrets.

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They built our Barbacoa-class in the first place anyway, so that is to be expected.
We gave the spec sheet and they gave us the maximum possible armored hull they were capable of producing.

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Wait...
 
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11.2 August 1900
Flashback to last month:
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Get me those intel reports!

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Uggh.
And it turns out the British are copying our Furiosa-class, dang it!

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Although it's three knots slower and with weaker armor in exchange for just one more gun in the broadside.
I don't think that's a fair tradeoff - it's not significantly faster than the Cruisers (24 knots!), so it's less useful as a scout and for slapping away Destroyers.

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Someone must have thought "Hey, the Spanish are making these really cheap hulls, we should try that" and not understanding why we wanted those same fast cheap ships.


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More yard problems present themselves.

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Still, we have more than enough to keep everyone paid and happy for quite a long time so let's just move on to the next month and see what happens.





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Justify your salaries, assholes!
 
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12.0 September - October 1900
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Seriously you guys?
I should have just let someone else build our Light Cruisers. It may be more expensive but we could have taken off full six months in accelerated construction.

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Well other than our shipbuilders continuing to be faff around, nothing much happened in September.

Next.




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Seriously, why are we having this much problems with steel?!
We're not under embargo.

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Rejecting flawed steel.

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That... that's more than fair, actually.

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Better wait than to build ships out of bad steel. That will cost us more in the long run.
A lost battle and a sunk ship is irrecoverable.

We can always melt bad steel and try it again.

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Steel is also needed for national infrastructure, you know.

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Oh boy a whole year before getting any light cruisers.

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Still, looking at this chart comparing speeds, ours are probably the fastest Light Cruisers in existence.
I'm really eager to see them come out and start breaking records and get into the history books.

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... huh. This is what admirals felt at the time, huh?
There are so many different possible doctrines for their burgeoning navy in the rapidly changing world of technology, that one might as well gamble in one and stick to it.

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Let the results speak for themselves.
 
13.0 November - December 1900
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Ouch. That's bad because 10-inch guns are the best we can natively produce.

Fortunately we're not using 10-inch guns at all.

Our armor is designed to repel 12-inch guns.

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Wait, why is everyone except Britain so angry at us all of sudden?!

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Porque soy Jaime Bondo.

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...

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Oh no this is bad. Austria-Hungary has gotten wind of our plans and are preparing to defend themselves.

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On the other hand, considering that we have less ships than they do could we somehow tempt them into declaring war on us first?
Will have to think more on that later.

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CS tension decreases.
US tension increases by same amount.
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WHY?!

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Fine. We're going to start spying on you now too.

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Dammit, CSA, why do you like me so much? Stop that.
Your approval fills me with shame.

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You ivory tower intellectuals better have something worth using soon or we're going to have to start the Defenestration of Madrid.
We can't afford any more slacking off!





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And so ends our first year as the commander of Spain's Great Navy.

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I should be praised for not getting us involved into any wars just yet while our naval forces are in such a shoddy state.
 
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That reminds me, a nice thing to consider after you start improving torpedoes is the submarines. They do some decent damage in war, minus the occasional sunk liner, and can even sink some large ships while keeping the small stuff busy hunting them. Of course, they aren't that reliable, so some only manage to dive and don't get back to the surface. But then, that still happens with post-war Spanish-built submarines, so it's time to start the tradition!
 
14.0 January 1901
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Bwuh.

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Well that was a fine way to start the new year!
Those are certainly practical outcomes for research. Good job, scientists!

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Unfortunately our yardworkers and industrial suppliers are full of fail as usual.

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But still, bonuses for everybody!

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Oh! That's a surprise.
I was so used to hearing about construction delays from our shipbuilders that I didn't realize we could have ships finally done by next month. I can't wait!

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So I won't.


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ROLL NEXT!

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Wow.

I don't know why ever expected anything different, to be honest.

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No problems with you? Good.
Good!

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(Palpatine voice) Good.

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Finally we are making progress!
 
15.0 February 1901
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I would be more angry at our information security apparatus, but that would imply we actually have any.

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Is it worth accelerating construction get our Light Cruisers at around the same time?

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Austria-Hungary has A LOT of Destroyers and Light Cruisers.
More importantly however, we only match them in the number of Battleships and Light Cruisers.

Even with our qualitative advantage in battlewagons, that's not enough.
We can't afford to send all battleships into the Mediterranean without leaving any in reserve in Northern Europe.

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But I have a cunning plan.

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Normally it would take us 32 months to build a battleship and we don't have anything better than 10-inch guns anyway.

But if we order it from Britain, we could have a battleship after 25 months, a very significant savings in time for only a slight increase in monthly costs.

It doesn't matter to me if Perfidious Albion has an idea of our ship's capabilities, because they have triple the number of battleships we have anyway.


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Hm. Double turrets save weight. On the other hand, secondaries aren't very armored and knocking one out will halve broadside anti-Destroyer and Light Cruiser armament.

I'm not sure, is Narrow Belt with Main Belt and Belt Extended of equal thickness the closest thing we have to All or Nothing Armor?

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Yowch! -40% Rate of Fire Penalty?!
We're sticking to single mount secondary turrets for now, even with their -20% penalty in exchange for better firing arcs.

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As you can see, the Barquillo-class is actually cheap enough and able to be produced fast enough that if it weren't for its 19 knot speed it could replace our Armored Cruiser line entirely.

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Once those Destroyers are out of the yard, we're going to start building.


So let's move on to the next turn and see what happens.
 
I do have to wonder what would it take for Spain to be a relevant power in the late 19th-early 20th centuries. How late would a change have to be?
 
I do have to wonder what would it take for Spain to be a relevant power in the late 19th-early 20th centuries. How late would a change have to be?
You mean how early. It would require at least removing the great Spanish hobby of Civil War.
 
You mean how early. It would require at least removing the great Spanish hobby of Civil War.
No, I meant how late. The easiest way would be for Ferdinand VII to be anything other than the absolutist idiot he was in OTL. The second easiest would be for him to never have kids or for Isabella II to be a man. And so on. What I'm asking is what the latest turning point would be to still have Spain be relevant at this point in history.
 
No, I meant how late. The easiest way would be for Ferdinand VII to be anything other than the absolutist idiot he was in OTL. The second easiest would be for him to never have kids or for Isabella II to be a man. And so on. What I'm asking is what the latest turning point would be to still have Spain be relevant at this point in history.
Well in this timeline they didn't get their asses reamed by the United States and still have their colonies, which has the problem that the US therefore would not be as incentivized to take back the Philippines and the Pacific Islands. They remain very relevant, if at least because they have good international fleet and air basing potential. Having colonies means looking for a modicum of military competence and a reason to keep advancing instead of just stagnating OTL just looking for enough to defend themselves in the Mediterranean and Near Atlantic.

However, OTL not picking fights with the United States was never their decision to make.


Spain's population in 1900 was 18 million. Italy was 31 million, France 38 million, Austria-Hungary 47 million. Relevance is a relative term, but Spain lacked the economy and manpower to meaningfully defend all its colonies from any regional competitors.

Spain was having the British build their battleships in OTL too, and had that interrupted by WW1. Even WW1 and Spain's strict neutrality, they were split into Francophiles and Germanophiles. Income from supplying the war effort didn't help the contracting economy anyway from lack of imports. Favoring trade with the US is the win condition in hindsight, but they wouldn't know that since after all it was the US that completely shattered Spain's existence as a World Power. Spain's neutrality in OTL helped them survive, but didn't do them any favors in the postwar situation. I'm not sure if there is a way for Spain to stay relevant, because unlike the UK and France post-colonial, they don't even have the economy and manufacturing to compensate. If they didn't just get into Civil War and tried an alternative to Francoist autarky, perhaps they could have progressed far enough only to get their teeth kicked in by Nazi Germany.

On the other hand, Spain needing to be fought or supporting France from behind could mean buying enough time to blunt the blitzkriegs or get one of the many things that could have gone wrong in the initial phase of WW2 to actually go wrong.

But as a world power? No, Spain is -done-.


In this timeline, Spain is very relevant since for some reason the CSA really likes them and the US is doing careful political positioning as the CSA's fleet numbers match theirs. Spain exerts influence in the Caribbean because a joint CSA-Spanish force would be a significant threat. If they are busy in the Caribbean, they won't have the forces to keep Hawaii. And since Spain has its possessions in the Pacific, getting Hawaii is a reasonable expansion to their basing ability. If they had, you know, the economy to actually put ships there.

West Coast shipping would be threatened.


Fortunately, that would also make the Japanese Navy Spain's problem now.
 
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16.0 March 1901
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Ohoho. What a windfall!

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These steel shortages are of critical strategic concern and we NEED TO FIX THIS.


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Though now that we've got most things out of the yard, we can go ahead with building.

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(signing the check)

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Boom. We're in the red again, but that's sustainable assuming our yards don't end up delaying delivery again.


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Next.
 
@Rufus, do other countries ever war on each other while my nation gets to just sit by the sidelines and watch?
 
17.1 April 1901
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Good! Finally!
Do we have any more DDs building?


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Oh gee whatever shall we pick?

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BE DISGUSTING SHOWOFFS OF COURSE!


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I mean seriously, we are Spanish. What did anyone expect would happen?



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Phhrrrfft!
 
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17.2 April 1901
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Put that aside for now.

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HOW.

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We have critical steel shortages and you give me this?!
How do you even manage it?!

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The performance of this new 11" gun is... otherwise identical to the 12" guns we bought from the British. Huh.

That explains a lot ...

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Wait, no!

Even if you did manage to match its performance, you did so with overall lighter mechanisms and less metal. That's impressive! That's seriously impressive.
We didn't just go from Quality -1 guns trying to figure things out. You went straight to Quality 0 standard, reliable, mass producible guns.

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How. How did you do this?!

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If we change main guns down to 11" we don't lose any armor piercing ability but free up loads of weight.


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Could we use this to bump up our speed to 21 knots?

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Or we could change our chase gun into a true battle turret.
Not without reducing a little of our ammo and tertiary guns load though.

I have underestimated you, mah research engineers.

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But NOT the SHITTINESS of our shipyards because APPARENTLY we can't change down to a smaller caliber in the rebuild ANYWAY!

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Well... considering it has identical performance, there's no point in putting our Battleships offline for ten months for a rebuild just yet.
At least with most orders done we're in the black again.

Wow that last Destroyer has been way delayed. What should have been 10 months to build is now... what? Fifteen?

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This is why I have foreign nations build our ships, people! Security concerns be damned!
 
18.0 May 1901
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Ooh! That's important!

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(Stephen Colbert voice) Give it to me!

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Ooh! That's DANGEROUS.

That's a real Light Cruiser-killer there. We're going to need more Armored Cruisers ourselves to deal with it.

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We don't have the budget to try that.


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Very good.

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But we can't even make submarines, what is this about?



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That's... somewhat expensive.

Looks like they have a new standard model of Light Cruisers. With their CA being the same speed as their CL's I don't quite have a feel yet what that means for their battle line.

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We need more CA's but the Barquillo class is just better for cheaper except in terms of speed.
The longer we take, the more we are forced to commit to one naval development plan, no matter how inefficient it may be.


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Accelerating construction saves us 2 more months. Since we can't build any more CAs, let's get our B's out faster.



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Let's move on.
 
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19.0 June 1901
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Meh.

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Comparing our fleet to Austria-Hungary, we do seem to have too few ships, don't we?

We have one more CA, but effectively only 1 active CA since we're sending the other two to faff around doing Colonial duty in Cuba and the Philippines.
A mere 2 CLs and 9 DDs with 1 more building.

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Well at least we're showing some naval presence now an-
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Ho-holy shite, UNITED STATES!

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You added more ships? CSA, what happened to YOUR SHIPS? Where did they go?

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Also, why does Italy seem to have a disproportionately huge and powerful navy for some reason?

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It makes no sense that the British Empire, with more ships on active duty than anyone else on the planet, is invisible regards their naval assignments around Europe.



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...

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Well?

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Have you ever noticed...

That spies spend a lot of time drinking in bars?


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(table flip) FUNDADOR!

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It is a cheap incentive.


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THAT IS NOT YOUR JO-
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Ugh economic advisor.
 
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