Tag Archives: China

A Bit of Good News, by Paul Craig Roberts

Posted on January 26, 2023 | Leave a comment

It would indeed be good news if we can dance on the coffin of Davos. From Paul Craig Roberts at paulcraigroberts.org:

Ekaterina Blinova Reports “Globalization has died and Davos 2023 was its funeral.”  Read her report:

https://sputniknews.com/20230121/globalization-has-died-and-davos-2023-was-its-funeral-ceremony-scholars-sum-up-1106556837.html

The neoconservative attack on Russia and China has a silver lining.  It has killed Globalism.  Russia and China and the countries dependent on Russian energy and Chinese goods and financing have been cut off from the WEF’s effort to unify the world under US hegemony.  Globalism was never anything but a way for Washington to exploit the rest of the world.  As Ms. Blinova says, the World Economic Forum is an elite club that intended to dictate Washington’s rules to the rest of the world. Washington would rule under the guise of “globalism.”

Klaus Schwab, in his 80s will soon be gone and the WEF with him.  Bill Gates might try to keep the WEF going for his own sick agenda, but today the US is a considerably smaller force on the world scene than it was during the Reagan presidency.

Washington is such an inbred system that the consequence is stupidity.  People  capable of thinking outside of official narratives are simply not accepted.  It is no longer possible for leadership based in objective reality to  take hold in Washington.

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A Dollar Collapse Is Now In Motion – Saudi Arabia Signals The End Of Petro Status, by Brandon Smith

Posted on January 26, 2023 | 1 comment

More and more countries are signalling that they no longer want to trade real commodities, particularly oil, for pieces of paper or computer entries. From Brandon Smith at alt-market.com:

The decline of a currency’s world reserve status is often a long process rife with denials. There are numerous economic “experts” out there that have been dismissing any and all warnings of dollar collapse for years. They just don’t get it, or they don’t want to get it. The idea that the US currency could ever be dethroned as the defacto global trade mechanism is impossible in their minds.

One of the key pillars keeping the dollar in place as the world reserve is its petro-status, and this factor is often held up as the reason why the Greenback cannot fail. The other argument is that the dollar is backed by the full force of the US military, and the US military is backed by the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve – In other words, the dollar is backed by…the dollar; it’s a very circular and naive position.

These sentiments are not only pervasive among mainstream economists, they are also all over the place within the alternative media. I suspect the main hang-up for liberty movement analysts is the notion that the globalist establishment would ever allow the dollar or the US economy to fail. Isn’t the dollar system their “golden goose”?

The answer is no, it is NOT their golden goose. The dollar is just another stepping stone towards their goal of a one-world economy and a one-world currency. They have killed the world reserve status of other currencies in the past, why wouldn’t they do the same to the dollar?

Globalist white papers and essays specifically outline the need for a diminished role for the US currency as well as a decline in the American economy in order to make way for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and a new global currency system controlled by the IMF. I warned about this years go, and my position has always been that the derailment of the dollar would likely start with the end of its petro status.

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Posted in Banking, Collapse, Currencies, Debt, Energy, Geopolitics, Governments, Trade

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5G: An Open Door for America’s Demise by Declan Hayes

Posted on January 24, 2023 | Leave a comment

What does the U.S. do when the next world-beating technology comes from China? From Declan Hayes at strategic-culture.org:

At day’s end, gamers, streamers and forward looking companies and governments will choose Chinese technology over America’s technologically challenged bullies.

5G is fantastic for everyone who wants to video call, stream movies or play games online. Not only is it infinitely faster than what is currently out there but, according to this FAQ, it is entirely safe, just like all those Pfizer Covid shots people jacked up on. As 5G is also pivotal to the Internet of Things, which stands at the heart of the World Economic Forum’s plans for our future, it is all good.

There are, alas, several pertinent and inter-related problems with 5G. The first of these is that Chinese company Huawei is far and away the world leader in this field, with Finnish firm Nokia and Sweden’s Ericsson’s taking up the distant rear and with no other company, American or otherwise, in the race.

This is a problem as 5G’s technology is such that it allows the provider, Huawei, Nokia or Ericsson, pry into their customer’s business, should they so wish, and thereby give them a massive competitive advantage in that and other, related ways.

Because that is a situation up with which the CIA will not put, the U.S. true to form, has been intimidating all and sundry and warning them of the dangers China, their ultimate nemesis, presents. It was for this reason that Canada, one of the U.S.’ more despicable colonies, arrested Huawei CFO Meng Wangzhou and held her for four years, on the CIA’s orders, on trumped up charges before being forced to release her.

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Posted in Geopolitics, Governments, Politics, Science, Technology, Trade

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“Chinese Aggression” Sure Looks An Awful Lot Like US Aggression, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on January 24, 2023 | Leave a comment

So much for Kevin McCarthy. He’s just as stupid as Nancy Pelosi, reprising her “poke China” trip to Taiwan. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

Punchbowl News reports that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is planning a trip to Taiwan, which will be yet another incendiary provocation against Beijing if it occurs. The previous House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, sparked a significant escalation in hostilities with her visit last year, the consequences of which are still reverberating today.

Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp explains:

Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan was viewed in Beijing as a major provocation, and it sparked the largest-ever Chinese military drills around the island. The exercises included China firing missiles over Taiwan and simulating a blockade of the island, both unprecedented actions.

China has kept up the military pressure on Taiwan since Pelosi’s visit, and its warplanes regularly now cross the median line, an informal barrier that divides the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. Before Pelosi’s trip, China barely crossed the line. Now, it’s an almost-daily occurrence.

Beijing views the US House speaker visiting Taiwan as an affront to the one-China policy and the understanding the US and China reached in 1979, when Washington severed formal relations with Taipei.

US-led provocations and escalations against China are becoming a regular occurrence, both from the US itself and from its imperial assets like Australia and Taiwan. Yet according to the western political/media class, the urgent threat of our day is “Chinese aggression”.

After the House of Representatives voted to approve the new Select Committee on China — a Republican initiative designed to increase internal pressure in the US government to ramp up the new cold war — the committee’s chairman Mike Gallagher put out a statement saying that it is “time to push back against the Chinese Communist Party’s aggression in bipartisan fashion.”

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Politics

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Understanding the Geopolitical Landscape in 2023… What It Means for Your Portfolio, by Chris MacIntosh

Posted on January 21, 2023 | Leave a comment

Buy companies that make ships. From Chris MacIntosh at internationalman.com:

Global Geopolitical Landscape

Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital put out a note to clients sometime ago, “I Beg to Differ” and the below paragraph in particular resonated with me.

First-level thinking is simplistic and superficial, and just about everyone can do it (a bad sign for anything involving an attempt at superiority). All the first-level thinker needs is an opinion about the future, as in “The outlook for the company is favorable, meaning the stock will go up.”

Second-level thinking is deep, complex, and convoluted. The second-level thinker takes a great many things into account:

  • What is the range of likely future outcomes?
  • What outcome do I think will occur?
  • What’s the probability I’m right?
  • What does the consensus think?
  • How does my expectation differ from the consensus?
  • How does the current price for the asset compare with the consensus view of the future, and with mine?
  • Is the consensus psychology that’s incorporated in the price too bullish or bearish?
  • What will happen to the asset price if the consensus turns out to be right, and what if I’m right?

The difference in workload between the first-level and second-level thinking is clearly massive, and the number of people capable of the latter is tiny compared to the number capable of the former.

First-level thinkers look for simple formulas and easy answers. Second-level thinkers know that success in investing is the antithesis of simple.

Here is a brief example of how to employ second-order thinking with Taiwan

It is worth considering a lesson from World War 2 because it’s vitally important, and — as far as I can tell — not only do most Americans not know it, but the current bunch of podium donuts in the US don’t appear to either.

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Posted in Geopolitics, Governments, Investing, Military, Politics, Propaganda, Trade, War

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Contrarian Thoughts on the Petro-Yuan and Gold-Backed Currencies, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on January 20, 2023 | Leave a comment

Charles Hugh Smith has a pretty good handle on how currencies work. From Smith at oftwominds.com:

Rather than cheer the concept of a new currency, we’re better served to look at the velocity of that currency and the cycles of investing that currency in assets denominated in that currency for a low-risk return.

Longtime readers know not to expect me to rubber-stamp anything, be it the status quo or proposed alternatives. Our interests are best served by screening everything through the mesh of independent analysis, a.k.a. contrarianism. Which brings us to the two sources of alt-media excitement in the currency space, the petro-yuan and another wave of proposed gold-backed currencies.

I’m all for competing currencies. The more transparent and open the market for currencies, the better. In my view, everyone should be able to buy and trade whatever currencies they feel best suits their goals and purposes.

In all the excitement over de-dollarization, some basics tend to get overlooked.

1. The yuan remains pegged to the US dollar, so it remains a proxy for the USD. It will only become a true reserve currency when China lets the yuan float freely on the global FX market and yuan-denominated bonds also float freely on global bond markets. In other words, a currency can only be a reserve currency rather than a proxy if the price and risk of the currency is discovered by global markets, not centralized monetary/state authorities.

2. Most commentators stop on first base of the oil-currency cycle: China buys oil from exporting nations by exchanging yuan for oil. So far so good. But what can the oil exporters do with the yuan? That’s the tricky part: the petro-yuan has to work not just for China but for the oil exporters who will be accumulating billions of yuan.

The oil exporters can hold some yuan as reserves, but the global market for yuan is not very large. What assets can they buy with yuan? Again, the global market of assets denominated in yuan is limited. The oil exporters can buy assets in China, of course, but with China’s property bubble finally popping, deglobalization sapping its export sector and Xi’s widespread disruption of private capital, the bloom is off the China Story in fundamental ways.

Why would oil exporters invest billions of yuan while Chinese wealth is leaving China?

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Posted in Currencies, Debt, Economics, Economy, Geopolitics, Governments

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The 2023 War – ‘Setting the Theatre’ by Alastair Crooke

Posted on January 13, 2023 | 1 comment

The Ukraine-Russia war is the focal point of a war that already encompasses much of the rest of the world. From Alastair Crooke at strategic-culture.org:

The China-Russia axis are lighting the fires of a structural insurrection against the West across much of the Rest of World. Its fires are aimed at ‘boiling the frog slowly’

A top US Marine General, James Bierman, in a recent interview with the Financial Times, explained in a moment of candour how the US is “setting the theatre” for possible war with China, whilst casually admitting as an aside, how US defence planners had been busy inside Ukraine years ago, “earnestly preparing” for war with Russia — even down to the “pre-positioning of supplies”, identifying sites from which the US might operate support, and sustain operations. Simply put, they were there,readying the battle space for years.

No surprise really, as such military responses flow directly from the core US strategic decision to actuate the 1992 ‘WolfowitzDoctrine’ that the US must plan and preemptively act, to disable any potential Great Power — well before it reaches the point at which it can rival or impair US hegemony.

NATO today has progressed to war with Russia in a battlespace, which in 2023, may or may not stay limited to Ukraine. Simply put the point is that the shift to ‘War’ (whether incremental or not) marks a fundamental transition from which there is no going back to ab initio — ‘war economies’ in essence, are structurally different to the ‘normal’ from which the West began, and to which it has grown accustomed over recent decades. A war society — even if only partly mobilised — thinks and acts structurally differently from peacetime society.

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Posted in Eurasian Axis, Geopolitics, Governments

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Why We Shouldn’t Underestimate China’s Petro-Yuan Ambitions, by Alex Kimani

Posted on January 7, 2023 | Leave a comment

It’s not clear if China wants a petro-yuan to further its own geopolitical designs or out of disgust with the U.S. and the dollar. Probably some of both. From Alex Kimani at oilprice.com:

  • Credit Suisse’s Zoltan Pozsar: the de-dollarization of the global oil industry is in full swing–even if we can’t see the final end game from here.
  • Some 40% of proven oil reserves belonging to OPEC+ members is owned by Russia, Iran and Venezuela–all of whom are selling to China at major discounts.
  • Chinese President Xi Jinping has pledged to ramp up efforts to promote the use of the yuan in energy deals.

The de-dollarization of the global oil industry is in a treacherous mission creep phase. Things like this don’t happen quickly, but determinedly and gradually, not exactly fitting into today’s media headline game that only considers instant developments. But it is happening and the tide will not be turned based on current and near and medium-term geopolitical developments.  Credit Suisse’s Zoltan Pozsar recently warned clients, in essence, that the de-dollarization of the global oil industry is in full swing–even if we can’t see the final end game from here.

And it’s all about China, of course. Pozsar does the OPEC math for us.

Some 40% of proven oil reserves belonging to OPEC+ members is owned by Russia, Iran and Venezuela–all of whom are selling to China at major discounts, and all of whom are on board with Beijing’s petro-yuan plan.

The countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)–most notably Saudi Arabia and the UAE–account for another 40% of proven oil reserves, and they are increasingly cozying up to China.

The remaining 20% is also accessible to China, and China is already the largest importer of crude in the world.

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China’s COVID Chaos A “Horrible Indictment” Of US Leadership For Emulating CCP Lockdowns: Former White House Adviser, by Eva Fu

Posted on December 30, 2022 | Leave a comment

Totalitarian lockdowns were once hailed as the ideal way to combat Covid. However, they not only obliterated human rights, they ultimately don’t work. From Eva Fu at The Epoch Times via zerohedge.com:

If the world can learn one thing from the COVID chaos in China, it is that “locking down does not work,” said healthcare policy adviser Dr. Scott Atlas.

“We don’t even know really the extent of the harms to their population that they inflicted by locking down but we know anecdotally that there were massive harms to people—they couldn’t get food, they couldn’t get their own medications, people were imposing a completely uncivilized, almost animalistic way,” Atlas, a previous White House special coronavirus adviser and contributor to The Epoch Times, said in an interview.

For almost three years, China’s ruling regime has imposed a severe zero-COVID strategy, using strict lockdowns, centralized quarantines, mass testing, and omnipresent surveillance to contain the virus’s spread, leading to many residents being deprived of basic living needs, and some even dying from a lack of care.

“This is a massive human rights violation,” Atlas said.

“All of their policies imposed on their public,” he said, referring to China’s communist party (CCP), “is an example of one of the most extraordinary violations of human rights that we have seen in modern history.”

‘Flies in the Face of Common Sense’

The policy reversal that came without a transition plan accompanied an exponential surge of cases that was quickly overwhelming the country’s health system.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Governments, Law, Liberty, Media, Medicine, Propaganda

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Xi of Arabia and the petroyuan drive, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on December 18, 2022 | Leave a comment

Bit by bit the dollar is losing its reserve currency status. If the Middle East and China do their oil business in currencies other than the dollar, particularly the yuan, it will hasten the process. From Pepe Escobar at thecradle.co:

Xi Jinping has made an offer difficult for the Arabian Peninsula to ignore: China will be guaranteed buyers of your oil and gas, but we will pay in yuan.

 
https://media.thecradle.co/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Chinas-Xi-and-the-GCC-countries.jpg

Photo Credit: The Cradle

 

It would be so tempting to qualify Chinese President Xi Jinping landing in Riyadh a week ago, welcomed with royal pomp and circumstance, as Xi of Arabia proclaiming the dawn of the petroyuan era.

But it’s more complicated than that. As much as the seismic shift implied by the petroyuan move applies, Chinese diplomacy is way too sophisticated to engage in direct confrontation, especially with a wounded, ferocious Empire. So there’s way more going here than meets the (Eurasian) eye.

Xi of Arabia’s announcement was a prodigy of finesse: it was packaged as the internationalization of the yuan. From now on, Xi said, China will use the yuan for oil trade, through the Shanghai Petroleum and National Gas Exchange, and invited the Persian Gulf monarchies to get on board. Nearly 80 percent of trade in the global oil market continues to be priced in US dollars.

Ostensibly, Xi of Arabia, and his large Chinese delegation of officials and business leaders, met with the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to promote increased trade. Beijing promised to “import crude oil in a consistent manner and in large quantities from the GCC.” And the same goes for natural gas.

China has been the largest importer of crude on the planet for five years now – half of it from the Arabian peninsula, and more than a quarter from Saudi Arabia. So it’s no wonder that the prelude for Xi of Arabia’s lavish welcome in Riyadh was a special op-ed expanding the trading scope, and praising increased strategic/commercial partnerships across the GCC, complete with “5G communications, new energy, space and digital economy.”

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Posted in Banking, Business, Currencies, Energy, Eurasian Axis, Geopolitics, Governments, Politics

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