Originally published July 2021. “Let China Sleep. When she awakes, she will shake the world…” This Morning: The media is full of China noise – does the rising tension mean it may become un-investible? The Chinese economy is very different, but recognisably similar. Investment into China boils down to how effectively a capitalist economy can […]
Sports making a racket, 48 up for the Cup and the allure of live Hop to it! Harking back to an innocent 70s youth of balmy summers and winter power cuts, when even Space Invaders had yet to land, a friend gets in touch to sense-check his vision for an organised sport of space-hopper racing. Sad sack […]
I’ve yet to come across anyone who has a better way of describing current monetary policy than Louis Gave from Gavekal. Paraphrasing Louis, ‘the Fed is dynamite fishing, they’ve lit the fuse, thrown the stick of TNT in the water, we’ve heard the bang and the fish are floating to the surface’. Put simply, rate […]
It seems that another item can now be added to the long list of things that are getting more expensive: football clubs. The bids coming in to buy Manchester United, reportedly in the region of £4.5bn (the owners are said to want £6bn) would make it the largest amount ever paid for a club. Given that the […]
Is fractional-reserve banking inherently unstable? Over at National Review, Edwin Burton, a visiting economics professor at the University of Virginia, argues that the “mismatch between the maturity of the source of funds and the maturity of the use of funds” creates a run-prone system. His argument, however, overlooks important contributions to monetary economics. Fragile banking systems usually result […]
The recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a regional US bank that funded start-up companies in the technology and innovation sector, has created a worldwide wave of financial instability. Despite the efforts of US financial regulators to contain the potential damage by immediately providing full protection to the bank’s depositors, the collapse triggered a global dip in […]
China’s billions of dollars in global investments and infrastructure projects seem to be paying off politically and economically. Just recently, Honduras signalled it is set to cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan, having been one of the few remaining countries to recognise the island as a state. This switch of allegiances would be a coup for China, which sees Taiwan […]
From early in 2020 until well into 2022, government officials in most countries imposed an array of draconian policies that were said to be necessary to protect the populace against COVID-19. In supposedly democratic nations like the United States, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, officials didn’t bother with legislation – they just decreed […]
The big chill of recession and a banking panic now haunts black gold, exactly as it did in the last six months of 2008 when Brent crude plunged from $148 a barrel in July to barely $40 in December. Brent crude was $85 two weeks ago and plunged to a low of 71.4 on Friday. […]
When gas prices rose 150 percent from June 2020 to June 2023, politicians and the media didn’t hesitate to blame corporate greed. The evidence they offered was two-fold: rising prices and rising profits. Yet over the past six months, gas prices have fallen 33 percent. Are politicians and media congratulating oil companies for displaying altruism? No. Market skeptics […]
