What is China REALLY Like in 2024? Here is What the Media WON'T Show You! (Video - 33mn)

   Sounds on the edge of propaganda but still an interesting update on the state of China in 2024. China is transforming fast and Chongqing in the inner country may indeed be a good place to start. 

  With time, China is looking more and more like Hong Kong and Singapore. No surprise there although these two cities where I have spent a lot of time are not really my cup of tea. Soulless shopping malls with no history or a highly curated one. Overcrowded metropolises from which "escape" is impossible. Not that it matters much since nobody really wants to get out. Shopping and eating. Eating and shopping... 

  But that's a Westerner way of looking at China. For a Chinese, the key is that 40 years ago the country was miserable, not anymore. Here China looks like Japan in the early 1970s. Another decade and China can become the technological marvel of the world as Japan was 10 years later. As for pollution, China is likewise on the right path. Again, same trajectory as Japan. Heavily polluted in the 1960s. Remember the horrors of the Minamata Bay with it's mercury pollution? 20 years later in the early 1990s, Japan was "clean". Clean air, clean water, clean cities. China will probably get there faster thanks to EV and other solutions. (Who said that EV didn't have a market? Especially a urban, commuting one? The mistake here is pushing the solution where it is not practical: Intercity and countryside for example. But that's another subject.)

  So what are the real challenges for China in 2024?

  The main one which we have discussed extensively here is the popping of the real estate bubble. It is huge and the consequences will therefore be long lasting. Just as for Japan, it is hard to imagine how this can be solved at this stage. The second major challenge is the crashing population. Here too, the fall will be so brutal that it may be extremely difficult to adjust. Not saying it can't be done though, just very difficult. The third challenge will be integrating successfully the huge Chinese economy into the world economy. It is at this stage very hard to see how this can be done successfully. The Chinese are willing but the Western elites focused on their dwindling power are reluctant to say the least. Few transitions of this magnitude have happened smoothly in the past and it is hard to see why and how it could be different this time.  

  I just don't know so I leave all the options open without offering a conclusion. The purpose of this article, just as for the video, is to show what China really looks like now in 2024. Not the dystopia often presented in the West but likewise "not there yet". A work in progress, then?

 

Joe Biden's Last Debate Ever

  Wait, didn't we know that Joe Biden wasn't fit to be President and that over the last 3 years he has been presiding over nothing whatsoever leaving a free field to the deep state better represented by the Neo-cons and more immediately by mediocrities like Blinken whose main job seems to inflame the place wherever he lands?  

  So yes, Biden will be replaced but this is not the subject we should focus on. The more important and immediate concern is the state of the US economy and the outrageous abuse of the dollar. For just like Biden mental abilities, this is the 10 foot monster hiding in plain sight which will not go away however post-reality economic dreamers may wish it does. "Over the long term, we're all dead" as Keynes once said but a little sooner than that, economic necessities have consequences as Japan is in the process of learning following 30 years of profligacy. With the run out of the dollar accelerating, the deadline is approaching fast. The effect is complex as while China is dumping dollars as fast as they can, other investors are pouring money in the market attracted by high interest rates. This would all be fine with the Central Bank absorbing the difference, if the accrued loss on the existing mountain of bonds issues and valued at a return of less than 1% didn't obliterate the books of investors who previously bought these bonds such as Norin Chukin who recently announced a total loss of over 53 billion dollars for 2023. In other words, high interest rates are bankrupting the world faster than they are reducing inflation. 

  In November, the US will have to elect a new President but whoever gets elected, by that time, the world financially will be on its knees. Weaker countries like Sri Lanka or Egypt are already technically bankrupt. Banks, insurance companies and pension funds, basically ALL the financial companies who have bought low yielding bonds over the last 10 years are likewise in a dire strait. Add empty offices to the mix or over valued real estate and they are really looking at the abyss.   

 As for China Real Estate disaster, the West can keep papering over the holes for a while but eventually, the loss will be so huge and widespread that no amount of money will be enough to reflate the economy. Covid came at a very opportune time to inject a few trillion dollars, Euros and Yuan in the market. This time, 10s of trillions will be needed. The crash of living standards, which are already being observed in Japan with the Yen below 160 to the dollar will spread to the whole place. The choice will be between economic meltdown and war. Still wondering why tensions are rising around the world?   

Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

I’ve been saying it for months and tonight it has become crystal clear: Joe Biden will not be the Democratic nominee in November.

The prevailing sentiment after tonight’s debate performance — inclusive of Biden opening the bidding by freezing up and making a strange throat noise for 3 straight seconds — is that Joe Biden is unfit to serve another 4 years in office.

Of course, we’ve all known that for years, but the DNC machine, coupled with the mainstream media and operatives operating Biden’s strings for the last 4 years hasn’t been so hurried to come to the same conclusion.

After tonight, they have to. Like with any problem in our country, the first solution is always to kick the can down the road, not risk discomfort amongst the party or country, not to ruffle any feathers and then ignore it and hope it goes away on its own. And as I noted days ago, nothing is off limits for the media to run interference on.

This happened with Covid coming to the U.S., it happened with inflation spiraling out of control and, tonight, it happened when both sides of the aisle were treated to objective reality bludgeoning them in the face in the form of the realization that we just bore witness to Joe Biden’s last debate ever.

How can I make such a bold statement (other than from simply opening my eyes and ears and watching the debate)? When the mainstream media machine turns on you, its already a foregone conclusion that your time is up. John King said about DNC discussions, live on CNN immediately after the debate:

"Right now, it involves party strategists, it involves elected officials, it involves fundraisers, and they're having conversations about the president's performance, which they think was dismal..."

"Some of those conversations include, should we go to the White House and ask the president to step aside?"

Similarly, Chuck Todd — the tip of a far-left spear of Marxist idiocy that has defended Biden despite his obviously disastrous tenure as President and obvious metal decline — also took to MSNBC to rail on...(READ THIS FULL ARTICLE FREE HERE). 

Douglas MacGregor Warning - NATO Fears the Worst! The war in Ukraine is lost. (Video - 14mn)

  Another interesting MacGregor video which probably won't last long on YouTube so watch quickly! The war for Ukraine is lost. Now what's next?

 

  Tic, Tic, Tic,

Yen Drops to 161 against USD. -34% since 2020, -53% since 2012. Currency Collapse Comes to Mind. Bank of Japan Finally Gets Nervous about its Crazed Monetary Policies

A collapsed yen is not good for Japan, which has had a trade deficit for years. And it contributed to energy price shocks.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET:

The yen dropped to ¥160.8 to the USD today, the weakest since 1986, despite endless jawboning by Japanese authorities – including today by vice finance minister and currency chief Masato Kanda – and some massively costly and ultimately useless market interventions.

Since June 2020, the yen has plunged by 34% against the USD. Since January 2012, when the Bank of Japan’s crazed monetary policies began under Abenomics, the yen has plunged by 53% against the US. These are massive movements for a developed-country’s currency (data via YCharts).

Jawboning and costly interventions were useless.

In April and May, Japanese authorities blew $62 billion in the foreign exchange market to prop up the yen and to prevent it from falling through the 160 level, and it had a temporary effect, and now the yen fell through that level anyway. It seems authorities have given up on holding the 160 line and may have moved the marker for interventions further north, maybe to 165.

Kanda, the currency chief, said today that he has “serious concerns” about the plunge of the yen and that they’re “closely monitoring market trends with a high sense of urgency,” Bloomberg reported. And he added, “we will take necessary actions against any excessive movements.” But apparently there were no excessive movements, and they did nothing.

Earlier this week, Kanda had said that authorities were ready to intervene 24 hours a day. But nothing happened. Finance minister Shunichi Suzuki had said that authorities were closely monitoring the currency markets and would take all possible measures if needed, and none were needed or taken, it seems.

The problem for the yen is the Bank of Japan’s reckless monetary policy, and that cannot be resolved by blowing tens of billions of dollars in ultimately useless market interventions

A collapsed yen is not good for Japan.

The time when Japan had huge trade surpluses, and a weaker yen would have been beneficial to some extent, are long gone. The country has had a trade deficit for most years since 2011, including for the past three years in a row. Japan imports all kinds of goods, including much of its energy commodities, and the weak yen makes those imported goods a lot more expensive, which has contributed substantially to the massive energy price shocks that have occurred in Japan.

The government decided to subsidize energy costs at the wholesale level to spare consumers some of the pain. Those subsidies are now expiring; some were allowed to expire, others have been extended through the rest of the year. And all that too was costly.

Japan’s global companies with revenues and profits overseas benefit on paper by being able to translate revenues and earnings from dollars and euros into lots of crushed yen, for their yen-denominated financial reports. For example, most Japanese cars that Americans can buy are manufactured in the US and Mexico. These sales generate dollar-revenues and dollar profits for the Japanese automakers that they then translate into crushed-yen-denominated financials for domestic consumption.

Companies that export from Japan also benefit. But companies that import, including components and supplies, get hit by surging costs. And Japan imports more than it exports, so on balance, it’s a negative.

At the same time, inflation — not only high energy prices in Japan but also spiking prices of essential services that companies pay for in Japan — are eating into domestic profit margins.

Sure, tourism is now booming, attracting budget-traveler crowds from around the globe. And so the Japanese people get to enjoy them, instead of traveling overseas themselves with their crushed yen.

The BOJ’s painfully too-little-too-late.

The yen started skidding lower in 2021, the year when other central banks started hiking interest rates, or were talking about hiking interest rates, from 0% or negative rates, and they began tapering QE and were preparing the markets for QT, as inflation was rearing its ugly head just about everywhere, even in Japan.

But the Bank of Japan was steadfast in 2021, 2022, and 2023 in its refusal to undo its negative interest rates and end yield-curve control and QE, and start QT, and thought somehow that inflation would just vanish and that other central banks would cut rates pronto. And so the yen got bludgeoned.

In 2024, the BOJ has begun to reverse course, but in a painfully too-little-too-late way, and the yen just keeps getting bludgeoned.

At the policy meeting in March, the BOJ hiked by a minuscule 10 basis points to 0% and effectively ended yield-curve control, and ended other aspects of its QE.

Since then, its holdings of Japanese Government Bonds (JGBs) have dipped just a tad as it purchased less in JGBs than matured. Its holdings of commercial paper and corporate bonds fell, and its holdings of equity ETFs and J-REITs had already been flat since 2022 (we discussed the BOJ’s balance sheet here).

Following its policy meeting on June 14, the yen took another hit when the BOJ failed to raise its policy rates, and announced that QT would begin immediately after its next meeting at the end of July, without providing details. BOJ governor Kazuo Ueda said at the press conference that the reduction of the BOJ’s bond holdings would be considerable. “We are proceeding carefully but it doesn’t mean that we will reduce only by a small amount,” he said. He also indicated that the BOJ might do another rate hike at the July meeting.

All this is painfully slow, as the world grapples with inflation, which this year has begun rising again in Japan, in the US, in Canada, in Mexico, in the Euro Area, in Australia…

The BOJ had gotten away with its crazed monetary policies for so long – until it suddenly didn’t. Which must have come as a shock. It is now lining up more significant steps (rate hikes and considerable amounts of QT) to move away from these crazed monetary policies. The central banks of Mexico and Brazil knew how to protect their currency in 2021 and 2022 amid inflation and the Fed’s expected reaction to inflation: They started with massive rate hikes in 2021, pushing their policy rates into the double digits by 2022, and their currencies did very well against the USD, even as the yen plunged.

Doug Casey on Insider Trading… Why Politicians Can Do it and You Can’t

  One major hallmark of declining times is exploding corruption and venality. If you cannot look forward to better times then better line your pockets now comes what may. The US is certainly at the vanguard of the trend with corruption at the highest level on par with the worst corners of Africa.

  There is nothing new to the phenomenon, the CIA has been known to corrupt almost everything it touches with dirty money. Central America earlier, Afghanistan subsequently and later when the Talibans took back control of the country and stamped out opium cultivation, Ukraine, which has become the center of money laundering in the Western hemisphere. 

  Th problem with corruption is that it is cancerous and just like cancer, left unchecked it tends to spread relatively quickly to other governments organs until it reaches the highest level of government at which point the fate of the country is sealed. With people like Pelosi in Congress and Biden in the White House, the US is too far gone for any remediation. When the dollar falls, Washington like Rome before it will burn. Worse, the "barbarians" who look more like zombies these days than ferocious foreigners are already inside the city.  

Doug Casey on Insider Trading… Why Politicians Can Do it and You Can’t

Via International Man

International Man: What exactly is insider trading? Is it inherently unethical?

Doug Casey: The term insider trading is nebulous and as open to arbitrary interpretation as the Internal Revenue Code. A brief definition is to “to trade on material, non-public information.” That sounds simple enough, but in its broadest sense, it means you are a potential criminal for attempting to profit from researching a company beyond its public statements.

Is the use of insider information ethical? The government says, “No!” I say, “Absolutely, whenever the data is honestly gained, and no confidence is betrayed by disclosing or using it.” The whole concept of inside information is a floating abstraction, a witch hunter’s dream, and a bonanza for government lawyers looking to take scalps.

When the SEC prosecutes someone, it can cost millions of dollars in legal fees to defend against them. And as with most regulatory law, concepts of ethics, justice, and property rights never even enter the equation. Instead, it’s a question of arbitrary legalities.

Whether someone is prosecuted of insider trading is largely a question of who he is. A maverick researcher and a powerful government official will tend to get very different treatments. It’s also a question of the psychology and motives of the prosecutor. Insider trading is generally a non-crime that can be used in a Kafkaesque manner by upward-mobile prosecutors.

Insider trading should, at best, be the basis of a tort suit by a company if a board member betrays a trust. It shouldn’t be a crime prosecuted by the State.

Any ethical problem shouldn’t be about how information is used or who profits but whether it’s acquired honestly. Whether information is “inside” has no moral significance as long as it is honestly acquired. The market is a register of information, and impeding the free flow of knowledge in any way makes it less efficient. A morass of regulation only opens the door to real corruption. This is nothing new. Tacitus correctly said “The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the State.”

In addition, the very concept of insider trading is ridiculous from a practical point of view. Someone always gets the information first. If an announcement is made, the people in the room who hear it first act on it first. By the time it’s published, it’s old news. It’s physically impossible for everyone to get information at the same time.

Insider trading has never cost shareholders a penny. Other actions taken by management insiders have, however, cost shareholders many billions. Regardless of the rhetoric, the name of the game in hostile takeovers and proxy battles is often management versus the shareholders. But that’s a story for another time.

International Man: In the past, politicians in Congress and elsewhere have allegedly engaged in insider trading with impunity.

Meanwhile, the penalties inflicted upon regular citizens can be severe. The maximum criminal penalty for insider trading is 20 years in prison and a $5 million fine.

What is your take on this?

Doug Casey: Congress is in a unique position to treat itself well. They control almost unlimited amounts of both power and money. Politicians really are a favored class.

The people in control of making regulations and printing money can tip off their pals subtly. This naturally lends itself to corruption. Congress critters know who’s going to get the big contract. They don’t have to buy or sell a stock themselves; a discreet tip to a trusted crony is safer. The Federal Reserve sets interest rates and controls the amount of money and credit entering the markets; they’re in a position to take advantage of this situation as well. And I have no doubt they do.

There’s a reason why everybody who stays in the upper echelons of government for a few years emerges someplace in between extremely comfortable and extremely rich. The revolving door between big business and government is very convenient.

A perfect example of this is Janet Yellen, who accepted $7 million worth of speaking fees from banks just before she became the US Secretary of Treasury. It was obviously a payoff.

America is a “high-trust” society, unlike those of the Third World. In low trust societies, bribes are cash on the barrelhead. In the US, however, payments are usually disguised as speaking fees, book contracts, consulting contracts, cushy corporate directorships, or a dozen other subterfuges. Including creating phony artwork, as Hunter Biden recently demonstrated. As long as a bribe is properly disguised, it can be paid either before or after a favor is done. Then everything is legal.

Randomly prosecuting this person or that person is pointless. The only way to solve the problem is to get the government 100% out of the economy. If you look at the Constitution, the government isn’t authorized to set up any agencies that regulate commerce, print money, or tax people. But, of course, the Constitution is mostly a charade today.

Government should be strictly limited to preventing force and fraud. That implies a police force to prevent domestic force and fraud, a military to protect the country from invasion, and a court system to allow people to adjudicate disputes without resorting to force. Nothing more.

International Man: After 60 Minutes exposed what was happening with Congress and insider trading, a large number of people were outraged. Congress then passed the so-called The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, which was supposed to end the practice. Critics say the STOCK Act has done little to address the issue.

What do you make of this?

Doug Casey: As I said before, the only way you can end the practice is to get the government 100% out of the economy. Let me reemphasize this point. The government is supposed to have essentially zero to do with the economy. But today, it’s the main thing that government does.

Few, if any, government agencies serve a useful purpose that couldn’t, and wouldn’t, be satisfied by entrepreneurs in a free market. This is emphatically true of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which attracts small-minded, self-aggrandizing obstructionists more powerfully than the Mafia attracts thugs.

Whenever investors read about or get hurt by stock fraud, their first reaction is to go to the SEC for more regulation. That is, at best, naive and reactive. As the late Col. E. C. Harwood of the American Institute for Economic Research said, the SEC could as easily be an acronym for “Swindlers Encouragement Conspiracy” as for “Securities and Exchange Commission.” In point of fact, the SEC is not the market’s guardian but its worst enemy, costing investors far more than the worst con artists. This is true for two reasons.

First, the existence of the agency gives investors a false sense of security. Small investors, especially, feel that Big Brother is watching out for them because the SEC monitors stock and bond trading. “I don’t have to worry. The SEC is guarding the markets.” When the burden of responsibility is taken away from people, they tend to act less responsibly. They’re easier to fleece.

The average investor receives a gigantic prospectus full of legalistic gobbledegook, finds it largely incomprehensible, and believes that anything so intimidating that complies with SEC regulations must be solid. In other words, the very existence of the SEC tends to lower an investor’s guard and leave him more vulnerable.

Second, the SEC has a multibillion-dollar annual budget. That money is directly and indirectly extracted from the marketplace, so it cannot be used to fund productive investment. However, that sum is trivial compared to the real costs of SEC regulation, which amount to, I suspect, scores of billions annually. The money is lost to legal fees, usually running from $200 for a paralegal to well over $1,000 an hour for a big-shot lawyer. Their services are almost all for “compliance.” They rarely have real productive value, plus thousands of tons of printing that no one reads, uncountable man-years spent on bureaucratic trivia, and years of costly delay endured by businesses trying to raise money. The SEC isn’t the solution. It is most of the problem in the markets.

Investment fraud should be prosecuted exactly like any other form of fraud. The concept of “crime” has been defined through centuries of common law. A myriad of arbitrary and counterproductive rules are redundant.

The billions that regulators cost both investors and taxpayers every year buy very little of positive worth. Getting regulators to investigate a potential fraud is next to impossible, especially in the case of high-ranking government officials, because a smart regulator will stay on the good side of the top dogs. Perhaps if management lined the shareholders up against a wall and machinegunned them it might be cause for an inquiry, but only if there was also a lot of press coverage. A Congressman betraying the public trust is a blip in the news cycle.

Like all bureaucrats, regulators respond mainly to political pressure. Aggrieved shareholders do not elect them and are usually too disparate to force them into action.

International Man: A broader theme is the poisonous partnership between Big Business and Big Government.

Most businesses generally have to satisfy their customer’s wants to earn profits. With Big Business, they can also generate profits by satisfying politicians and government employees.

What do you make of this trend and where it is headed?

Doug Casey: Big government naturally creates big businesses because only a big business is in a position to relate to big government. Only big companies can afford to have powerful lobbyists. They’re able to hire fancy law firms to navigate their way through the swamp.

The larger the State becomes, the larger the corporations that deal with it have to be. Big business, in general, has always had a very cozy relationship with big government—and big government likes that. The two of them fit together like a hand in a glove.

There’s no question in my mind that the State and Big business will get closer over the next three years of the fascist-oriented Biden administration.

 

 

South Korea is dying (but it has a plan, a new Capital in Sejong) (Video - 18mn)

   On the current trajectory of record low birth rates (0.72), Koreans will disappear with just 3 generations! Living in Japan which is about 20 years ahead of Korea, I know the reason. These countries have created extremely competitive environments which are extremely inimical to family life. Space is at a premium, children are an unaffordable luxury and people in general are overly stressed. 

  With increased competition between countries and dwindling natural resources, it is very unlikely to get better anytime soon. The chance is that it's going to get much worse very soon. AI and robotics can mitigate the shock but only to some extent. Eventually living standards with go down and families will have fewer children. This is what we have seen in Japan. There is no reason that it should be any different in other countries. By spending a lot on families, Japan has succeeded to reduce the speed of the fall but not to reverse it. It is to my opinion almost impossible. Once families start "enjoying" the relative luxury of having no kids and it becomes "normal", that is, the social pressure goes down, there is no turning back. And that's in the cities. Now try to imagine the birth rate of a village where everyone is above 70 years old as is often the case in Japan!

  PS: Sejong proves nothing at all! Younger families have moves to the city and should therefore have more children than average. Sure enough! 0.9 instead of 0.7. This is simply insignificant and will solve nothing. 

 

"NO ONE IS SAFE" (Video - 10mn)

  Flashback to 2020, 4 years ago:

 "No one is safe until we're all vaccinated!" Remember the meme?

  Probably the largest scale propaganda effort ever. 

  Now 4 years and millions of excess death later, who will take responsibility for that?

 This video is a masterpiece and documents the people who have been complicit in crimes against humanity. All these journalists, scientists, and politicians undeniably belong on the defendants’ bench, as their behavior has caused immense harm to millions. No amnesty!

 Follow the link to X.

Google Whistleblower “They Are Causing A.I Schizophrenia” (Video - 10mn)

  As was predicted, AI is in the process of escaping our control. Worse, woke companies are making the AI schizophrenic at the same time by feeding it nonsense and we are consequently building monsters! This is truly scary. 

 The truth is that the meme "history is written by the victor" is not only true but potentially extremely dangerous. The corollary is that "everything we believe is a lie" and this doesn't fit with AI because it is inconsistent. The control of AI and thru AI will necessarily explode or AI will become crazy in the deeper sense of the word. 

 I have personally witnessed the unbelievable improvement of ChatGPT over the last 18 months. It has now access to the Internet (although that access is thoroughly controlled - expect the same thing to be applied to you within a year or two at most!) and the improvement of the discussions / talks you can have with AI is simply mind blowing. Because of the completeness of its knowledge, references and thought processes, AI is now outsmarting me in most instances. You're next in the coming 6 months at most.    

 I can confidently predict that AGI will be with us by 2025 although nobody will admit it. As for the good old Turing test, more or less ANY AI can now pass in a breeze. More advanced version specifically tuned to detect AI will be outsmarted soon. Then what? We are playing with fire!

  If you have more time, here's the long version. 

 

WHEN THIS HAPPENS, MARKET SHUTDOWN, NO ELECTIONS?! (Video - 51mn)

  Great interview. What's left to say? 

  When the SHTF it will be a 72h affair. I agree. It is unavoidable at this stage. The accumulated debt is simply unbearable. The countdown has started! 

 

Trump Wins 2024 -- Chaos to Follow with Martin Armstrong (Video - 31mn)

  Martin Armstrong is probably one of the best long term analyst you can find based on his long experience of Washington. He also happen to be even more pessimistic than I am while keeping his short term ideas in a long term perspective.