The Federal Reserve is the current contender for taking the crown from the Japanese. Central bankers, in particular, are like hoarders; they never throw any policy idea away. It doesn’t matter how many times it fails, or how spectacularly. Japanese policymakers have stuck with QE for now double-digit attempts without anything to show for it. Instead, whichever thing gets rebranded. [...]
Forget scripted television. If you want Game of Thrones-style palace intrigue, you can do no better than Beijing in 2020. There are all sorts of rumors floating around, few of which can ever get confirmed. It’s not that there are rumors but rather how many of them, and how they don’t seem to be stamped out with the usual regularity [...]
Forget about trade wars, or even the eurodollar’s ever-present squeeze on China’s monetary system. For the Communist Chinese government, its first priority has been changed by unforeseen circumstances. At the worst possible time, food prices are skyrocketing. A country’s population will sit still for a great many injustices. From economic decay to corruption and rising authoritarianism, the line between back [...]
China’s growing troubles go way back long before trade wars ever showed up. It was Euro$ #2 that set this course in motion, and then Euro$ #3 which proved the country’s helplessness. It proved it not just to anyone willing to honestly evaluate the situation, it also established the danger to one key faction of Chinese officials. The entire world [...]
Always aspiring to technocratic greatness, China’s Communist Party is set up to run like clockwork. It’s supposed to go off in predestined fashion, a course programmed into the vast apparatus by highly proficient experts. It is, or is supposed to be, comforting that order and control over the complex main spheres of daily life can be managed down the detail [...]
Chinese officials are getting nervous. Everyone knows that whenever your favorite sports team struggles and fans are calling for the head coach’s head, any owner or general manager who then issues the dreaded (from the coach’s perspective) vote of confidence is essentially sealing his fate. PBOC Governor Yi Gang issued a similar sort of statement today. CNY is in freefall, [...]
Top Chinese leadership is taking further shape. With Xi Jinping’s continuing consolidation of power going on right this minute, most of the changes aren’t really changes, at least not internally. To the West, and to the mainstream, what the Chinese are doing seems odd, if not more than a little off. Unlike in the West, however, there is determined purpose [...]
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