Modern fractional reserve banking is ultimately a confidence game. If lenders or depositors are confident their bank is solvent, it stands. If confidence is broken, that historically leads to bank panics, deposit runs and domino collapse of a financial system or worse. The surprise collapse in late May of a small Inner-Mongolia Chinese bank, Baoshang,…
The Arctic’s ice cover is melting, which presents new economic opportunities for the Arctic states, while also making the competition between them stiffer. Can these opposing interests lead to a large-scale war in the region? The fight for the resource-rich region now involves not just the Arctic Ocean countries –the US, Russia, Canada, Norway, and…
In chats about Hong Kong and the mainland, we always reached a consensus: if you want to develop you can go to the United States or back to the mainland, but there is no future in Hong Kong. In recent years, the decline has happened with shocking speed. At handover in 1997, per capita GDP…
The visit of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to China on July 2 carries with it high hopes that progress will be made on integrating his country’s “Middle Corridor” with BRI. The “Middle Corridor” is Turkey’s vision of connecting with its civilizational cousins in Central Asia and further afield with China, thus pioneering a new…
Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has warned China of “consequences” over its handling of violent protests in Hong Kong. Hunt has not ruled out slapping sanctions on the Chinese government, according to BBC reporting. Other Conservative politicians like former Tory party chairman Chris Patten have also weighed in to rebuke China and to praise the…
During the course of the G20 important agreements and alliances were reached between Russia-China and the USA which indicate that President Trump is not “just another neo-con” as some of his cynical detractors have claimed, but is actually working to re-orient the United States into a strategic alliance with the Eurasian superpowers. This was seen…
