PeakOil is You
by Subjectivist » Sun 29 Mar 2015, 05:02:56
peripato wrote:What's it all for? It's not like growth can continue for very much longer, so these train links seem like a colossal waste.
by peripato » Sun 29 Mar 2015, 05:19:47
Subjectivist wrote:peripato wrote:What's it all for? It's not like growth can continue for very much longer, so these train links seem like a colossal waste.
It is about who comes out on top if the house of cards falls down. China is doing an excellent job of positioning themselves as the leader for the 21st century.
by ennui2 » Sun 29 Mar 2015, 09:05:46
by Cid_Yama » Sun 29 Mar 2015, 09:42:26
by peripato » Sun 29 Mar 2015, 10:07:27
Cid_Yama wrote:Unless you've been the top dog and your hegemony has been challenged. How the challenge is met is very much in our interests, if it results in a global war. Just because we are going down the drain on our own, doesn't mean we can't be flushed.
Also, this is very much about how global energy reserves will be used( or not), over the time we have left, and by whom.
It also will determine how rapid the power down will be, especially in the US. The US has been using 25% of the world's resources with only 5% of the world's population. Do you think that will continue if you are no longer top dog?
by onlooker » Tue 31 Mar 2015, 13:41:09
by Cid_Yama » Wed 01 Apr 2015, 03:49:37
by onlooker » Wed 01 Apr 2015, 05:33:29
by SeaGypsy » Wed 01 Apr 2015, 07:16:03
by Cid_Yama » Wed 01 Apr 2015, 12:46:26
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signed a letter of application for Israel to join the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the Israeli Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.
In a statement on its website, the Foreign Ministry said Israel's AIIB membership would open up opportunities to integrate Israeli companies into infrastructure projects it financed.
Israeli companies are increasingly turning to Asia to capture a boom in demand for their technology, as the government urges them to diversify export markets in response to Europe's rising anti-Semitism and potential trade sanctions.
The new bank plans to invest $100 billion (67.7 billion pounds) in infrastructure projects in Asian countries. Half of that amount has already been budgeted by China.
by Cid_Yama » Wed 01 Apr 2015, 13:25:49
The world watched as the number of countries applying to be founding members of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) rose to 46 by the Tuesday deadline.
The soaring participation has been seen as evidence of China's growing international sway. If there is one message to glean from the number of applicants, it is that the world has sensibly voted for a more inclusive, balanced and mutually beneficial international economic order.
The bank is set to finance massive infrastructure projects in Asia and meet the growing demand for a more inclusive and balanced international financial order.
The AIIB, despite its focus on infrastructure development in Asia, offers abundant trade and investment opportunities for developed countries with advanced technology.
China has vowed to be a responsible stakeholder, and with the AIIB initiative, it is doing just that for a more prosperous Asia and a more balanced international economic order.
The AIIB, as well as the New Development Bank (better known as the "Brics bank") and the "one belt, one road" initiative, is also seen as a way for China to deal with its huge excess capacity in industries ranging from cement and glass to iron and steel.
by onlooker » Wed 01 Apr 2015, 15:01:32
by ennui2 » Wed 01 Apr 2015, 18:05:57
Cid_Yama wrote:if it results in a global war
by Cid_Yama » Sat 04 Apr 2015, 10:33:44
On March 28, China’s top economic planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), released a new action plan outlining key details of Beijing’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative. Chinese president Xi Jinping has made the program a centerpiece of both his foreign policy and domestic economic strategy. Initially billed as a network of regional infrastructure projects, this latest release indicates that the scope of the “Belt and Road” initiative has continued to expand and will now include promotion of enhanced policy coordination across the Asian continent, financial integration, trade liberalization, and people-to-people connectivity. China’s efforts to implement this initiative will likely have an important effect on the region’s economic architecture—patterns of regional trade, investment, infrastructure development—and in turn have strategic implications for China, the United States, and other major powers.
Q1: What is the “One Belt, One Road,” and what is in the new plan?
A1: The “Silk Road Economic Belt” and “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” are initiatives first introduced by Xi in the fall of 2013 during visits to Kazakhstan and Indonesia, respectively. They are expected to feature prominently in China’s 13th Five-Year Plan, which will run from 2016 to 2020 and guide national investment strategy throughout that period.
Often referred to jointly as the “One Belt, One Road,” details released so far by China’s official media outlets show the “Belt” as a planned network of overland road and rail routes, oil and natural gas pipelines, and other infrastructure projects that will stretch from Xi’an in central China, through Central Asia, and ultimately reach as far as Moscow, Rotterdam, and Venice. Perhaps awkwardly named, the “Road” is its maritime equivalent: a network of planned port and other coastal infrastructure projects that dot the map from South and Southeast Asia to East Africa and the northern Mediterranean Sea.
The new Belt and Road plan, jointly released by the NDRC and the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Commerce, highlights that the scope of the initiative will extend well beyond infrastructure construction. The program will also include efforts to promote greater financial integration and use of the Renminbi by foreign countries, create an “Information Silk Road” linking regional information and communications technology networks, and lower barriers to cross-border trade and investment in the region, among other initiatives. New regional institutions, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and New Silk Road Fund (NSRF), are also designed in part to complement and support the Belt and Road’s development.
The plan is also notable for its mixing of traditional Chinese diplomatic language (e.g., emphasizing sovereignty and nonintervention) alongside a newer rhetorical focus on adherence to high standards and international norms and the “decisive” role of the market and industry in driving the initiative. This echoes the pledge made by China’s leadership at the November 2013 Third Plenum to “give the market a decisive role in resource allocation,” but it remains to be seen whether or not market forces and commercial considerations will in fact play a critical role in driving the new Silk Road forward.
Q2: What is Beijing trying to achieve with this initiative?
A2: There are important economic and geopolitical drivers of the initiative, though Beijing is likely more focused on the former at present given its domestic economic challenges.
Specifically, the Chinese leadership is struggling to manage a difficult transition to a “new normal” of slower and more sustainable economic growth. The infrastructure projects proposed as part of the Belt and Road—many of which would run through some of China’s poorest and least developed regions—could provide stimulus to help cushion the effects of this deepening slowdown. Beijing is also hoping that, by improving connectivity between its underdeveloped southern and western provinces, its richer coast, and the countries along its periphery, the Belt and Road will improve China’s internal economic integration and competitiveness and spur more regionally balanced growth. Moreover, the construction is intended to help make use of China’s enormous industrial overcapacity and ease the entry of Chinese goods into regional markets. At a time when many large state-owned enterprises are struggling to stay afloat and banks are stuck in a cycle of rolling over ever-growing and progressively less viable loan portfolios, the projects that make up the Belt and Road could provide vital life support and serve as a useful patronage tool for compensating vested interests threatened by efforts to implement market-oriented reforms.
On the foreign policy front, the Belt and Road reflects many of the priorities Xi Jinping identified at a major Chinese Communist Party gathering on foreign affairs held last November. These included a heightened focus on improving diplomacy with neighboring states and more strategic use of economics as part of China’s overall diplomatic toolkit. Against the backdrop of a regional “infrastructure gap” estimated in the trillions of dollars, the initiative highlights China’s enormous and growing resources and will provide a major financial carrot to incentivize governments in Asia to pursue greater cooperation with Beijing. Over the medium to long term, successful implementation of the initiative could help deepen regional economic integration, boost cross-border trade and financial flows between Eurasian countries and the outside world, and further entrench Sino-centric patterns of trade, investment, and infrastructure. This would strengthen China’s importance as an economic partner for its neighbors and, potentially, enhance Beijing’s diplomatic leverage in the region. Increased investment in energy and mineral resources, particularly in Central Asia, could also help reduce China’s reliance on commodities imported from overseas, including oil transiting the Strait of Malacca.
Q3: Does this initiative involve a free trade area or the creation of another kind of international institution?
A3: No, this is clearly not a regional free trade area, and it involves no binding state-to-state agreements. Instead, it is at its heart a pledge by China to use its economic resources and diplomatic skill to promote infrastructure investment and economic development that more closely links China to the rest of Asia and onward to Europe. In this regard, it reflects China’s preference to avoid if possible formal treaties with measurable compliance requirements in favor of less formal arrangements that give it flexibility and allow it to maximize its economic and political skills.
Q4: What are the potential benefits to Asia?
A4: The “One Belt, One Road” has been referred to as China’s version of the Marshall Plan, a comparison Beijing has sought to downplay as being freighted with geopolitical undertones that it claims are absent in its initiative.
Motivations aside, the initiative is a powerful illustration of China’s growing capacity and economic clout—and the Xi administration’s intent to deploy them abroad. Properly implemented, the projects that comprise the Belt and Road could help enhance regional economic growth, development, and integration. According to the Asian Development Bank, there is an annual “gap” between the supply and demand for infrastructure spending in Asia on the order of $800 billion. Given that infrastructure is at the heart of the Belt and Road, there is room for the initiative to play a constructive role in regional economic architecture. In addition, if this leads to more sustainable and inclusive growth, it could help strengthen the political institutions in the region and reduce the incentives and opportunities for terrorist movements.
by Cid_Yama » Sat 04 Apr 2015, 11:25:40
The U.S. Dollar. That little sheet of paper aka “The worlds reserve currency” (WRC) moved in ways that made one think they were watching a biotech stock that just received FDA approval to then minutes later have it pulled. It was absolutely breathtaking. The dark side of that move also showed just how unstable this market is becoming.
Currencies move in what’s known as “pips” (e.g., 1/100 of 1%) but for simplicity’s sake let’s just say they bounce around up and down in moves of pennies. When they move violently up or down in the equivalent of say dimes and quarters – people take notice. A violent sustained move (i.e., within the course of a full trading day) of just 1 dollar – you’ve got not only traders, but global corporations, as well sovereigns watching with explicit eyes for there is not only the wealth of companies on the line, rather, there may very well be “the wealth of nations.”
So how does one think someone with billions upon billions (if not out right trillions) of monetary exposure felt as they watched the world’s reserve currency swing back and forth gyrating in multiples of dollars? Not in weeks, months, or even days – but hours! All I can say is: Welcome to HFT meets USD. Just remember to buckle up and hold on for dear life – and account balances. This ride is going to be jaw-dropping!
Don’t look for any solace in that other once perceived equivalent of “liquid” markets U.S. Treasuries either. It seems they too have fallen into the same debacle.
The Dollar’s stunning movements along with the reverberations wrought across the currency pairs globally, together with the muddled messaging emanating from the Fed. is going to have everyone (and I do mean everyone) weighing the “new currency market player” vs the now perceived, as well as demonstrated “risks” in staying beholden to the current WRC. And just like in retail I believe currency markets share a very important attribute: Once you allow the customer to perceive, let alone conclude, there’s an alternative to you – the damage to market share may already be inevitable as well as irreversible.
What transpires from here is still anyone’s guess. For we truly are in uncharted territory.
by Keith_McClary » Sat 04 Apr 2015, 11:30:08
By Dilip Hiro | (Tomdispatch.com)In the new politics of Afghanistan under Ghani, as the chances for peace talks between his government and the unbeaten Taliban brighten, the Obama administration finds itself gradually but unmistakably being reduced to the status of bystander. Meanwhile, credit for those potential peace talks goes to the Chinese leadership, which has received a Taliban delegation in Beijing twice in recent months, and to Ghani, who has dulled the hostility of the rabidly anti-Indian Taliban by reversing the pro-India, anti-Pakistan policies of his predecessor, Hamid Karzai.
How to Influence Afghans
Within a month of taking office in late September, Ghani flew not to Washington — he made his obligatory trip there only last week — but to Beijing. There he declared China “a strategic partner in the short term, medium term, long term, and very long term.” In response, Chinese President Xi Jinping called his Afghan counterpart “an old friend of the Chinese people,” whom he hailed for being prepared to work toward “a new era of cooperation” and for planning to take economic development “to a new depth.”
As an official of the World Bank for 11 years, Ghani had dealt with the Chinese government frequently. This time, he left Beijing with a pledge of 2 billion yuan ($327 million) in economic aid for Afghanistan through 2017.
The upbeat statements of the two presidents need to be seen against the backdrop of the twenty-first-century Great Game in the region in which, after 13 years of American war, Chinese corporations are the ones setting records in signing up large investment deals. In 2007, the Metallurgical Corporation of China and Jiangxi Copper Corporation, a consortium, won a $4.4 billion contract to mine copper at Aynak, 24 miles southeast of Kabul. Four years later, China National Petroleum Corporation in a joint venture with a local company, Watan Oil & Gas, secured the right to develop three oil blocks in northwestern Afghanistan with a plan to invest $400 million.
In stark contrast, 70 U.S. companies had invested a mere $75 million by 2012, according to the Afghanistan Investment Support Agency.
by AgentR11 » Sat 04 Apr 2015, 22:42:55
by ennui2 » Wed 08 Apr 2015, 17:01:06
Subjectivist wrote:China is doing an excellent job of positioning themselves as the leader for the 21st century.
by Cid_Yama » Wed 08 Apr 2015, 20:45:01
At a ceremony in Toronto on March 23, Finance Minister Joe Oliver launched Canada as the Americas’ first hub to clear trades in goods and services using the Chinese yuan, or renminbi (RMB), without having to first convert to U.S. dollars.
Companies can expect to save about five percent on direct RMB transactions by eliminating costs associated with the U.S. dollar conversions, said Gao Min, a Toronto-based treasury vice president at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), in an interview in Vancouver. Although ICBC is little known to most Canadians, it is the world’s largest bank, with more than US$3 trillion in assets. It was appointed by China’s central bank to clear RMB transactions for North America after Prime Minister Harper announced a set of bilateral trade agreements in Beijing last November.
China will also open up its capital markets for Canadians to invest up to RMB50 billion as part of a bigger goal to promote the international use of the Chinese currency and its eventual rise as a global reserve currency.
The Canadian hub, which will be served by a network of major local and international banks through a computerized platform, will be the 10th one jointly established by China around the world since Hong Kong launched the first one in 2011. The others are located in Singapore, London, Frankfurt, Sydney, New Zealand, Luxembourg, Seoul, and Taipei.
“The internationalization of the RMB is one of the most significant financial events of the 21st century, and the Canadian economy will benefit from Canada’s position as the first RMB trade and investment hub in the Americas,” said Ananth Krishnan, the Vancouver-based head of HSBC Bank’s global trade finance for the western region, in an interview after delivering his RMB presentation at a packed AdvantageBC forum in Vancouver on February 20. AdvantageBC is a Vancouver-based group representing about 150 financial and business organizations tasked primarily with promoting B.C. as an international business centre.
The hub will enable companies to save hundreds of millions of dollars a year in conversion costs alone, Krishnan told the Straight, as China is Canada’s second-largest trading partner, with combined imports and exports exceeding a record $56 billion last year, according to Statistics Canada.
The hub will also open up possibilities for Canadian firms to develop new trade ties with China, because the RMB facility will enhance their attraction in the eyes of Chinese buyers and suppliers, said Krishnan, who predicts that during the next three years, Canada’s exports to China will grow by 11 percent annually while imports will rise by eight percent per year.
“The Chinese government is introducing baby steps to further open up its economy and the RMB as an international currency. They’re establishing settlement hubs around the world to encourage its use. In four to five years, it’ll be fully convertible like other major currencies,” he said during his talk.
The RMB has already displaced the pound and euro to become the second most widely used trade currency after the dollar.
Hansen’s optimism about the RMB’s continued rise is backed by the World Bank’s projection that China will soon overtake the U.S. as the planet’s largest economy to add to its 2013 title as the number one global trading nation.
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