Pearls [China’s String of]
China now owns/controls many ports along the Belt and [maritime] Road. Gwadar, in Pakistan; Piraeus, in Greece and in 2018,…
Mobile Pay
Mobile Pay – paying for goods and services by phone – is just one of the many ways that China…
Guns and Butter?
China has two overarching and interrelated imperatives. Provide improving economic and personal opportunities for its citizens, and reestablish its historic…
China’s Perspective
China remembers its former greatness. Magnificent civil engineering projects: the Dujiangyan Water Project still functioning after 2400 years; the Great…
Chinese Credit
The Chinese banking system has long been afflicted by massive lending to State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), organizations whose purposes did…
Made in China 2025
The formalized industrialization component of the grand ambition, now well under way: including the Belt and Road initiative, the String…
South China Sea
The United States Energy Information Administration has estimated that 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of…
Private Competition for Blockchain
CryptoCollapse [BitCoin from $20,000 USD in January to $7,000 in April] allows oxygen to reach the multitudes of potential BlockChain…
Opening Leads in Bridge
The obvious: there are three components to playing bridge – bidding to establish the contract, defence, and the play of…
Bear Tracks?
By most (all?) historical parameters, global stock prices are unsustainably high! A brief history: Between 1966 and 1982, stock markets…
Imprinted Brains?
Two generations of investors have imprinted in their brains that interest rates are benign – they rise only occasionally and…
South China Sea
The United States Energy Information Administration has estimated that 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of…
Nero Parallels?
Nero was Emperor of Rome for 13 years in the middle of the hundred year period that scholars generally agree…
Everywhere Folly
Originally published at The Financial Pipeline “For an investor, the value of Tuchman’s The March of Folly lies in the…
Shatter Fragile
Beyond resilient and robust, Taleb proposes that Antifragility is the preferred quality in a crisis. Adversity makes you stronger. Resilience…
Is it Just Possible?
An important idea in a lousy book, Taleb espouses “antifragility. Fragile entities are most likely to shatter when confronted by…
“ALGO” Dangers
Mathematical models underlie an estimated $2 Trillion of structured products sold to investors desperate for higher returns than conventional debt…