Music Video: Baby Don’t Get Hooked On Me

Mac Davis

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Charts: U.S. Fed Balance Sheet Surges Amid Bank Runs

Foreign Official Repo up to the maximum of US$60 billion

Investors park their money in the Money Market Funds

Source : Bloomberg

Charts: The Number of Employed Persons in Hong Kong Decreased in February of 2023

The number of unemployed persons also shrank.

Source : Trading Economics

Chart: China Urban Youth Unemployment Rate Rose in February 2023

Source : Statista

The Real Threat of 15-Minute Cities

John Mac Ghlionn wrote . . . . . . . . .

The Guardian’s Oliver Wainwright recently discussed a new “international socialist conspiracy” that has taken the world by storm. “Fringe forces of the far left,” he noted, “are plotting to take away our freedom to be stuck in traffic jams, to crawl along clogged ring roads and trawl the streets in search of a parking spot.” The name of this “chilling global movement?” he asked, sarcastically and somewhat contemptuously: The “15-minute city.” Wainwright believes these cities are simply part of a “mundane planning theory.” He’s wrong.

A few days after Wainwright’s piece was published, three academics called 15-minute cities (FMCs) “the hottest conspiracy theory of 2023.” In a truly elitist manner, they poked fun at those who dared to question the motive behind FMCs.

One needn’t be a card-carrying QAnon member to have fears over these Trojan-like creations. Before going any further, it’s important to get our definitions in order. As the political scientist Kelly M. Greenhill has noted, not all conspiracy theories are wacky, and not all conspiracy theories are wrong. Take the Watergate conspiracy theory, for instance, or the fact that Edith Wilson made most of the executive decisions after her husband, President Woodrow Wilson, suffered a stroke. Quite often conspiracy theories turn out to be accurate.

Also known as smart cities, FMCs are places where everything imaginable, from your place of work to your favorite pizzeria, is accessible either by foot or bike (not by car, though; they will be verboten) in 15 minutes or less. What’s so bad about this?

On first inspection, very little. We are, after all, creatures of comfort. We live in a world where the mantra “Too Long, Didn’t Read (TL;DR)” now reigns supreme. We crave convenience; we crave expediency. However, expediency isn’t always a good thing; sometimes it’s downright dangerous. This is especially true when people, either consciously or otherwise, trade their freedom for ease of access to certain services. FMCs may make it easier for citizens to get from A to B, but these creations will also make it easier for those in power to spy on us, to harvest our data, and enable Big Brother to become Bigger Brother.

As I write this, FMCs are being actively championed by the World Economic Forum (WEF), the group behind the “Great Reset” and the idea of owning nothing, having absolutely no privacy, and being very happy. This fact alone should concern all readers.

Want to discuss the WEF?

To many, I’m sure FMCs sound incredibly cool. But don’t be fooled by the name. FMCs are actually “smart cities.” As I have noted elsewhere, the word “smart” is really just a synonym for surveillance. These ultra-modern, tech-saturated monstrosities use hundreds of thousands of sensors to vacuum up copious amounts of personal data.

FMC policies are currently being rolled out in cities such as Barcelona, Bogotá, Melbourne, Paris, and the dystopian wasteland known as Portland. What do these cities have in common? Surveillance technology. Between now and 2040, cities right across the United States (and beyond) are predicted to spend trillions of dollars on the installation of additional cameras and biometric sensors. Sure, surveillance is bad now. But, as Randy Bachman famously hollered, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

By 2050, more than two-thirds of the world’s population will live in closely surveilled urban centers, like glorified rats in cramped cages. Contrary to popular belief, we no longer live in a panoptic society. When Jeremy Bentham, the English philosopher and social theorist, put forward the idea of this prison system, there was no internet. In truth, there weren’t even cars. We now live in a post-panoptic world—a digital panopticon, if you will—with huge social media platforms collecting personal user data before selling it to the highest bidder.

The companies running these platforms often work closely with government officials, identifying supposed sinners and punishing them in the swiftest of manners. As the writer Kylie Lynch has noted, these companies know absolutely everything about you; they have instant access to your browser history, your activity online, and now, rather worryingly, even your biometrics. Not surprisingly, these Big Tech companies will have a big impact on the FMCs of the future, by providing the underlying digital infrastructure needed to monitor us and ensure mass compliance.

FMC are wolves in sheep’s clothing. Don’t believe the countless stories telling you otherwise. It has become common for elitist, mainstream outlets to poke fun at those who dare to question the “we have your best interests at heart” narratives. We have been burned too many times before.

Source : Brownstone Institue

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China Rooftops Could Almost Match Size of Global Solar Industry

China’s buildings and rooftops have potential to host more than 1,000 gigawatts of solar power capacity — almost the same size as the entire existing global industry, according to the sector’s largest manufacturer.

There’s theoretically enough space on residential, commercial and public properties to host that scale of generation capacity as costs drop and technologies advance, said Zhong Baoshen, chairman of Longi Green Energy Technology Co. That would be enough to power at least 750 million homes during peak generation.

Solar photovoltaic generation capacity rose about 27% to 1,223.5 gigawatts globally in 2022 and China accounts for more than a third of the total, according to BloombergNEF.

Reaching the 1,000 gigawatts level would require the industry to overcome hurdles such as grid constraints and a lack of energy storage capacity, meaning the estimate will likely remain theoretical in the near term. Still, Zhong is confident on China’s ability to rapidly develop such distributed renewable sources.

The country’s Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development last year set a goal of adding 50 gigawatts of solar capacity on buildings between 2021 and 2025. Instead, last year alone, the country ended up adding 51 gigawatts of distributed solar projects, mostly on the rooftops of homes, factories and office buildings.

Distributed solar projects are also a boon for rural revitalization, a key government priority in recent years to boost economic development and improve living standards in the countryside. “Rural revitalization is not only about rapid economic development, but also green and low-carbon development to meet villagers’ expectations for a better life,” Zhong said in a written response to questions.

Source : BNN Bloomberg

A Brake on Innovation: Silicon Valley Bank ‘s Failure Poses Serious Challenge for America’s Tech Economy

Matt Ocko and Zachary Bogue wrote . . . . . . . . .

Over the course of about 24 hours, starting Thursday night, Silicon Valley Bank experienced one of the most dramatic bank runs in global financial history. Whispers of structural weakness – fueled by a gaffe in the timing and communications of a loss-making sale of some of the bank’s assets – provoked panic.

In the digital age, among a small community in the San Francisco Bay area who look at their phones more than their surroundings, this was enough to mean trouble.

President Joe Biden’s announcement Monday that all SVB depositors will be protected, and not at taxpayer expense, was welcome and necessary. The SVB collapse threatened to topple other banks, whether specialized players like SVB or regional banks.

As the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which now controls the bank, looks for a buyer, those of us who work in the innovation economy should have a single hope: that the bank’s new owner will send a strong message of support for the startup companies that have been the backbone of American prosperity and security for more than 75 years – and that are critical to national security, fighting climate change and re-homing America’s supply chain.

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The crisis at SVB involves red states as well as blue, and the whole American workforce as much as tech workers. Its effects would have been felt far from Silicon Valley, and in every part of the economy.

SVB had reach throughout the US economy

The $175.4 billion in deposits imperiled at SVB touches perhaps 10 times that amount of economic activity nationally: nurses working on clinical trials; pipe fitters; welders; truck drivers; lab technicians; small manufacturers building the future in places such as Ohio, North Carolina, Utah and Texas – and the cafes, dentists, car dealers and real estate agents that SVB-banked companies support.

The startups that were thrown into chaos are the ones building the safer nuclear reactors, the new battery materials, the automated recycling systems, the future of abundant clean water and the sustainable aviation fuels called for in the Inflation Reduction Act.

They are delivering breakthrough intelligence and defense capabilities more effectively than the traditional defense industry. They are ensuring that medicines and medical technology are available in a national health crisis.

The stability of the innovation economy is a national priority.

Over the next few months, we’ll learn what SVB might have done to prevent the bank run. But what should not be lost in this moment is that for 40 years, SVB has understood and reliably supported waves and waves of technological progress that benefited all Americans.

SVB helped tech startups get off the ground

From the entire set of technologies in microchips, storage and networking that were prerequisites for the internet and every compute service on it driving American productivity (including Google, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure), to lifesaving breakthroughs in genomics and precision medicines (including much of what made COVID-19 vaccines possible), to the building-block innovations of today’s large-scale climate tech, SVB was there to lend to the young companies creating them when generally larger institutions simply could not be bothered. For decades.

These investments have delivered huge economic impact for America, hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs and improved quality of life for people around the world – and the ecosystems that support life on Earth.

Likewise, SVB’s now-absorbed, previously independent cousin institutions in investment banking like H&Q and Alex Brown were willing to take risks creating liquidity for young companies when larger peers would not give them the time of day.

The absence of those investment banks and the slow extinction of more nurturing public markets has had an impact on both the nature and scope of innovation that is funded and that makes it to market. It also has removed opportunities for middle-class Americans to “buy in early” on promising public stocks in companies that actually make things of value.

A protracted or negative outcome to this crisis won’t cripple technological innovation, but it would replace the acceleration of innovation with a brake, one that neither America’s national security nor its resilience to the climate emergency can afford.

Happily, this bank does not need a taxpayer-footed bailout: just customers who have its back, just as it has had theirs. Here, signs are promising: Hundreds of venture capital firms, ours among them, have signed a letter of support for SVB at this critical hour.

Silicon Valley must continue to have a bank as bold as the American dream.

Source : USA Today

In Moscow, Xi and Putin Bury Pax Americana

Pepe Escobar wrote . . . . . . . . .

What has just taken place in Moscow is nothing less than a new Yalta, which, incidentally, is in Crimea. But unlike the momentous meeting of US President Franklin Roosevelt, Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in USSR-run Crimea in 1945, this is the first time in arguably five centuries that no political leader from the west is setting the global agenda.

It’s Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin that are now running the multilateral, multipolar show. Western exceptionalists may deploy their crybaby routines as much as they want: nothing will change the spectacular optics, and the underlying substance of this developing world order, especially for the Global South.

What Xi and Putin are setting out to do was explained in detail before their summit, in two Op-Eds penned by the presidents themselves. Like a highly-synchronized Russian ballet, Putin’s vision was laid out in the People’s Daily in China, focusing on a “future-bound partnership,” while Xi’s was published in the Russian Gazette and the RIA Novosti website, focusing on a new chapter in cooperation and common development.

Right from the start of the summit, the speeches by both Xi and Putin drove the NATO crowd into a hysterical frenzy of anger and envy: Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova perfectly captured the mood when she remarked that the west was “foaming at the mouth.”

The front page of the Russian Gazette on Monday was iconic: Putin touring Nazi-free Mariupol, chatting with residents, side by side with Xi’s Op-Ed. That was, in a nutshell, Moscow’s terse response to Washington’s MQ-9 Reaper stunt and the International Criminal Court (ICC) kangaroo court shenanigans. “Foam at the mouth” as much as you like; NATO is in the process of being thoroughly humiliated in Ukraine.

During their first “informal” meeting, Xi and Putin talked for no less than four and a half hours. At the end, Putin personally escorted Xi to his limo. This conversation was the real deal: mapping out the lineaments of multipolarity – which starts with a solution for Ukraine.

Predictably, there were very few leaks from the sherpas, but there was quite a significant one on their “in-depth exchange” on Ukraine. Putin politely stressed he respects China’s position – expressed in Beijing’s 12-point conflict resolution plan, which has been completely rejected by Washington. But the Russian position remains ironclad: demilitarization, Ukrainian neutrality, and enshrining the new facts on the ground.

In parallel, the Russian Foreign Ministry completely ruled out a role for the US, UK, France, and Germany in future Ukraine negotiations: they are not considered neutral mediators.

A multipolar patchwork quilt

The next day was all about business: everything from energy and “military-technical” cooperation to improving the efficacy of trade and economic corridors running through Eurasia.

Russia already ranks first as a natural gas supplier to China – surpassing Turkmenistan and Qatar – most of it via the 3,000 km Power of Siberia pipeline that runs from Siberia to China’s northeastern Heilongjiang province, launched in December 2019. Negotiations on the Power of Siberia II pipeline via Mongolia are advancing fast.

Sino-Russian cooperation in high-tech will go through the roof: 79 projects at over $165 billion. Everything from liquified natural gas (LNG) to aircraft construction, machine tool construction, space research, agro-industry, and upgraded economic corridors.

The Chinese president explicitly said he wants to link the New Silk Road projects to the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). This BRI-EAEU interpolation is a natural evolution. China has already signed an economic cooperation deal with the EAEU. Russian macroeconomic uber-strategist Sergey Glazyev’s ideas are finally bearing fruit.

And last but not least, there will be a new drive towards mutual settlements in national currencies – and between Asia and Africa, and Latin America. For all practical purposes, Putin endorsed the role of the Chinese yuan as the new trade currency of choice while the complex discussions on a new reserve currency backed by gold and/or commodities proceed.

This joint economic/business offensive ties in with the concerted Russia-China diplomatic offensive to remake vast swathes of West Asia and Africa.

Chinese diplomacy works like the matryoshka (Russian stacking dolls) in terms of delivering subtle messages. It’s far from coincidental that Xi’s trip to Moscow exactly coincides with the 20th anniversary of American ‘Shock and Awe’ and the illegal invasion, occupation, and destruction of Iraq.

In parallel, over 40 delegations from Africa arrived in Moscow a day before Xi to take part in a “Russia-Africa in the Multipolar World” parliamentary conference – a run-up to the second Russia-Africa summit next July.

The area surrounding the Duma looked just like the old Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) days when most of Africa kept very close anti-imperialist relations with the USSR.

Putin chose this exact moment to write off more than $20 billion in African debt.

In West Asia, Russia-China are acting totally in synch. West Asia. The Saudi-Iran rapprochement was actually jump-started by Russia in Baghdad and Oman: it was these negotiations that led to the signing of the deal in Beijing. Moscow is also coordinating the Syria-Turkiye rapprochement discussions. Russian diplomacy with Iran – now under strategic partnership status – is kept on a separate track.

Diplomatic sources confirm that Chinese intelligence, via its own investigations, is now fully assured of Putin’s vast popularity across Russia, and even within the country’s political elites. That means conspiracies of the regime-change variety are out of the question. This was fundamental for Xi and the Zhongnanhai’s (China’s central HQ for party and state officials) decision to “bet” on Putin as a trusted partner in the coming years, considering he may run and win the next presidential elections. China is always about continuity.

So the Xi-Putin summit definitively sealed China-Russia as comprehensive strategic partners for the long haul, committed to developing serious geopolitical and geoeconomic competition with declining western hegemons.

This is the new world born in Moscow this week. Putin previously defined it as a new anti-colonial policy. It’s now laid out as a multipolar patchwork quilt. There’s no turning back on the demolition of the remnants of Pax Americana.

‘Changes that haven’t happened in 100 years’

In Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350, Janet Abu-Lughod built a carefully constructed narrative showing the prevailing multipolar order when the West “lagged behind the ‘Orient.’” Later, the West only “pulled ahead because the ‘Orient’ was temporarily in disarray.”

We may be witnessing a similarly historic shift in the making, trespassed by a revival of Confucianism (respect for authority, emphasis on social harmony), the equilibrium inherent to the Tao, and the spiritual power of Eastern Orthodoxy. This is, indeed, a civilizational fight.

Moscow, finally welcoming the first sunny days of Spring, provided this week a larger-than-life illustration of “weeks where decades happen” compared to “decades where nothing happens.”

The two presidents bid farewell in a poignant manner.

Xi: “Now, there are changes that haven’t happened in 100 years. When we are together, we drive these changes.”

Putin: “I agree.”

Xi: “Take care, dear friend.”

Putin: “Have a safe trip.”

Here’s to a new day dawning, from the lands of the Rising Sun to the Eurasian steppes.

Source : The Cradle