In Pictures: Food of Labyrinth in Singapore

Fine Dining Contemporary Singaporean Cuisine Focusing on Local Ingredients

No.11 of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants

Charts: Stretched Delivery Times in 2021-22 Are Reversing and Will Drive Goods Deflation

Source : Twitter

A Disorderly Reset with Gold Revalued By Multiples

Egon von Greyerz wrote . . . . . . . . .

Tectonic shifts lie ahead. These will involve a US and European debt crisis ending in a debt collapse, a precipitous fall of the dollar and the Euro with Gold emerging as a reserve asset but at multiples of the current price.

The next phase of the fall of the West is here and will soon accelerate. It has been both precipitated and aggravated by the absurd sanctions of Russia. These sanctions are hurting Europe badly and affecting the US in a way that they didn’t expect, but was obvious to some of us. The Romans understood that free trade was essential between all the countries that they conquered. But the US administration blocks have both the money and the ability to trade of the countries they don’t like.

But shooting yourself in the foot really hurts and the consequences are in front of our eyes. No foreign country will want to hold US debt or dollars. That is a catastrophic problem for the US as their deficits will grow exponentially in coming years.

So a debt collapse is not just a looming disaster but a bomb hurling towards the US economy at supersonic speed.

With the imminent death of the petrodollar and explosion of US debt, there is only one solution for the funding requirements of the US Government – the FED which will stand as the sole buyer of US Treasuries.

A CATASTROPHIC DEATH SPIRAL

So the DEBT spiral of higher debt, higher deficits, more Treasuries, higher rates and falling bond prices will soon turn into a DEATH spiral with a collapsing dollar, high inflation and most probably hyperinflation. Sounds like default to me but that word will probably never be used officially. It is hard to admit defeat even when it stares you in the face!

Yes, the US will probably obfuscate the situation with CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) but since that is just another form of Fiat money, it will at best buy a little time but the end result will be the same.

US Debt Ceiling Farce belongs to Broadway rather than Wall Street

The debt ceiling was created in 1917 as a means of restricting reckless spending by the US government. But this travesty has gone on for over 106 years. During that time there has been a total disdain for budget discipline by the ruling Administration and congress.

The problem is not just the debt but the cost of financing it.

The annualised cost of financing the Federal debt is currently $1.1 trillion. If we assume conservatively that the debt grows to $40 trillion within 2 years, the interest cost at 5% would be $2 trillion. That would be 43% of current tax revenue. But as the economy deteriorates, interest will easily exceed 50% of tax revenue. And that is at 5% which will probably be much too low as inflation rises and The Fed loses control of rates.

Thus a very dire scenario lies ahead and that is certainly not a worst case scenario.

THE FED IS BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

The Fed and the thus US government are now between Scylla and Charybdis (Rock and a Hard Place).

As it looks today, the US will bounce between Scylla and Charybdis in coming years until the US financial system and also the economy takes ever harder knocks and goes under just as every monetary system has in history.

Obviously the rest of the West including an extremely weak Europe will follow the US down.

BRICS AND SCO – RISING POWERS

The whole world will suffer but the commodity rich nations as well as the less indebted ones will ride the coming storm far better.

This includes much of South America, Middle East, Russia and Asia. The expanding power blocks of BRICS and SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) will be the strong powers where a much increasing part of global trade will take place.

Barring major political and geopolitical upheavals, China will be the dominant nation and the main factory of the world. Russia is also likely to be a major economic power. With $85 trillion of natural resource reserves, the potential is clearly there for this to happen. But first the political system of Russia needs to be “modernised” or restructured.

What I outline above is of course structural shifts that will take time, probably decades. But whether we like it or not, the first phase, which is the fall of the West, could happen faster than we like.

A MONETARY SYSTEM ALWAYS ENDS IN A DEBT EXPLOSION

In 1913, total US debt was negligible, and in 1950, it had grown to $406 billion. By the time Nixon closed the gold window in 1971, debt was $1.7 trillion. Thereafter the curve has become ever steeper as the graph below shows. From September 2019 when the US banking system started to crack, the Repo crisis told us that there were real problems although no one wanted to admit it. Conveniently for the US government, the Repo crisis became the Covid crisis which was a much better excuse for the Government to print unlimited amounts of money together with the banks.

Thus, just in this century, total US debt has grown from $27 trillion to $94 trillion!

But that was history and we know we can’t do anything about the past. But now comes the fun.

I have been warning about a coming debt explosion for some time. Well, I believe this is it.

So let’s take a quick look at a few factors that will cause the debt explosion.

BANK FAILURES

A Hoover Institute report calculates that more than 2,315 US banks currently have assets worth less than their liabilities. The market value of their loan portfolios are $2 trillion lower than the book value. And remember this is before the REAL fall of the asset values which is still to come.

Just take US property values which are greatly overvalued by the lenders:

So the four US banks that have gone under recently are clearly just the beginning. And no one must believe that it is just small banks. Bigger banks will follow the same route.

During the 2006-9 subprime crisis, bailouts were the norm. But at the time, it was said that the next crisis would involve bail-ins.

But as we have seen so far in the US, there were no bail-ins. Clearly the government and the Fed were concerned about a systemic crisis and did not have the guts to bail in the bank customers, not even above the FDIC limit.

As the crisis spreads, I doubt that bank depositors will be treated so leniently. Neither the FDIC, nor the government can afford to rescue everyone. Instead depositors will be given an offer they can’t refuse which is compulsory purchase of US treasuries equal to their credit balance.

The European banking sector is in an even worse state than the US one. European banks are sitting on large losses from bond portfolios acquired when interest rates were negative. No one knows at this stage the magnitude of the losses which are likely to be substantial.

Both in commercial property and housing, the situation is worse in Europe than in the US since the European banks are funding most of these loans directly themselves, including € 4 trillion of home mortgages.

The banks also have a mismatch between low rates received on mortgages against high rates paid to finance them.

The ex-governor of the Bank of France and ex-head of the IMF, Jacques de Larosière accuses the authorities of subverting the private banking system with deranged volumes of QE after it had become toxic:

“Central banks, far from promoting stability, have delivered a Masterclass in how to organise financial crisis”

$3 QUADRILLION OF GLOBAL DEBT & LIABILITIES

If we add the unfunded liabilities and the total outstanding derivatives to the global debt, we arrive at around $3 quadrillion as I discussed in this article:

“This is it! The financial system is terminally broken”

Sadly, the Western financial system is now both too big to save and too big to fail.

Still all the king’s horses and all the king’s men cannot save it. So even if the system is too big to fail, it will with very dire consequences.

GOLD TO BE SUBSTANTIALLY REVALUED IN THE DISORDERLY RESET

Just over a century after the creation of the Fed and the beginning of the debt ceiling, the mighty dollar has lost 99% of its value in purchasing power terms.

And measured against the only money which has survived in history – Gold – the dollar has also lost 99%.

This is obviously not an accident. Not only is gold the only money which has survived but also the only money which has kept its purchasing power throughout the millennia.

For example, a Roman Toga cost 1 ounce of gold 2000 years ago, which today is also the price for a high quality man’s suit.

You would have thought that losing 99% of its value for the reserve currency of the world would be a disaster. Well it is of course, but the US, as well as most of the Western world, has adjusted by increasing debt exponentially to make up for the disastrous debasement of the currencies.

What is even more interesting, gold is up 8-10X this century against most currencies.

That is a superior performance to virtually all major asset classes.

And still nobody owns gold which is only 0.5% of global financial assets.

More recently gold is at all-time-highs in all currencies including the dollar.

But in spite of the extremely strong performance of gold or more correctly put, the continued debasement of all currencies, no one talks about gold.

This is obviously very bullish. Imagine if all stock markets made new highs. It would be all over the media.

So what this is telling us is that this gold bull market, or currency bear market, has a very long way to go.

As I often point out, no fiat money but only gold has survived throughout history.

Gold’s rise over time is always guaranteed as governments and central banks will without fail destroy their currency by creating virtually unlimited fake money.

Since this has been going on for 1000s of years, history tells us that this trend of constantly debasing fiat money is unbreakable due to the greed and mismanagement of governments.

And now with the debt crisis accelerating, so will the gold price.

Luke Groman makes a very interesting point in his discussion with Grant Williams (grant-williams.com by subscription). Luke suggests that although the dollar will not yet die as a transactional currency, that it is likely to be replaced by gold as the reserve asset currency.

The combination of dedollarisation and liquidation of US treasuries by foreign holders will lead to this development.

Commodity countries will sell for example oil to China, receive yuan and change the yuan to gold on the Shanghai gold Exchange. They will then hold gold instead of dollars. This will avoid the dollar as a trading currency when it comes to commodities.

In order for gold to function as a reserve asset, it will need to be revalued with a zero at the end and a bigger figure at the beginning as Luke says. The whole idea would be that gold will become a neutral reserve asset which floats in all currencies.

The inverse triangle of Global debt resting on only $2 trillion of Central Bank gold shown above makes the revaluation of gold obvious.

A floating gold price as a reserve asset is of course much more sensible than a fixed gold price backing the currencies and would be the nearest to Free Gold.

So the consequence of gold becoming a reserve asset could involve a rise of say 25X or 50X the current level. Certainly not an improbable outcome in today’s money. The debasement of the dollar and other Western currencies is likely to have a similar effect but then we are not talking in today’s money. Time will tell.

As gold is now in an acceleration phase, we are likely to see much higher levels however long it takes and whatever the reason is for the rise.

The 1980 gold price of $850, adjusted for real inflation would today be $28,300

As gold is now in an acceleration phase, we are likely to see much higher levels however long it takes.

What is clear is that fiat money, bonds, property and stocks will all decline precipitously against gold.

What is important for investors is to take protection now against the most significant RESET in history which is a disorderly reset.

So if you don’t hold gold yet, please, please protect your family, and your wealth by acquiring physical gold.

Gold repositioning as a Global Reserve Asset could happen gradually or it could happen suddenly. But please be prepared because when it happens you don’t want to hold worthless paper money or assets.

Source : Gold Switzerland

Why Is the U.S. Banning Children’s Books?

Jane Ciabattari wrote . . . . . . . . .

Philip Pullman’s widely acclaimed fantasy novel Northern Lights has been voted sixth in the BBC Culture 100 greatest children’s books of all time poll, and Pullman is the number one living author on the list. Yet when it was first published in the US in 1996, the novel – known in the US as The Golden Compass, and the first book in the trilogy His Dark Materials – was in some parts of the US banned, and by 2008 was the second most challenged book in the US.

Northern Lights won the Carnegie Medal for children’s fiction in the UK in 1995, and in 2019 Pullman was knighted as well as honoured with the 2019 JM Barrie award, marking a “lifetime’s achievement in delighting children”.

Yet the world view presented in Northern Lights and the rest of the trilogy – considered by some as atheist in sentiment – proved too much for some vocal minorities in the US. The American Library Association’s 2008 banned book list identified the title as the second-most challenged book in the country, with objections coming from the Catholic League. In fact the whole trilogy caused outrage in some sections of the US, while in the UK, columnist Peter Hitchens stated that Pullman was “the anti [CS] Lewis, the ones atheists would have been praying for, if atheists prayed.” (CS Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is also in the BBC Culture poll’s top 10).

The banning of Northern Lights could be considered a precursor to censoring books for “moral”, world view or religious reasons. Now the banning and challenging of books in the US has escalated to an unprecedented level. The ALA documented an unparalleled number of reported book challenges in 2022, more than 2,500 unique titles, the highest number of attempted book bans since the ALA began tracking censorship data more than 20 years ago. Books for young people that have been targeted for topics such as race, gender and sexuality include Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer, George M Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Jonathan Evison’s Lawn Boy.

“Ultimately, attempts to ban books are attempts to silence authors who have summoned immense courage in telling their stories,” ALA president Lessa Kanani’opua Pelayo-Lozada tells BBC Culture. “Most books that people object to are by or about LGBTQ+ individuals or people of colour. Those books are on library shelves because someone in the community wants to read them. It’s the job of a librarian to provide access to those authors and stories, whether they mirror the experience of a reader or shed light on an unfamiliar perspective.”

She adds, “Americans enjoy the freedom of expression and the freedom to engage with others’ expression. We get to choose the books and ideas we want to engage with, but we don’t get to decide what our neighbours can read and think. We don’t get to silence stories that we don’t like.” The movement to ban books is driven by a vocal minority demanding censorship,” Kasey Meehan, director of PEN America’s Freedom to Read project, tells BBC Culture. “This school year saw the effects of new state laws that censor ideas and materials in public schools, an extension of the book banning movement initiated in 2021 by local citizens and advocacy groups. These efforts to chill speech are part of the ongoing nationwide campaign to foment anxiety and anger with the goal of suppressing free expression in public education.” Bans occurred in 32 states, affecting four million children and young people. The surge of banned books includes more titles that touch on violence and abuse, health and wellbeing, or instances or themes of grief and death.

Reasons given by challengers include “gender ideology propaganda”, “transsexual material”, “embracing trans ideology which is an assault on girls/women”, “sexual misconduct”, “drug/alcohol use”, “LGBTQ content”, “violent”, “anti-police”, “racist”, “obscene”, “paedophilia”, “grooming”. “In the past 10 to 13 years, the LGBTQ books have gotten very sexually graphic,” Jennifer Pippin, a Florida mother and book challenger, and founder of Moms for Liberty, told the Washington Post. The concern over LGBTQ books is not homophobia, she said, but the “sexually explicit” nature of the texts.

Censorship and sensibility

“While the book banners are a minority of the population, they are a vocal minority… and an organised one, determined to impose their wills on every level of governance,” author Jonathan Evison tells BBC Culture. Evison’s novel Lawn Boy, about a young Mexican-American yard worker who struggles to forge his way in working-class Seattle, is seventh on the ALA most-banned list. “Thus, it is very important that we be diligent and organised in our efforts to defend free speech.”

Ninety percent of the challenges in 2022, according to the ALA study, were lists compiled by organised censorship groups (40 percent were of 100 books or more). “The book banners have developed a kind of playbook – a list of targeted books, and the offending passages from each book,” Dave Eggers, author of, most recently, the “all ages” novel, The Eyes and the Impossible, tells BBC Culture. Eggers visited Rapid City, South Dakota, after his novel The Circle was banned in high schools there, and all the school district’s copies destroyed.

On 17 May, George M Johnson, whose memoir All Boys Aren’t Blue navigates boyhood and adolescence from the perspective of a queer black boy, joined PEN America, publisher Penguin Random House, several other authors, and parents of two children in the school district, to file a lawsuit in Florida to fight against a county that removed books, violating the first amendment and the 14th amendment, and asking for books to be returned to school library shelves where they belong.

“What gives me hope,” Johnson tells BBC Culture, “is that the majority of the country is against book bans. The fact that the bans are activating students to fight for their rights to have books. And that we are winning in a lot of counties, and keeping the books on shelves. We are galvanised and organised and ready to continue this fight for as long as it takes. Furthermore, the banning of books has not stopped publishers from allowing more stories to be written. Eventually, there will be so many stories that you can’t ban them all.”

Nobel laureate Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, a coming-of-age story that explores the effects of racism on a young girl’s psyche, is third on the ALA’s most challenged list. Morrison once explained that the book’s title was inspired by black childhood friend who, at age 11 told her she had been praying for two years for blue eyes. “This kind of racism hurts,” Morrison said. “This is not lynchings and murders and drownings. This is interior pain.”

As BBC Culture honours the 100 greatest children’s books of all time, it’s a good moment to envision the children’s books still to be written (and illustrated), the myriad of voices still to be heard, the stories still to be told. And to consider Morrison’s eloquent argument against book banning in Burn This Book, the PEN America anthology she edited. “The thought that leads me to contemplate with dread the erasure of other voices, of unwritten novels, poems whispered or swallowed for fear of being overheard by the wrong people, outlawed languages flourishing underground, essayists’ questions challenging authority never being posed, unstaged plays, cancelled films – that thought is a nightmare. As though a whole universe is being described in invisible ink.”

Source : BBC

Chart: 10 U.S. Policy Recommendations to Preserve Peace and Stability in the Taiwan Strait

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Read the full report

TEN FOR TAIWAN . . . . .

中国船厂交付“世界之最”浮式生产储卸油船（Floating Production Storage and Offloading）

记者: 杨漾, 施瑜彤 . . . . . . . . .

随着世界海洋油气开发向深远海发展，铺设长距离油气回输管线的成本越来越高。将油气处理厂直接置于海上——浮式生产储卸油船（FPSO）的市场需求快速扩张。中国船企正在该领域的全球订单争夺战中加速崛起。

中国船舶集团所属大连船舶重工集团有限公司（下称大连造船）5月26日宣布，其与三井海洋联合开发和设计的全球第一艘M350型FPSO“Bacalhau”号正式交付，实现了我国FPSO造船业的重大突破。

FPSO是开采深海油气资源的高端大型海洋工程装备，可实现海上石油、天然气等能源的开采、加工、储存、外运，被称为“海上石油加工厂”。由于结构及工艺复杂，FPSO被视作海工领域“皇冠上的明珠”。

挪威咨询公司睿咨得能源分析称，全球海上石油和天然气服务业正处于一个新的繁荣时期，2023年将达到十年来高点。通常而言，单艘FPSO的总造价超过10亿美元，全球能承担该等复杂程度装备制造的船厂屈指可数。据澎湃新闻了解，由于FPSO建造难度大、集成程度和工程精度要求高，并非每个国家都有能力新建FPSO。目前，该领域形成了韩国、新加坡、中国与巴西四国竞争的格局。

据大连造船介绍，当天交付的是该公司建造的第七艘新造FPSO，与世界知名FPSO总包公司三井海洋、世界知名石油公司艾奎诺首次在新造FPSO方面达成合作。

这艘新型FPSO是世界上首个应用挪威船级社最新规范设计的超大型海工项目，能满足巴西、西非、澳大利亚等地区的特殊海洋环境条件，适用于全球多个海域的油气开发作业，并大幅降低运营成本。

该项目的规模和尺度参数创世界之最，总长364米，型宽64米，型深33米，设计吃水22.65米，排水量46万余吨，甲板面积达17400平方米，相当于三个标准足球场。每天可以处理原油22万桶，相当于占地10平方公里的陆地油气加工厂。

其中，油气处理上部模块重量达5万吨，全船管子多达34000根，重约4000吨，电缆拉放总长度约80万米，相当于大连到上海的直线距离。涂装面积约88万平方米，各专业施工物量是普通VLCC（超大型油轮）船型的3倍之多。

作为全球最大的海上浮式储油船，全船使用的管路多达36000根。要想减少船只的维修养护成本，运送原油的管路就要既耐腐蚀又安全可靠。为此，科研人员突破了焊接和安装工艺等诸多难题，将超强碳钢和改良型玻璃钢等多种新型材料首次使用在该船管路制作中。一系列创新实现了该平台在油田只需要低程度的维护，且满足30年不进坞的要求。

据悉，该项目是开采石油进行油气分离、处理含油污水、动力发电、供热、原油产品的储存和运输，集人员居住与生产指挥系统于一体的综合性的大型海上石油生产基地。作业油田为巴西圣保罗州外海桑托斯盆地，是巴西水域产能和储量最大的浮式生产储卸油船。

Source : The Paper

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