Afleveringen
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Like Germany hiding in the Euro, China have long played the game of keeping their currency soft, to juice their exports.
But now, with the accelerator still jammed to the floor on US inflation, it seems that the powers in Beijing might be looking to devalue the Rimimbi even further.
Everyone plays currency games - the trick is not to get caught. And the problem for China might be that they’re on the brink of embarrassing their adversaries.
Meanwhile, what happens when a miracle becomes a conjuring trick?
After forty years of weaving economic magic, the South Koreans now have the world’s lowest birth rate — and GDP slumping back towards developed economy norms. Are they about to become an early Eastern front runner of the social problems of the west? And can they afford that - given their tough geopolitical neighbourhood?
Exorbitant privilege is what they call the US ability to print the global reserve currency.
So what if the privilege was revoked?
Plenty of apocalyptic fiction has been written about that moment. But this week we’ve done the modelling to put a number on the dent in US living standards.
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A diplomatic incident in Latin America has somehow become the focal point for an ever-expanding range of stories - from the Venezuelan elections, to US energy policy to Ecuadorian banana exports to Russia.
Leading even coolheaded observers to ponder the question: are we approaching the Latin American embassy incident singularity?
Meanwhile, there are always good tariffs and bad tariffs - and in announcing his new shipbuilding policies, this week Joe Biden’s giving us both a plate of cheese and a plate of chalk.
Finally, Arch-Eurocrat Mario Draghi has made a big speech about European competitiveness. Its 20 years of failure - and its hope for the future.
Is this the first sign of a continent about to flex its soon to be enviable muscles? Or is it the first twitchings of an arthritic bodybuilder about to pop a hernia?
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Little Rocket Man has a new toy.
This month, Kim Jong Un unveiled a Bond-villain-like missile with an extending tip.
On that tip was what looks to be a hypersonic glide vehicle.
A hypersonic glide vehicle is the real deal. They're extremely fast. They can manoeuvre at those high speeds. And we don’t yet know if it’s possible to shoot them down.
On paper, this means that North Korea has more advanced potentially-nuclear missiles than the West.
On paper, this is bad news.
But the story gets worse.
It was almost certainly given to them by the Chinese or the Russians.
Why?
Could North Korea be the vehicle to do for the East China Sea what the Houthis have done for the Red Sea? Undermining US power, and leaving America’s regional allies - in this case Japan and South Korea - scrambling for new, more multipolar patterns of allegiances.
Malcom Kyeyune is a columnist for Compact Magazine, a regular writer UnHerd, an expert on modern warfare, and a friend of the show.
In this week’s Special Episode, he’ll be laying out a broad range of potential futures for the region.
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The Atlanticists versus the Autonomists - the European civil war coming soon to a bureaucracy near you.
It’s long been a theme of this show that the continent is being slowly capsized by its long term problems, related to energy and productivity.
We’ll be picking through three news items that tell the short term story of the continent’s woes.
Terrible producer confidence numbers out of Germany, oil prices back to a fresh spike even in the teeth of an incipient recession, and Poland’s Donald Tusk softening the rhetorical ground for continental conscription.
Then, we’ll be panning back.
To look at the dilemma Europe now faces. That between the Atlantacists - who want to shelter under America’s aegis, but thereby have to toe the party line on geopolitics;
and the autonomists - who want to break for something genuinely multipolar, gaining their energy independence, but at sea in an increasingly dangerous world.
The war now spans the continent. And it cuts both ways.
In Germany, the AfD and Sahra Wagenknecht are rising from either side of the political aisle, but both promising to overturn the Atlantacist geopolitical settlement.
Meanwhile, as she gets closer to the French Presidency, Marine Le Pen is kowtowing to the NATO line.
And Georgia Meloni’s promised populist rule has been set back onto the Atlantacists straight and narrow by the Italian presidency.
With constant talk of remilitarising while the continent is broke, are we doomed to spend the next decade stuck in a world where all European citizens are compelled to pretend that our dear leaders are building an army that doesn’t actually exist?
Of course, this is the Premium Week, so we’ll be prancing through this dog and pony show for free for fifteen of those 65 minutes. After that, you’re welcome to sign up on our patreon. Five dollars, pounds or Euros, cancel any time.
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New research from Bloomberg says that Beijing is steering the Chinese economy away from the recent real estate boom, and into high tech manufacturing.
It’s a drive estimated to be worth 19% of GDP by 2026.
Running the numbers, not only is China Collapse Theory once again proved false, the market may even have under-priced how much gas there still is in the tank.
Meanwhile, the Francis Scott Key Bridge has collapsed, effectively blockading Baltimore Port for a long time to come.
The 80 billion dollars in cargo and 140 000 jobs tied to it is bad enough.
But the blow to US pride might turn out to be worse. Across the country, infrastructure is crumbling; while replacing it is becoming ever-more expensive.
Finally, as the US Fed debt pile moves towards 100 per cent of GDP, warnings are being sounded about an American Liz Truss Moment.
Trussification has become a byword for politicians being strung up by the bond markets. The only questions outstanding are: who exactly is the Truss who is about to be strung up? And who is organising the stringing?
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This is a special edition of Multipolarity on The Economic Consequences Of The War.
In 1919, JM Keynes wrote The Economic Consequences of the Peace. Predicting the death of the old world order after Europe’s first unsuccessful attempt at suicide.
We aren’t yet at peace, but the economic consequences of the present war in the middle of Europe are starting to come into view.
Consequences for NATO as a new study shows that in order to meet their target of 2% of GDP, European Nato members will need to increase spending by €56 billion every year.
For sanctions policy as Azerbaijan records a 2000 % spike in car sales from Britain.
And for industry in The Coming Multipolar Age, as Chinese production leaves Western Production for dust.
This week: we’re going to be moving through each in turn, to build up a composite picture of what tomorrow will look like, whatever the exact outcome of the Ukraine War.
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NVIDIA has become a stock market behemoth on the back of their AI-friendly graphics chips. Last week saw them hit a $2.19 trillion market capitalisation. So are they the future of the globe’s most info-critical resource - or a sign that we’re entering the Pets.com era of the AI age?
Meanwhile, after months of delays and diplomatic blocking operations, Sweden and Finland are officially in NATO.
But with past and future president Trump signalling that he will be less than interested in European defence, are they arriving at a party just as the lights go up?
Finally, British equities used to be 9 per cent of the global equity market. New data confirms they’re now 3 per cent. And the trend line is south. As the City’s long term future gently slides out of view, Britain is going to need a new basket for all of its eggs...
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Does the housing market obey the laws of supply and demand?
We say no.
Join us for a controversial, possibly mind-blowing journey into the heart of darkness, into an upside-down-world that set Twitter on fire this week.
Victoria Nuland has fallen on her sword. Or someone else’s sword. Whatever happened to America’s third-ranking diplomat, suddenly retiring at 62 while her President hobbles on at 80, it does seem there are suddenly a lot of swords about.
Does the fall of notoriously Russia-averse Nuland clear the way for a Biden 180 on Ukraine?
Finally, when Rishi Sunak put the crested podium out front of Downing Street last Friday night, for an emergency announcement, it felt more like a hostage situation - like the British political class begging for its life.
The Gaza War has ripped up the story Britain once told itself about its multiculture. But still no one can quite say it.
How will the country survive its political class being rendered altogether speechless?
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"Hamburgers will decide America's future". So says Malcolm Kyeyune in a recent essay ruminating on the American journalist Tucker Carlson's recent visit to Moscow where he famously - or, perhaps, infamously - purchased a burger at Russia's new McDonald's clone, 'Tasty, that's it'.
Kyeyune sees Carlson's culinary adventure as reminiscent of Mikhail Gorbachev's decision to do an advert in which Russians would debate whether the fall of the Evil Empire was worth the introduction of fast food chains. Now the shoe is on the other foot, with Carlson highlighting how cheap food is in Russia in comparison to the United States, plagued, as is the rest of the West, with a cost of living crisis.
But this latest fast food fight is really only the tip of the iceberg lettuce. Since the pandemic of 2020, a feeling of malaise has crept into the West. The feeling is palpable and encompasses everything from rising costs of basic necessities to a feeling that the culture is spiralling out of control to a questioning of our basic modus operandi - what happened, some ask, to our freedoms?
In this week's episode we want to discuss whether the West is spiralling into chaos? It feels like a lot of narratives are breaking down right now, and one crisis seems to open onto another like a Matryoshka doll. With a highly controversial election on the horizon in November and the Biden Administration having failed to deliver on its promise of normality, is our ideological Berlin Wall starting to crumble?
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The numbers are finally in. Israel’s economy has contracted 20 per cent year on year.
It seems the only consolation is that it’s still doing better than the economy of Gaza.
How long can this level of decline go on?
With no end to the war in sight, and a new front in Lebanon cracking open, are we witnessing Israel’s fall from the first rank of the OECD?
Meanwhile, remember the war no one cared about?
You know – the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War?
Of September 2020?
Between Armenia and Azerbaijan?
Well, what would you say if we told you the world stands on the brink of Armenia-Azerbaijan War Three? Nothing much?
Finally, a new Treasury Committee Report says that the Bank of England will have lost £80 billion by the end of the year. That’s cash, not just a paper loss. In fact, the full paper loss is around 250 billion.
That means the new Bank debt shovelled on the government’s books this year is close to the entire Defence budget.
Given the present intellectual state of the bank, only one question remains.
Does anyone have a bridge to sell them?
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Bloomberg says “Germany’s Days as an Industrial Superpower Are Coming to an End”. Which poses at least one serious question - has Bloomberg been listening to Multipolarity?
As the industrial decline narrative goes mainstream, it seems like the copium has finally run out in the Chancellories of Europe.
Meanwhile, reports in the West of a Chinese bust have reached the kind of fevered tone normally associated with the final days of a boom. Yet somehow retail spending is growing at 7.4 per cent a year, and prices of consumer items like cars are still coming down. So is this the world’s first projection-recession?
Finally, Egypt is threatening to withdraw from the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. How much of that is sabre rattling designed to please the Egyptian in the street? And will it be enough to stop the Egyptian in the street becoming the Egyptians in Tahrir Square?
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The US is now bombing Iranian targets, via B1 bombers that have to be flown direct from Texas to perform the task.
This is an interesting new form of madness.
As the West is pulled ever-deeper into the quagmire, we're taking a low road/high road approach to prediction: attempting to model the potential for serious conflict right up to an Iraq-style land war invasion.
Then, we're devoting the second half of the show to thinking more strategically, about the future of the region, the prospects for shutting the Strait of Hormuz, and the potential strategic cards the West has left.
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This week is a Premium Week - every month, we offer our Patrons an exclusive special edition. Our chat with Malcom went on for 1h40, so we've decided to offer the free listeners the first 40 minutes.
If you'd like to hear the full whack, including Malcom's thoughts on the potential for Iranian sleeper cells to perform sabotage operations in Europe and America, please do sign up.
It's $5/£5/€5 a month, and you can cancel any time.
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All the greatest romances are love/hate.
As The Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor of geopolitics, Iran and America have always danced a dance of angry fascination with each other.
Now, as the Middle East burns, their kismet is truly aflame.
With an overstretched Joe Biden about to call in the airstrikes, we’re in the foxhole, figuring out if they’re actually gonna go all the way this time.
Or if this is just one more round of heavy petting.
Ever since a British general let slip the prospect of reintroducing conscription, the British media has been convulsed by a debate over the most trivial aspects of the question. Whether we still have Blitz Spirit. Whether Gen Z are too fat. Which ethnicities would be prepared to fight for the multiculti regime.
There is, however, a bigger picture — something to do with war in Europe?
Finally, this is the week that the FT handed their old enemy Viktor Orban a lifetime’s supply of PR gotchas. In fact, The Plot to Blow Up The Hungarian Economy might be the funniest special ops disaster since the Bay of Pigs.
Hatched in Brussels, this bomb had no trigger, no fuse, no gunpowder — in short, it conformed strictly to EU regulations.
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As the 8th round of Tomahawk missiles hit the Houthis in ten days, a senior White House official caused guffaws when he proclaimed the attacks aren’t working - but that we should keep on doing them anyway.
That senior official’s name? Joseph P Biden. So if the President himself can’t come to a logical line on what’s going on, what hope is there for his underlings? We’ll have the latest from the Red Sea carcrash.
In Britain, the new Defence Secretary Grant Shapps is ramping up the rhetoric, saying that the country is "moving from a post-war to pre-war world”. It poses an important question: what exact will Britain’s 72 000 soldiers be doing in a global war against, say, Russia’s 800 000? Selling hotdogs?
Is it wise that NATO’s key figures all follow the old maxim: walk loudly and carry a small stick?
Finally, Javier Milei’s running into issues with reality. He inherited 160% inflation - but thanks to months of painful austerity, inflation is now at a more manageable 200%. Like Salvador Allende before him, another radical South American government seems like it’s about to be broken apart on the wheel of hyper-inflation. Is this the teething troubles of a newborn economic tiger, or has the doom loop begun on libertarianism’s last stand?
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With the world's biggest container ships presently rounding the Cape of Good Hope, Vasco da Gama-style, the Lads are calling it: inflation is coming back.
This could prove to be a sticky situation for the West's leaders. After all, we were supposed to have seen out the worst by now. Everything was wagered on turning the page in anticipation of election season in the autumn. So what happens to all those carefully laid plans?
Meanwhile, Lloyd Austin didn’t tell his boss he was ducking out of work. Work From Home culture has made that a reality for many. Unfortunately for Lloyd, he is the Secretary of Defence while America’s gunboats bombard Yemen. Lloyd told sources that he barely missed a beat. But Philip thinks this approach speaks to a deeper dysfunction in DC. Who’s steering the Pentagon’s ship of fools?
Finally, news is just in that The Solomon Islands no longer recognise Taiwan. Neither does Nicaragua.
What can that mean? Yup, Beijing’s been on another spending spree, buying up influence in a brace of minor nations.
With 17 countries recently having their Chinese diplomatic status upgraded, we analyse the placement of the latest pieces in the global Go game.
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The Global American Empire has had its honour impugned by the Houthi Rebels, sometimes called a 'ragtag army'.
But as The Lads point out, that characterisation just doesn't work. High-end weapons, Iranian training, and a capacity to melt into the landscape will make 'winning' the war for control of the Red Sea an operational nightmare. With no clear goals, no obvious win criteria, and ever-more provocation to come, they think the transatlantic alliance is stepping into quicksand.
This is a premium episode sampler.
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Remember the Ever Given? The boat that got stuck in the Suez Canal?
Well, thanks to the Houthis, traffic in the canal is down by almost as much as when it was plugged. It seems the red sea crisis is about to inject an inflation spike much like the one the Ever Given gave us.
Only, this time, the memes will be much less jolly.
North of Israel, the war on two fronts is coming on nicely.
With the assassination of Hamas’ deputy and a Hezbollah commander on Lebanese soil, we analyse the chances that they could throw their keffiyehs into the ring.
Finally, a new report shows that financialised US office space in the major metropoles is now regularly underwater. We’re returning to the question of whether it’s about to have its own 2008 moment.
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This week, we're pulling the scheduled predictions for 2024 episode, to do some century-wide predicting. The Houthi incursion into the Red Sea, that we've been reporting for a couple of months, has reached a new peak. It now seems as though it is more than simply a new front in a regional war. It may even threaten the Pax Americana.
US attempts to form a counter-force coalition of the willing have foundered, and more and more it feels as though the forces of the BRICS would like the Red Sea as their own lake. As much as the Russians have the same design on the Black Sea.
What's the future of US dominance in the face of its failure to match this open provocation?
A columnist for Compact, UnHerd and many others, Malcom Kyeyune has spent years auditing US armaments and strategic strength. Here, the long-time friend of the show joins The Lads, to hash out whether the Red Sea is effectively a dead sea.
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This week on Multipolarity, something a bit different.
We want to map the DC brain, from the inside.
Somewhere, inside the Washington Beltway, are a bunch of very smart people who often think alike. Be they at the State Department, the Pentagon, CIA, other parts of the Federal government, or think tanks, they have been tasked with projecting the global power of the world’s greatest empire.
They make the decisions. Someone has to.
And just as France has its Enarques. Or China has its unique mandarin examinations, the Foreign Policy bureaucracy of America have a common culture, a particular education, and a singular mindset. Yet it is so common, so super-dominant in our Western world, we seldom think to question its priors.
This week, we’re lucky to be joined by the very model of the modern wonk-general. Carlos Roa. A Contributing Editor at The National Interest, he was formerly the Executive Editor of the publication. He was Associate Editor of Horizons: Journal of International Relations and Sustainable Development and an analyst at the Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development.
He knows DC from many different vantage points.
We wanted to use his experience of being an insider to chart the anthropology of the Washington Deep State. To talk about what it is to be part of the Washington power elite - how you get started. What schools you go to. What parties you go to. Who you meet and the fundaments of the shared world view they regurgitate to each other.
This episode is a Rake’s Progress, if you will. How To Get Ahead In DC, who you ned to step on, who you step round, to get to the top of the totem pole.
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Most people have never heard of Guyana. Many think it’s in Africa.
But Venezuelans know their CIA World Factbook inside and out. They’ve long claimed that its Western regions are rightfully theirs. And now that the Guyanese have struck oil, the Maduro regime want to take those areas by conquest.
The question isn’t can Venezuela - population 30m - knock over Guyana - population 790 000. With the West presently preoccupied on two other continents, it’s: who is going to stop them?
This week the world’s biggest oil producers announced they’d be sharply cutting back on production – and the oil price fell.
There’s something screwy going on in the market. But who exactly has the power to manipulate the world’s biggest most internationalised market?
Finally, this week in Middle East Corner, we’ve got yet another round of damaged ships.
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