Meet Iran, World's Hottest Stock Market

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 5/17/2020 09:26:00 PM
Infidel, witness the power of the Tehran Stock Exchange. Your first reaction may be, "They have a stock market in Iran"? Fret not, dear readers, they do have one. What's more, it's been on fire despite the ongoing US embargo that's brought its economy to a near-standstill in terms of international trade. Speaking of which, one of the things Iran still trades--albeit in reduced amounts--is oil. With oil prices near multi-decade lows at the moment due to the sheer lack of demand for it as the world has come to a halt, you would be right to expect that this newly-discovered Iranian stock market is faring very poorly at the...
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Japan’s Ongoing Repatriation of PRC Production

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in ,, at 5/10/2020 09:32:00 PM
"Sorry mate, but Japan Inc. is coming home." One of the current themes of the global COVID-19 pandemic concerns "deglobalization." In economic terms, previously elaborate supply chains stretching across continents have proven brittle to disruptions caused by closed borders and transportation shutdowns. Of course, no country has benefited more from the broadening of these global production networks in recent decades than the People's Republic of China. At least that was the situation way back when relocating operations in China made sense given its low-cost labor and vast numbers of newly-minted consumers. Nowadays, though,...
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Trump Blocks US Public Pension's PRC Investments

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in ,, at 5/09/2020 04:42:00 AM
US public pensions being invested in China post-Covid-19? Getouttahere!  A core idea in investing is that of "portfolio diversification": It's better not to put all your eggs in one basket so that they all do not break if that basket falls. For instance, we are witnessing an historic AmeriCollapse with a 14.7% unemployment rate and 20.5 million jobs lost in the wake of Trump's bumbling response to the COVID-19 outbreak Stateside.  So, wouldn't you want to put at least some of your money elsewhere the economy isn't so dire like, say, China whose exports are on the mend? The unsurprising answer from the Trump administration...
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Coincidence? UK Tops W European Obesity; COVID-19 Deaths

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 5/05/2020 09:17:00 PM
Flat on his bum Boris Johnson is the perfect metaphor for the UK's COVID-19 response. Is it a coincidence that a certain European island country tops the region's obesity and COVID-19 death league tables? I think not. Probably the worst insult you can hurl at the British is that they are the Americans of Europe. Now that's a lot of baggage--which they mostly carry around the waist, as it turns out. Especially nowadays, that transcontinental dietary "special relationship" isn't working out so well. Just as the US has the fattest people among all OECD nations, the United Kingdom has the portliest Western Europeans. First,...
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The Rise of European CoronaProtectionism

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in ,, at 5/02/2020 08:11:00 PM
 I almost forgot to post this one: The "hollowing out of the industrial base" is a favorite belief of arch-protectionists like Trump's pseudo-economist, Peter "Death by China" Navarro.  However, this belief knows no geographic boundaries or ideological predispositions. American or European, right or left, you'll find the same idea repeated ad nauseam. What's more, it's a sign of the times that the drumbeat for this kind of protectionism grows louder. In the wake of 2020's Great Coronavirus Global Shutdown, European countries long since affected by the loss of the commanding heights of industry--coal, oil, steel,...
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