Silver Eclipses Gold... Thanks to the EU?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in ,, at 7/22/2020 05:46:00 PM
I have been looking at an entry point to buy silver over the past few months, but a dip has not really come. Indeed, the metal has soared recently, handily outperforming gold. Why is this so? For a long time, the gold/silver price ratio was historically high, so there is likely some mean reversion there. That is, gold became too costly relative to silver despite having similar attributes, so silver's price had to move up eventually. Like gold, silver is something with intrinsic value unlike paper money or even virtual currencies. So there's some of that consideration at play: It is hard to find an asset on more of a roll...

Is China's TikTok Turning American to Avoid a US Ban?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in ,, at 7/22/2020 05:15:00 PM
So much international controversy over such a mindless diversion. That is TiktTok's current predicament. This is just a follow-up on a previous post I made about how India banned TikTok's app there. During these difficult times, countries are understandably adapting protectionist stances. After all, it's the easiest strategy to pursue when confronted with hardship: blame foreigners for whatever ails your country. In the telling of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, TikTok is a Trojan horse for Chinese Communist encroachment into American life. For kicks, I am linking to a Fox News story for the first time ever (I think)--fitting...

"Trade War 4.0": How the EU Plans to Punish US Tech

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in ,, at 7/20/2020 08:12:00 PM
This is a follow-up to the earlier post about how the EU and US are on a collision course over the tax treatment of American tech giants, which the EU believes are operating nearly tax-free within their countries. If we were still dealing with old-fashioned goods, the solution for the EU would be simple: apply tariffs, which are taxes on goods. After all, the US is applying those on a lot of EU goods right now. But how would you retaliate against services which the US is dominant in? Since these are intellectual property-rich things, you would make it easier to violate IP. Now, if there is anything the US guards zealously,...

Missing US Innovation: Assisted Suicide On Demand

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in ,, at 7/16/2020 06:10:00 PM
Numbers don't lie: There isn't much to live for Stateside. Healthcare is largely misspent there, so how about the opposite? The United States is perceived as an innovator leading the rest of the world. Sometimes, its innovations are not necessarily ethically or socially edifying. Witness the emergence of its sprawling prison industrial complex. No other country on earth spends as much on incarceration or throws as many of its own people behind bars. Usually those jailed are us colored people, but that's another discussion for some other time. Suffice to say that fortunes have been made in this industry. Profiting off the...

Can Trump Destroy Hong Kong's Dollar Peg?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 7/08/2020 07:20:00 PM
Asian financial crisis, SARS, global financial crisis, COVID-19 outbreak...HK$ remains pegged. Whither Trump? There are several ironies in the Trump administration's ongoing efforts to strike back at China for eroding Hing Kong's political freedoms through passing a national security law via the mainland's rubber-stamp legislature. For a wannabe authoritarian, Trump taking action against China for eroding its territory's independence is kind of rich. For another thing, Hong Kong is one of the few places on earth that imports far more the United States than it exports. Trump regularly bashes those the US runs large bilateral...

Techno-Nationalism: India Bans PRC's TikTok

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in ,,, at 7/02/2020 12:44:00 AM
Slap Xi's image with sandals...and ban Tiktok too!  Well, well, well: In a previous post concerning whether India could boycott China after the recent, fatal border skirmish, I said "They can burn as many Xi pictures as they like, but their compatriots won't stop buying PRC-made goods anytime soon." As it turns out, techno-nationalism is alive and well but not in the way I had envisioned. (I am still correct on technical points since [1] what's transpired concerns services not goods and [2] it's a government ban instead of a consumer boycott). The jingoistic Modi government apparently couldn't help itself from taking...