21 Friday May 2021
The story of Greensill Capital’s rise and fall has everything: investment banks, opaque finance, private jets, trophy mansions and the biggest British lobbying scandal in a generation, involving former prime minister David Cameron. The Financial Times charts the rise of Lex Greensill and Sanjeev Gupta and examines where it all went wrong.
25 Friday Sep 2020
CSIS: The China Economic Risk Matrix, written by the Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics’ non-resident senior associate Daniel Rosen, non-resident adjunct fellow Logan Wright, and Associate Director of the China Projects team at Rhodium Group, Lauren Gloudeman. Despite rising inefficiency, China’s financial system has served as the shock absorber that has helped China’s economy recover from the virus outbreak and maintain growth. But the same elements that have driven China’s recovery have also pushed China’s financial system deep into a gauntlet of systemic financial risks. The China Economic Risk Matrix is the combination of indicators of financial vulnerability that threaten to overwhelm Beijing’s policy tools to manage them, along with a novel, China-specific financial stress indicator. Building on the earlier CSIS volume, Credit and Credibility, this report explores the specific conditions and markets in which changes in government credibility can have a significant impact on systemic stability in China.
13 Sunday Sep 2020
The U.S. unemployment rate shot up faster than in any other developed country during the pandemic. WSJ explains how differences in government aid and labor-market structures can help predict how and where jobs might recover.
The covid-19 pandemic is set to increase public debt to levels last seen after the second world war. But is rising public debt a cause for concern? New economic thinking suggests perhaps not, at least for now.
04 Tuesday Aug 2020
A deteriorating bilateral relationship and growing regulatory scrutiny have changed the trajectory of capital flows between the United States and China over the past three years. The COVID-19 pandemic threatens to further disrupt two-way investment, as weak Chinese consumption and supply chain risks make U.S. companies re-think their China footprint, and Chinese investors face continued headwinds from domestic restrictions on outbound capital flows and U.S. regulators wary of opportunistic foreign buyers. The National Committee held a virtual event with report authors Thilo Hanemann and Daniel Rosen, both of Rhodium Group; Ker Gibbs, president, AmCham Shanghai; Rebecca Fannin, founder/editor, Silicon Dragon Ventures; and National Committee President Stephen Orlins to launch our new Two-Way Street: 2020 Update report and discuss the latest two-way investment data and analysis on May 11, 2020.
31 Friday Jul 2020
28 Tuesday Jul 2020
19 Sunday Jul 2020
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12 Tuesday Nov 2019
A deal among oil-producing countries to curb production and balance an oversupplied market will achieve its objective in the first quarter of next year, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said, after prices tumbled on news of a build-up in U.S. inventories.
His Saudi counterpart, Khalid Al-Falih, said at a joint news briefing in Astana, Kazakhstan, that inventories were declining worldwide and reductions would accelerate in the next three to four months. Inventories will settle to their five-year historical average — OPEC’s target — before the end of the year, though Saudi Arabia, the group’s biggest producer, may modify its policy if output cuts don’t have the desired effect, he said. June 11, 2017 Read More HERE
25 Thursday Jul 2019
Posted in america, Economics, Environment
≈ Comments Off on Oil-Well Bolts Are #Failing
Failed bolts on a connector unit from a subsea oil well. U.S. regulators and oil-field service companies have said the bolts are breaking, prompting equipment shutdowns and raising safety concerns about gear used on Gulf of Mexico rigs. PHOTO: BUREAU OF SAFETY AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENFORCEMENT
18 Saturday May 2019
Posted in Economics, Environment, History, news, Research
≈ Comments Off on Afghanistan:the Saudi Arabia of lithium
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The New York Times has reported that U.S. officials and American geologists have found an estimated $1 trillion worth of mineral deposits that have yet to be exploited in the country. The paper said a Pentagon report called Afghanistan potentially “the Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key component in batteries for cellphones, laptop computers and eventually, a plug-in fleet of electric cars.
In December, 2007, China’s state-owned China Metallurgical Group Corp. (MCC) signed a $2.9 billion agreement with the Kabul government to extract copper from the Aynak deposit, one of the world’s largest unexploited copper deposits with an estimated 240 million tons of ore. When MCC entered into negotiations with the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, it offered substantial aid for resource development as part of the package.
Of course in order to move the ore Afghanistan needs a rail system. Afghanistan ‘s mining 
minister appointed China Metallurgical Group Corp. to carry out technical studies for two proposed rail lines in the country from Kabul to Turkam in the east, and Kabul to Mazar-e-Sharif in the north. The rail lines are seen as essential to help Afghanistan develop a mining industry that could bring in billions of sorely needed dollars to the impoverished nation.
Naturally China really wants gas and oil and once again Afghanistan’s government signed a deal with China’s state-owned National Petroleum Corporation, allowing it to become the first foreign company to exploit the country’s oil and natural gas reserves.The ministry listed the initial value of the project with CNPC as $700 million. But the total could be ten times greater if more reserves are found and developed.
The government of Afghanistan also granted key gold and cooper licenses to a consortium backed by City of London banker Ian Hannam, former BHP Billiton CEO Chip Goodyear and Poland’s multibillionaire Jan Kulczyk. In addiation Afghan Gold and Minerals, Afghan Minerals Group, and Turkish-Afghan Mining Co. had been picked from a shortlist of 25 bidders to explore and start developing the Balkhab, Shaida and Badakhshan projects respectively. Afghan Gold and Minerals (owned by Sadat Mansoor Naderi) will have copper explorations rights over the Balkhab, northwest of the capital Kabul. Not sure who owns the Turkish-Afghan Mining Co. Also, Afghan Minerals Group was granted Thursday a license to explore the Shaida copper deposit, in the province of Herat, in western Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, Turkish-Afghan Mining obtained the license for the Badakhshan gold and copper deposit, in the Badakhshan province, in north-eastern Afghanistan.
Afghanistan’s government granted an Indian steel company the right to exploit the Hajigak iron ore deposit which is considered one of the largest iron deposits in the world at 1.8 billion tonnes. The Indian company wants to ship the ore through Pakistan to India, which might seem a bit of a problem but the amount of money to be make by trucking firm and Government fee’s means that the green light will be given.
They are a lot of other businesses (and NGO’s) looking to profit from the Afganie war as well.
China, Not U.S., Likely to Benefit from Afghanistan’s Mineral Riches
China mining giant tapped for Afghan rail project
16 Saturday Feb 2019
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A presentation at the United Nations North Lawn building presented statistics gathered by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) about spending on armaments and militarism. The report declared that in 2013 over 1,747 billion dollars were spent on armaments. SIPRI Director Sam Perlo Freeman pointed out that the overwhelming majority of military spending was being done by the US and its allies.
While military spending by the United States has slightly decreased, spending by strategic US aligned regimes around the world is dramatically rising. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is a key US ally in the Middle East and a backer of insurgent groups in Syria, has increased its military spending by 14.8%, the largest increase of any country on earth. John Feffer of Institute for Policy Studies, one of the presenters, told Press TV, that the build-up of military spending by US aligned regimes around the world has dangerous implications and could lead to war. Presenters pointed out that military spending is rising most rapidly in the Middle East and the Pacific, and that despite recent cuts, the United States remains the main exporter of weapons and supplier of military aid. See video here.
Information from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
RichardbBrunner 