China shouldn’t need anything from Australia. It should have access to resources from Russia, Afghanistan, Iran, Kazhakstan, etc. However, curiously, all those overland routes and industrial supply lines are riven through with ethnic strife and chaos. So strange!
China is an economy designed to detonate the instant the boats stop arriving from abroad.
If only the Five Nations Corridor could get completed and operating. Kazhasktan, Tajikstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan - infested with Western financial empire scouts, spies, saboteurs, and agent provocateurs.
Further, who will sell cross-national insurance? Where will the escrow be held? What currency will be accepted in that trade? The financial side matters just as much as the physical infrastructure. Corruption and intrigue can stop the very best of engineering feats.
The black markets and piracy/banditry will also be an issue, if the rail, etc. ever gets built.
There is a lot for China to deal with.
“Princes of the Yen” - the Japanese, and for that matter the Asian financial crisis, were intentionally orchestrated US dollar asset bubble collapses.
Intentional. Asset Bubble. Collapses.
The economy of Japan was flooded with US dollars and the demand by the Bank of Japan, to bankers, to loan, loan, loan.
Then the supply of US dollars was cut off.
The debts came due, and the collapse and foreclosures took place.
The U.S. has been in a massive … US dollar asset bubble - real estate, stocks, and AI data centers. To the moon.
And what will happen? If the politicians or military or the people get too uppity?
No more money for stocks, no more money for real estate, no more money for AI.
It is a hair trigger collapse, and the central bank ends up stronger afterward, with the legal ownership of almost the entire economy in very few hands of central bank connected bankers
I just dropped >$2000 USD on HVAC tools equipment, and books. Figured if I know how to do that kind of work, collapse or not, I will be a valuable guy. I don’t have enough saved for my meager precious metals to be anything more than a couple months of survival food money, fuel, emergency medical expenses, or bribes to warlords.
Isn’t it odd how the whole world, America included, survived without HVAC for up to fairly recently? Now, America is full of 300lb fatasses who live in wooden garden sheds in the desert who fire the HVAC if the temperature gets even 1 degree hotter or cooler than the ideal temperature for waddling about as a 300lb fat ass in a comiccon t shirt.
I mean, your HVAC skills will be valuable, but a % of people will cope as people used to cope and a % (the giant fat asses) will cease to be. The rest will need an abominable amount of electricity day in and out to power their HVAC (if they can get it) and then, yes, a HVAC guy.
Not having a go. Just saying that the resilience of that trade is downstream of some stuff, including the idea that people can happily buy 10 kwh+ per day of power.
Out of interest, did the Japanese set up the whole carry trade thing to prop up/extend the fact that their economy and demographics are a ruin?
Or did it just happen/was an accident of other measures?
(Btw - at least they might emerge from whatever is coming as Japanese, whereas I don’t think most of the west will emerge in their current/historical form and values)
I once worked in an ice cream factory. It is just good economic sense to refrigerate ice cream with AC rather than imported ice. Ditto pretty much every agricultural or computer use. Food and industry both have big productivity gains with AC.
Fractional coins is always an option if they want gold and only have a fraction to spend. My point is, the boat has slowly slipped out of the harbor and is becoming unaffordable to most. This move was intentional in the west but not in the Eastern countries where they’re encouraged to buy and are actually conscious of spot prices.
I don’t know how you got that idea but I’m actually thinking in terms of buying gold with fiat. I’m saying that the price of AU has quietly risen above the means of any moderate level of stacking for the average person. Just a year ago, a few thousand brought home some ounces and now it’s fractions. I suspect this was intentional because any positive news for PMs would go against the fiat debt game. The Eastern countries are way ahead on their thinking and understanding of PMs. Try asking any easterner what spot price is, they know. Westerners aren’t even conscious of the idea.
Good choice. I don’t know what part of the country you live in, but here in the south, HVAC is a money machine. Even part-time works pays great. It’s non-stop repair on capacitors, fans, and whole unit change outs. I have several friends in the business, so I know all about.
Basically the idea that the kind of modest stacking that you’re talking about is going to win the day is rather speculative. It basically holding its value against inflation should be assumed base case, in which case squirrelling away $4000 today should be assumed to buy you $4000 of today’s purchasing power tomorrow, even if tomorrow’s purchasing power on paper is $40000 or $400000 in devalued currency. Buying a few ounces today probably isn’t going to set you up for life or let you weather hard times in the absence of other preps, which are likely a better overall investment.
And your “average” Easterner doesn’t have the funds to squirrel away ounces a year, either, so not sure what boat they’re on that the “average” guy here has missed. Average ASEAN per capita GDP is about $5000.
Ah, now that I think about it, europe had similar squeeze spesifically with dollar loans. Here in Finland banks did exactly as you describe, thus it smells deliberate crash of economy to push country towards west, out of soviet union.
That central bank command economy sounds dictatorship in other flavor. Same one leader to rule country, just it is not politician. That’s convenient for keeping country in check.
That playbook is playing on greed. “Free money!”. Nice blingy things. Then drug dealer cuts off supply and cant buy more. I hope chinese are smarter to learn from history but greed is just so common flaw of humans.
“Gold is money, silver is more. Silver is not a bag of pet rocks.” --Vince Lanci
I do vault all my silver outside the US as I don’t want to deal with anything 232 if Trump Administration does go there.
So the US has put investment in the virtual world (Metaverse, AI) and conspicuous consumption, letting our infrastructure fall apart. “green energy” builds solar and wind that cannot stabilize our grid, instead of conservation investments, such as insulating homes.
So do we think that China has enough infrastructure in place that they, unlike the US, can weather a peak oil collapse and keep a basic PHYSICAL high tech base working. We know the US cannot.
In WWII, the US was able to convert auto and tractor plants to making tanks in months. You’re right, we can’t make physical things any more.
The ACA was written by the insurance industry, with corrupt Democrat complicity.
One better idea is to make people responsible for their own health. I work so hard on diet and exercise so I don’t need to do medication. Whenever I chat with sane medical people, we lament the “just give me the pill and a scooter” mentality of most couch potato patients.
Paul is so right about the search for the truth. I have moderate liberal friends that seem to think maybe it was OK to take that “nasty Charlie Kirk” off the table. My response is “are you advocating political assassination?” The sanest response I’ve received is - oh, I need to think about that. As with Paul, I find with the rest you just have to disengage.
Yes, but. Sometimes there’s something no amount of good lifestyle can fix. For example, I have a genetic heart defect. Known about it since I’m 19 although back then they didn’t know about the genetic link. At my very first echocardiogram I was told that I would be fine but to keep being monitored by a cardiologist because something would likely need to be done when I got into my 50s or 60s and by then “they” would likely be able to fix it.
Sure enough I had open heart surgery at age 64 which fixed the problem. But have struggled with Afib since and have had 2 ablations. Wow! Was all that expensive and couldn’t have happened without insurance! All the diet, exercise, keeping a proper weight, not smoking or drinking made no difference.
It bothers me that our “health-care” system is so broken. I’ve got no problem with refusing to have society pay for expensive weight loss drugs when lifestyle changes are what’s needed. But really worry the baby is being thrown out with the bathwater.
You are so right. I broke an arm in April. Told the emergency room orthopedist to just set it. Humans have been setting broken bones for 10000 years. Turns out it was a spiral fracture and a splint couldn’t keep it aligned. Had it been my left hand, I’d have said OK. Unfortunately, since I’m right handed, I believed the orthopedic surgeon that the misalignment of the wrist would make an already arthritic hand hard to use. So I let them put in a steel plate and fix my marginal carpal tunnel problem at the same time.
Modern surgery CAN be a good thing. As are antibiotics, if NOT overused.
However, I’ve needed major PT and an exercise program (lots of time and sometimes painful) to get full health back. Good therapists are as helpful as surgery, although insurance companies try to minimize their use. Personally, I can’t help but think that limiting therapy leaves particularly the elderly less physically healthy, weaker and less balanced. Then, the next fall maybe they won’t survive - think the bean counters - so they’ll die more quickly and less insurance expenses over their shorter life. Yes, I’m a cynic about the insurance industry.
I don’t think you’re understanding what I’m saying and that’s ok.
Does Argentina have silver mines that the US can use? They will be getting 40 million dollars via Trump.
Hey Chris, as the leader of a young family, is now a good time to buy a first home or better to rent? I ask due to the cracking confidence in fiat currency and devaluation of the dollar and how that will affect the housing market. It’s hard to imagine having any security (financial, food, energy, etc.) in a rental since you don’t own it. What do you predict for the housing market in the event of a market crash? Thanks!
