• US intelligence: 'We can no longer call shots alone'
• European Union will be 'hobbled giant' by 2025
• Triumph of western democracy not certain

Looking ahead to 2025, the NIC (which coordinates analysis from all the US intelligence agencies), foresees a fragmented world, where conflict over scarce resources is on the rise, poorly contained by "ramshackle" international institutions, while nuclear proliferation, particularly in the Middle East, and even nuclear conflict grow more likely. ...

The new report views a transition to cleaner fuels as inevitable. It is just the speed that is in question.

The NIC believes it is most likely that technology will lag behind the depletion of oil and gas reserves. A sudden transition, however, will bring problems of its own, creating instability in the Gulf and Russia.

While emerging economies like China, India and Brazil are likely to grow in influence at America's expense, the same cannot be said of the European Union.

The NIC appears relatively certain the EU will be "losing clout" by 2025. Internal bickering and a "democracy gap" separating Brussels from European voters will leave the EU "a hobbled giant", unable to translate its economic clout into global influence ...

Guardian 21 November 2008

The First World debt crisis only serves to hasten the shift of power to the East

The problem is not just public debt. It is total debt. The governments of the developed world have over-borrowed but so have consumers and companies ...

The first thing is surely that the two-speed world will continue through this recovery.

The West ... will be increasingly preoccupied by its debts.

Much of the fruits of growth will have to go, first in stopping public debt rising further, then starting to pay it off. That will restrict private consumption as well as public spending ...

The second thing is that it looks more and more as there will be a second leg to the downswing ...

The third thing that is going to happen is that we in Europe ... will think differently about public spending ...

We have in effect been lied to ... about what the state can provide at any particular level of taxation.

And as a result of that lie, we have transferred a huge burden on to our next generation of working people.

They have to provide not only for the pensions and healthcare of the retiring workers but also pay interest on the debts that have passed on ...

The hardest thing to see is the financial consequences.

Will governments try to reduce the real burden of debt by encouraging inflation? There will certainly be a great temptation to do so ... the course of inflation is the great imponderable; what is certain is that the shift of power from West to East will continue.

Independent  11 June 2010

In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad

However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves ...

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms.

Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk.

Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records ...

Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens.

Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77.

Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant ...

NYT  26 Jan 2012    Corporate Sociopathy    Neoliberal Consumer Culture    The FYB Dystopia

If surpluses cause as many problems as debts, maybe we need to tax creditors

Philip Inman explains the Keynes solution to the current imbalances ...

They get richer and we get poorer ... because they have artificially low exchange rates.

The Germans have profited vastly from a lower euro than they would have enjoyed had the Deutschmark remained valid currency.

The Chinese keep pumping out goods at a dollar-pegged rate. Should the yuan be floated freely, we would all be paying much more for our flat-screen TVs ...

... floating exchange rates and a tax on surpluses would help adjust the imbalances.

Robert Skidelsky ... has documented how John Maynard Keynes, who wrestled with this problem in the depression of the 1930s, put forward just such a solution.

"Keynes sought to secure creditor adjustment without renouncing debtor discipline.

"To this end, his scheme aimed to bring a simultaneous pressure on both surplus and deficit countries to 'clear' their accounts ...

China will not write off anyone's debts – it is hooked on being a surplus country. The Germans should know better.

And if they refuse to write off other nations' debts, it is they and not the Greeks who should be thrown out of the euro.

Gdn  03 Jan 2012    A Two Speed Europe    Global Risks 2012    Globalization Log

Rebalancing the Global Economy

'Our Lifestyle Has Revolved Around a Dangerous Egotism'

Is Germany Headed for a Power Blackout?

SPIEGEL: Do you sometimes have nightmares that you are burdening industry and the German people with billions in expenses, but it turns out climate research was wrong all along with all its doomsday scenarios?

Röttgen: High-ranking Chinese colleagues have removed any fears that I may have had about being entirely wrong.

Even if there was no climate change whatsoever, they told me that they would still invest in renewable sources of energy, efficient technologies and electric cars.

It makes economic sense for them to invest in a future that doesn't rely on burning oil, coal and natural gas -- also because it's important for them to remain competitive with high-tech countries like Germany ...

Der Spiegel  28 Nov 2011    Durban COP17    Eating the Future Log    Peak Oil: Not If but When?

Climate Change

Energy & Natural Resources

Political deadlock derails China's EU aid offer

China had offered help in return for European support to grant it either more influence at the International Monetary Fund, market economy status in the World Trade Organisation, or the lifting of a European arms embargo ...

The IMF route would have been the simplest diplomatically ...

But the sources in Beijing say that this option was abruptly closed to China when it became clear to EU politicians that any investment from China would be contingent on gaining a greater say in IMF decision-making and a more rapid path to inclusion of China's yuan in the IMF's special drawing rights currency unit ...

Tel  11 Nov 2011    Euro Crisis    Global Risks 2012    

China, an appreciation

Motorists warned cost of tank of petrol 'to hit £100' by 2015

Struggling families were told to brace to expect the average cost of unleaded petrol to rise from an average of £1.34.8 today to £1.54 within four years.

Experts said this would the cost of filling up a Ford Mondeo, which has a 70-litre tank, will rise from just over £93 to nearly £108.

After a brief respite, fuel costs will rise again within a few months amid surging demand from booming Asia economies, which are expected to trigger a boom in oil markets, according to forecasters at the Ernst & Young ITEM Club ...

Tel  07 Nov 2011    Falling Living Standards    Global Risks 2012    Peak Oil

Cannes showed how power has shifted to Beijing

The global economy has three main pillars: the United States, the European Union and China.

America was where the crisis began, with a housing market bubble that corrupted the financial sector.

Europe is where the crisis now has its locus, amid fears that the single currency could break apart.

China, despite steaming ahead since the slump of late 2008, may be next ...

Back in 2008, when the crisis broke ... Chinese factories were mothballed and the workers laid off.

China's communist leaders well understood the potential for serious social unrest so they ordered Chinese banks to keep the economy moving by expanding credit.

At one stage, the annualised increase in credit growth in China hit 170% ...

The result was over-investment on a colossal scale: not just in industrial capacity but in property.

China is now awash with factories that will struggle to make a profit and with a glut of overpriced housing ...

Europe's problems come at an unfortunate time for China, which is facing the twin problems of over-investment and overheating, and is vulnerable to even a relatively mild double-dip recession in the west.

Gdn  06 Nov 2011    Globalization Log    Global Risks 2012    

Democracy: Cause of Debt Problems

Chinese economic miracle fuels surge in carbon emissions

Soaring carbon dioxide emissions from China and the US have driven the world's output of greenhouse gases to its highest level ...

Global CO2 emissions in 2010 reached 33.51 billion tonnes, up from 31.63 billion tonnes in 2009 – an increase of nearly 6 per cent.

This is believed to be the highest-ever percentage increase year on year, despite growth in many industrial economies being sluggish or non-existent.

However, the figures from the US Department of Energy show clearly that it is the surging Chinese economy that is driving the growth: China's emissions in 2010 were 8.15 billion tonnes, up from 7.46 billion tonnes the year before – a 9.3 per cent increase in 12 months.

The 694-million-tonne increase alone dwarfs all the carbon emissions that Britain produces in a year.

China now accounts for 24.3 per cent of global carbon emissions ...

The US, whose emissions totalled 5.49 billion tonnes in 2010, up from 5.27 billion tonnes in 2009 – an increase of 4.1 per cent – now accounts for 16 per cent of emissions worldwide ...

Between them, the two industrial giants produce 40 per cent of the world's greenhouse gases, and neither shows any sign of slowing down ...

Ind  05 Nov 2011    Eating the Future Log    Last Nation Standing

China warns it cannot 'cure' eurozone's debt crisis

China, holder of the world's largest foreign exchange reserves at $3.2 trillion, said it wanted more clarity before investing.

The official Xinhua news agency, used to communicate Communist Party policy, said Europe must address its own financial woes.

"China can neither take up the role as a saviour to the Europeans, nor provide a 'cure' for the European malaise," it stated.

"Obviously, it is up to European countries themselves to tackle their financial problems." ...

Tel  30 Oct 2011

How China can save the eurozone

Under the prevailing institutional environment, China's only viable option is to maintain its currency peg, but add some upward flexibility on the exchange rate.

A stable euro, underpinned by sound monetary policies of the European Central Bank, would offer China more options in managing its monetary policies.

It would give Chinese policymakers time to diversify its foreign exchange reserves and to correct the imbalance in its economic structure, while creating a relatively stable economic environment that is conducive to longterm economic development.

A prosperous Europe also offers the best chance of creating a multipolar global economic system.

As the US enters another election year, it is again open season on China.

With Republican candidates and the Democrat-controlled US Senate clamouring to label China a currency manipulator, trade and investment frictions are bound to increase. China will need to rely on the independence and impartiality of the WTO in adjudicating any future trade disputes with the US, and only a multipolar global economic system can guarantee this ...

Gdn  30 Oct 2011    Eu Log

List of countries by external debt

Days when the West could lecture Beijing are over

Hillary Clinton, according to one report posted by WikiLeaks, called China "the USA's banker".

With the euro bailout deal potentially involving China buying up to €70bn in European bonds, it looks like the nation has just acquired another major client ...

The days of berating it over its internal issues and telling it to model itself more on a multi-lateral entity such as the EU are coming to an end ...

Ind  29 Oct 2011    America    China    EU Log

Dave lectures China on freedom and the rule of law, shock

China holds Europe to ransom over £62bn bailout deal

Be Nice to the Countries That Lend You Money

China May Impose Conditions for Helping Euro Zone

... on Thursday morning, Sarkozy telephoned with Chinese President Hu Jintao to discuss his country's involvement.

While nothing concrete resulted from the chat, there are indications on Friday that any Chinese involvement could come at a price.

According to a front-page story in the Financial Times, China would not only require water-tight guarantees on its investment, but Europe might have to pay a political price as well.

As a condition for its involvement, Beijing could ask European leaders to cease criticizing China's policy of keeping its currency, the renminbi, artificially undervalued, Li Daokui, a member of China's central bank monetary policy committee, told the paper.

It is an issue that has repeatedly strained China's relations with Europe, but especially with the United States.

Were Europe to agree to such a demand, it could drive a wedge between Washington and Brussels.

"It is in China's long-term and intrinsic interest to help Europe because they are our biggest trading partner," Li told the Financial Times.

"But ... the last thing China wants to do is throw away the country's wealth and be seen as just a source of dumb money." ...

Der Spiegel  28 Oct 2011    EU Log

Brussels Decisions 'Will Exacerbate the Crisis'

Eurozone seeks bailout funds from China

As they say up North: "You don't get owt for nowt"

The head of the eurozone's bailout fund is beginning attempts to persuade China to invest in a scheme to help rescue member countries facing debt crises ...

Analysis
Martin Patience

BBC News, Beijing
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
With more than $3tn in foreign reserves there are European hopes that China could ride to the rescue.

As the EU's biggest trade partner Beijing would also be hard hit by any downturn in Europe.

But like other investors, China will want guarantees.

And Beijing may push for other concessions, such as market economy status - a move that would make it harder for European companies to press trade complaints against Chinese rivals.

Any investment will also be fraught with political risk.

China's fund managers have faced criticism after earlier overseas investments soured.

Despite being the world's second economy, more than 200m Chinese live in poverty.

China's leaders won't want to be seen giving "charity" to countries richer than their own.

BBC NEWS  28 Oct 2011    EU Log

China 'won't follow US' on carbon emissions

China will not allow its carbon dioxide emissions per person to reach levels seen in the US, according to the minister in charge of climate policy.

Xie Zhenhua, vice chair of the National Development and Reform Commission, said that to let emissions rise that high would be a "disaster for the world" ...

... the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) put China's annual emissions at 6.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide per person, compared to the US figure of 16.9 tonnes ...

But the Chinese number has tripled since 1990, says the JRC - and could rise to US levels within six years.

However, Mr Xie ... said China would not "follow the path of the US" and allow per-capita emissions to rise that high ...

BBC NEWS  25 Oct 2011

Emission pathways consistent with a 2°C global temperature limit

We find that in the set of scenarios with a ‘likely’ (greater than 66%) chance of staying below 2°C, emissions peak between 2010 and 2020 and fall to a median level of 44Gt of CO2 equivalent in 2020 (compared with estimated median emissions across the scenario set of 48Gt of CO2 equivalent in 2010).

Our analysis confirms that if the mechanisms needed to enable an early peak in global emissions followed by steep reductions are not put in place, there is a significant risk that the 2°C target will not be achieved.

Nature Climate Change  23 October 2011

Global CO2 emissions soar despite efforts by industrialised countries

Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) – the main cause of global warming – increased by 45 % between 1990 and 2010, reaching an all-time high of 33 billion tonnes in 2010 ...

Continued growth in the developing countries and emerging economies, and economic recovery by the industrialised countries are the main reasons for a record breaking 5.8% increase in global CO2 emissions between 2009 and 2010 ...

EC Joint Research Centre  21 Sept 2011    Eating the Future Log    Fire and Floods

The Anthropcene

A Cooler Climate

35 Critical Facts About . . . Global Warming

The Global Warming Pages

Sarkozy tells Cameron to 'shut up' in euro clash

A more important stand-off, this time between France and Germany, over how to increase the fire-power of Euroland's dwindling €440bn bail-out fund, was resolved yesterday on German terms.

However, leaders of the 17 Eurozone nations called for more detailed study of two possible "models" for boosting the value of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) to at least one trillion euros.

These included inviting other countries, or private investors, including China, to invest in a new fund to insure, or guarantee, the debts of larger EU nations such as Italy or Spain ...

Ind  24 Oct 2011    Bankocracy Log    'Divi' Dave Log    EU Log

“Be Nice to the Countries That Lend You Money”

EU could source bailout funds from Asia and the Gulf

Europe to join the Greater China co-prosperity union?

The EU could tap sovereign wealth funds from Asia and the Gulf in order to boost the financial clout of its main vehicle to bailout eurozone countries suffering debt distress and prevent contagion spreading, it is understood.

Finance ministers from the 17 eurozone countries are discussing the option of creating a "special purpose vehicle" for the European Financial Stability Facility in order to boost its current €440bn (£383bn) lending capacity.

The idea, according to sources, would be to attract further money from official and private investors, with the sovereign wealth funds of countries such as China, Singapore or Qatar ...

The only other option now being discussed is to turn the EFSF into an insurer that would offer to insure the first, perhaps 20%, of losses on new government debt held by private creditors ...

A "strictly confidential" report from Greece's "troika" of debt inspectors warns that the banks will have to accept 60% losses or "haircuts" if governments were to limit their second bailout to €109bn.

It says Greece could require €252bn in support between now and the end of 2020 and, in a worst case scenario, this could rise to almost €450bn . . .

Gdn  22 Oct 2011

The single currency is close to collapse

... the underlying problem is simple enough.

Europe’s political elites know that for the euro to survive in its present form, it must move – with speed – towards full fiscal and political integration.

Yet national leaders, and the voters they answer to, are as yet unwilling to accept the loss of sovereignty, and indeed the shared liabilities, that such a revolution demands ...

Tel  22 Oct 2011    Bankocracy Log    EU Log    IMF

Saving the Euro with fiat money

Troika report on Greek debt - full text

China eyes shale gas and uranium firms

China's growing attempts to seize global natural resources has reached Britain with a link to the recent shale discoveries near Blackpool and a bid for a London-listed uranium company.

Close ties have emerged between China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and a backer of Cuadrilla Resources, the exploration group that claimed last month there were trillions of cubic metres of shale gas under Lancashire.

The Beijing-to-Blackpool link was revealed after the Hong Kong-based Kerogen Capital came to the rescue of one of the largest shareholders in Cuadrilla.

Kerogen and CNOOC are behind a new $1.5bn (£1bn) fund, which is looking at investing in new resource projects.

Kerogen, set up by former JP Morgan bankers Ivor Orchard and Jason Cheng, has taken a 15% stake in AJ Lucas – an Australian engineering business that holds about 40% of Cuadrilla.

Lucas has been struggling to raise new cash and needed to inject $10m in Cuadrilla to maintain its stake in a business that is also 40% owned by Riverstone – a private equity firm in which former BP boss, Lord Browne, is a key player.

Chinese companies have already bought into shale gas companies in the US, where a welter of discoveries has sent the price of natural gas plummeting.

Cuadrilla made headlines when it claimed that two exploratory wells in the Bowland shale of Lancashire indicated huge reserves of 5.6tn cubic metres of shale gas ...

Gdn  09 Oct 2011    Branch Office Britain    Energy Policy    Shale Gas

Protectionism beckons as leaders push world into Depression

China, Germany, and the new mercantilism ...

The world savings rate has surpassed its modern-era high of 24pc. This is the killer in the global system.

It is why we are at imminent risk of tipping into a second, deeper leg of intractable depression ...

Tel  02 Oct 2011

Banking crisis set to trigger new credit crunch

Credit default swaps on lenders as far afield as China and Australia, countries that until recently seemed immune to the chaos, have doubled in the last two months to levels not seen since the financial crisis ...

Tel  02 Oct 2011

Mad Hatter's tea party that is the eurozone crisis

Here are just a few of the surreal aspects of the current state of affairs.

The answer to a lack of growth in struggling countries such as Greece is austerity of such ferocity that recessions deepen.

The solution to a financial crisis caused originally by the over-leveraging of banks and individuals is to turn Europe's bailout fund into a leveraged €2tn hedge fund.

Meanwhile, many of the politicians in Britain who battled long and hard to keep the pound – George Osborne and Ed Balls to name but two – are now born-again evangelists for full fiscal union ...

Predictably, the stresses and strains inherent in a monetary arrangement that involved yoking together countries as diverse (not just economically but culturally) as Germany and Greece, Portugal and Finland, Austria and Spain quickly manifested themselves.

The weaker countries on the periphery saw their costs of production rise more rapidly than those at the core, and gradually became less competitive as a result.

Although Europe as a whole saw its trade balance remain close to zero, Germany ran a hefty trade surplus at the expense of Italy, Spain and Greece.

Just as China recycled its trade surplus into the global economy through the purchase of US treasury bonds, so Germany's surplus headed south to fuel property bubbles in Spain and to finance excessive borrowing by Greece.

The actions of China and Germany kept the speculative orgy going for a while, but only by making the eventual hangover worse ...

Gdn  02 Oct 2011    Bankocracy Log    EU Log    Global Risks 2011

Eurozone crisis: Democracy in the balance

Qatar swoops for Greek assets as Europe looks abroad for help

Toil and Trouble Over the Caldron That Is Greece

Greeks Move to Slash State Jobs for 30,000

Moody's threat to downgrade Dexia

Europe and China Bound by Mutual Fears

At around $15.2 trillion (€11.1 trillion), the US government's debt at the end of 2012 could be as high as the amount of money the country generates in a year.

In Europe, the debt prognosis is hardly any better. Italy: €1.9 trillion (approximately 120 percent of annual economic output); Greece: €472 billion (150 percent).

The debt clocks of America and the euro countries are ticking relentlessly, and the slogan "Money rules the world" is being given a new meaning.

In record time, it seems the current global balance of power is shifting -- in favor of China ...

The supposed "yellow peril" has positioned itself as a "white knight" which promises not to leave its trading partners in Europe and America in the lurch.

In return, however, Beijing is demanding a high price -- the Chinese government wants more political prestige and more political power:

¦Prime Minister Wen has called for more access to American markets ...

¦Wen is also demanding that the US lift restrictions on the export of high technology products to China ...

¦Far-reaching demands have also been made of Europe by Wen: European Union countries, he argues, should at last recognize the world's second largest economy as a market economy ...

Der Spiegel  14 Sept 2011

Will the eurozone crisis bring Europe together – or tear it apart?

... as the commission president apparently sees it, out of the trauma of the Greek near-default and the crunch of 2011 may be salvaged something vastly more positive, something of massive and advantageous political import – a giant institutional leap towards a united states of Europe.

In fact, Barroso was remarkably frank about this ambition in his remarks today.

The only way to stop the negative cycle in financial markets was to deliver deeper integration, he said.

Leading EU countries such as Germany and France should not take their own initiatives and expect others to follow, as in the past.

Instead they should apply the "community method", giving Brussels the lead.

"A system based purely on intergovernmental co-operation has not worked in the past and will not work in the future," he said ...

Gdn  14 Sept 2011    EU Log

Last Nation Standing

UK to sue ECB over clearing house regulations

Cameron feels the heat of meltdown on Continent

French banks scramble to prove they're strong enough for debt crisis

EU's ultimatum to Germany: act now to save the euro

Germany and France Back Greece on Austerity Effort

China warns eurozone leaders 'get your house in order'

Britain’s exposure to eurozone debt

German Solar Firms Eclipsed by Chinese Rivals

China: a very mercantilist economic policy ...

Companies like Suntech and Yingli now dominate the world market for photovoltaics.

The Chinese already generate close to half of global sales and almost 60 percent of profits in the industry ...

Eight companies from China and Taiwan are on the top-10 list of the fastest-growing players in the industry.

There are no longer any German companies on the list ...

This means that the Chinese competition is now more likely to benefit from the billions in feed-in tariffs in Germany than domestic producers ...

According to the Rhenish-Westphalian Institute for Economic Research, the average German household pays about €123 a year to subsidize green electricity.

The generous subsidies are a prime example of how the German policy of promoting green energy is pushing things in the wrong direction.

Photovoltaics is by far the most expensive and most inefficient method of energy production.

It consumes billions, and yet it produces just 2 percent of Germany's energy requirements.

A program to promote electricity conservation would be at least as productive, and much cheaper to boot -- but it makes less of an impact than the production of shiny solar collectors ...

The Chinese also benefit from government support in their advance on markets in Europe and North America.

But China doesn't promote the industry via consumers -- it helps the companies directly ...

State-owned banks then help the wind turbine producers advance into export markets ...

Der Spiegel  07 Sept 2011    A free market train wreck    Energy Policy    Globalization Log

Alternatives to fossil fuels

A Third Solar Company Files for Bankruptcy

Bundesbank questions legality of EU bail-outs

"The latest agreements mean that far-reaching extra risks will be shifted to those countries providing help and to their taxpayers, and entail a large step towards a pooling of risks from particular EMU states with unsound public finances," said the bank's August report.

It said an EU summit deal in late July threatens the principle that elected parliaments should control budgets.

The Bundesbank said the scheme leaves creditor states with escalating "risks and burdens" yet no means of enforcing fiscal discipline to make this workable.

There are no plans as yet for EU treaty changes to correct these distortions.

"Unless there is a fundamental change of regime involving a far-reaching surrender of national fiscal sovereignty, it is imperative that the 'no bail-out' rule – still enshrined in the treaties – should be strengthened by market discipline, rather than fatally weakened," the report said ...

China has been a crucial prop for the eurozone, accumulating some €700bn of EMU bonds over the past decade as it seeks to lower dependency on the the US dollar.

Beijing has pledged support for Italy and Spain over recent months but there are signs that the Politiburo is losing patience with Europe's leaders ...

Tel  22 Aug 2011    EU Corporate State Log

Communitarian Citizenship

ECB austerity drive raises fears for democratic accountability in Europe

Europe needs debt relief, not decades of austerity

IMF: Brussels needs more power over euro nations' budgets

It's time the EU had a new economic philosophy

Reform the euro or bin it

Maastricht madhouse

Is The World Going Bankrupt?

The longer the Western debt crises smolder on, the darker the outlook for the global economy.

Because the US economy is collapsing, American consumers are buying fewer goods from China and India.

And because investors are piling out of euro and dollar investments, supposed islands of stability are starting to look shaky as well.

In recent weeks, the Swiss franc and the Brazilian real have appreciated so strongly that exporters in those countries have been virtually unable to sell their products abroad ...

Scaling down debt isn't easy, as can be seen in Britain.

The government of Prime Minister David Cameron has imposed more rigorous spending cuts than any other traditional industrial nation.

The austerity program is coming at a high price. The cuts are hitting domestic demand and have all but wiped out economic growth.

Every country that embarks on fiscal cuts faces a similar fate, and it takes years for the measures to bear fruit.

States that have restored their budgets to health tend to grow faster than profligate ones.

So the economic prosperity of the West hinges on whether governments are capable of thinking in new dimensions of time.

They finally need to start thinking further ahead than the next election.

Der Spiegel  09 Aug 2011    A Faustian Pact Log    America    EU    Global Risks 2011    IMF

Fiat Money Systems    Is capitalism ... ?    What caused the credit crunch?        

Global financial crisis: five key stages 2007-2011

Holding a G7 meeting without China today is like expecting the League of Nations without the US to tackle totalitarianism in the 1930s ...

Gdn  07 Aug 2011    A Faustian Pact Log    America    EU    IMF

Fiat Money Systems    Is capitalism ... ?    What caused the credit crunch?    

China scolds the west over debt crisis and eurozone woes

China loses patience with US leaders who 'kidnapped' world finance

China, the world's biggest owner of US Treasuries, turned up the pressure on the US to sort out its sovereign debt woes yesterday as its official news agency labelled American politicians "dangerously irresponsible" for failing to resolve the crisis.

As nervous investors dumped short-term Treasury bills, China's state-controlled Xinhua news agency said US politicians had "kidnapped" the rest of the world in a "game of chicken" by wrangling over a deal to raise America's $14.3 trillion (£8.7trn) debt ceiling ...

Ind  30 July 2011    America    Bankocracy Log

Bankocracy    Fiat Money Systems

US Senate blocks debt-ceiling bill

Tea Party holds US – and the world – to ransom

China told to reduce food production or face 'dire' water levels

Zheng Chunmiao, director of the Water Research Centre at Peking University, said the world's most populous country will have to focus more on demand-side restraint because it is becoming more expensive and difficult to tap finite supplies below the surface ...

Zheng's comments are based on his studies of the aquifers under the North China plain, one of the country's main wheat growing regions.

He said the water table is falling at the rate of about a metre a year mainly due to agriculture, which accounts for 60% of demand.

"The water situation in the North China plain does not allow much longer for irrigation," Zheng said.

"We need to reduce food production even though it is politically difficult. It would be much more economical to import." ...

Gdn  28 June 2011    Water Crisis_Parched Planet

China

Drought

China's trade surplus beats forecasts

The trade surplus was $11.4bn (£6.9bn), according to the customs agency, whereas analysts had expected a figure of about $3bn ...

The news comes during US-China talks on trade relations and will put the issue of the Chinese currency in the spotlight ...

BBC NEWS  10 May 2011    Globalization Log

China    G20_IMF    Global Risks

Rival Currencies Take Aim at Dollar's Dominance

The West is deluding itself over China

Global economy 'in no state to cope with new shocks'

Chinese trade surplus brings currency war into focus

The West is deluding itself over the extent of China's growth

In an historical blink of an eye, within my adult life-time, America's role on the world stage has been transformed – from unassailable powerbroker, whose authority was rarely questioned, to the status of a fast-fading monarch, notionally still in charge, yet widely seen to be standing in the way of inevitable change.

This palpable transformation has coincided with – and been partly caused by – America's shift from being the world's biggest creditor to the world's biggest debtor.

The US has been joined in its rapid balance-sheet-reversal by the UK and several other "advanced industrial societies".

Weighed down by huge financial liabilities and an expanding rump of unproductive workers, average living standards in America and much of Western Europe are most definitely in relative – if not absolute – decline.

The current generation of school leavers in the industrialised world, for the first time in more than 100 years will, on average, be poorer than their parents ...

China's influence, and its financial muscle, is rising exponentially.

Last year, the country loaned more to emerging nations than the World Bank.

The fact that Beijing can propose building a new Trans-Continental Railway, in America's backyard, across a land-mass of unmatched strategic importance, and be taken seriously, speaks volumes.

The global power balance is shifting inexorably. The Western world needs to accept that.

But as the G20 showed, the policies we propose and the decisions we take, are designed to deny, rather than accommodate, this new reality.

Telegraph  19 Feb 2011

China says faces tough fight against desertification

About 27 percent of China's total land mass, or about 2.6 million square kilometres (1.04 million square miles), are considered desertified, while another 18 percent of the nation's land is eroded by sand, the report said.

Experts believe that 530,000 square kilometres of the nation's deserts can be returned to green land, the paper quoted the director of the national bureau to combat desertification, Liu Tuo, as saying.

But the process will take 300 years at the current rate of reversing desertification by about 1,700 square kilometres annually, Liu said ...

Independent  08 Jan 2011    An Addiction to Growth

HSBC sees China and America leading global mega-boom

Crunching everything from fertility rates to schooling levels and the rule of law, HSBC predicts that the world's economic output will triple again by 2050, provided the major states can avoid conflict - trade wars, or worse - and defeat the Malthusian threat of food and water limits.

Growth will rise to 3pc on average, up from 2pc over the last decade.

In a sweeping report entitled "The World in 2050", the bank said China would snatch the top slot as expected, but only narrowly.

China at $24.6 trillion (constant 2000 dollars) and the US at $22.3 trillion will together tower over the global economy in bipolar condominium - or simply the G2 - with India at $8.2 trillion far behind in third slot, and parts of Europe slithering into oblivion ...

HSBC works from the assumption that mankind will avoid the energy crunch and overcome the eco-deficit, a term used to describe the world's depletion rate of non-renewable assets.

It calls for $46 trillion of investments in alternative forms of energy to break out of the carbon trap, and head off a supply crisis that could derail growth.

Feeding the world may be harder.

The UN expects food demand to rise 70pc by 2050, yet the yield growth of crops has slowed to 1.5pc a year from 3.2pc in the 1960s.

The number of people living in areas experiencing "severe water stress" will double from a third of the world population to two thirds between 1995 and 2025.

The water basins irrigating the crops of the North China plain are being exhausted at an alarming rate ...

Telegraph  05 Jan 2011    Eating the Future    Peak Everything

Global food prices hit record high

Searching For A Miracle

China claims new nuclear technology

China's ambitions to lead the world in nuclear power were boosted today by reports that its scientists had mastered a key technique in the reprocessing of spent uranium.

State media claimed the technology overcame a supply bottleneck and ensured China would have sufficient nuclear fuel for at least 3,000 years ...

Due to surging demand for energy and growing concerns about pollution, China's nuclear-power generating capacity is projected to increase up to tenfold in the next 10 years.

By 2030 China could be on course to overtake the US as the world's leading atomic energy producer ...

The technology, developed and tested at the number 404 factory of the China National Nuclear Corporation, situated in the Gobi desert, enables recycling of irradiated fuel, according to China Central Television.

How this differs from existing reprocessing methods in other countries is unclear, but the state broadcaster said that with this technique a kilo of uranium could produce close to 60 times more power than was now possible in China.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, China now has 13 operating reactors and 26 more facilities under construction.

China National Nuclear Corporation said last year it planned to invest 800bn yuan (£78bn) in the industry by 2020.

China has already been replicating the technology of its foreign suppliers and is moving to design its own reactors and reprocessing plants.

The next step is construction and overseas sales.

Guardian  03 Jan 2011    Nuclear Power

China is leading the way with thorium

China enters race to develop nuclear energy from thorium

China bets on thorium

Nuclear Power

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