ASIA: Ant Group executives are no longer part of Alibaba Partnership, a body that can nominate the majority of the e-commerce giant’s board, Alibaba’s annual report released on Tuesday showed. as both companies parted ways after China’s sweeping regulatory crackdown. The terms now allow only Alibaba employees to be part of the partnership. Seven Ant […]

There is a common misconception that the United States has the highest rate of inflation in the world. I see it questioned in numerous emails The United States does have a major problem when it comes to inflation, but its currency has not depreciated to the point where it is weak. Let us compare data […]

ASIA: China’s new household deposits grew more than a third year on year to a record USD 1.5tn in the first half of 2022, while individual bank borrowings plunged more than half over the same period, official data showed. The inversion in savings rates followed an increase in bank deposits as Chinese savers raced to […]

Consumer price gains hit their highest level since January 1983 in Canada. The news comes one week after the Canadian central bank surprised the markets by implementing a 100 basis point rate hike. June’s 8.1% inflation rate acted as another indicator that the Canadian economy is in trouble. The BoC is expected to raise rates […]

QUESTION: Hi Martin, thank you as always for your incisive explanations of what’s going on in the ever-roving mind’s eye of SOCRATES. In your July 24 interview with Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog, you started to explain that a form of “Great Reset” is necessary–because taxpayers’ $ has been spent hog-wild and wilder for 90 years, […]

ASIA: Industry body FICCI on Thursday said India’s economy is estimated to grow 7% in the current fiscal, lower than the earlier projection of 7.4%, mainly due to the ongoing geopolitical uncertainties. FICCI’s Economic Outlook Survey (July 2022) also said the policy rate of the Reserve Bank of India is expected to touch 5.65% by the […]

ASIA: Asian Development Bank (ADD) in its “E-Mobility Options for ADB Developing Member Countries,” which both forecast and recommended the quick shift to electric vehicles in the region to stem both climate change issues and the rising cost of fuel. The report noted how in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) focused on EV production […]

ASIA: Chinese authorities on Sunday violently dispersed a peaceful protest by hundreds of depositors, who sought in vain to demand their life savings back from banks that have run into a deepening cash crisis. Since April, four rural banks in China’s central Henan province have frozen millions of dollars’ worth of deposits, threatening the livelihoods […]

The supply chain crisis is an ongoing disaster that has greatly contributed to inflation. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has been touting the idea of “friend-shoring” for over a year. Not to be confused with onshoring or nearshoring, friend-shoring will somewhat limit the supply chain to allied nations. Why on Earth would we want to limit […]

ASIA: China’s banks have detailed 2.11 billion yuan ($312 million) of loans at risk to the increasing number of homebuyers refusing to pay mortgages on unfinished homes, as fears grow over a potential spillover into the wider financial sector. State-owned Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. said Thursday it held 660 million yuan of overdue loans […]