So did the US just dissolve the prestige of the USD for $6 billion?

Seems… Short-sighted?

Is power consumption a leading metric for economic growth? China notched 7.4% electricity consumption growth in March YoY. They’ve been fairly correlated in the past, with the caveat that growth in services generally leads to contraction in electricity consumption.

I’m notching up my GDP growth estimates for this year from barely above 5% to a healthy 5.5%+. There’s a lot of internal development that’s not getting reflected, and so something is clearly happening in China. But what?

996 is a tech thing. It’s unsurprising that, in fields where China is widely recognized as lagging behind the US, more work and longer hours are valued over workers’ rights.

China’s economy grew 5.3% in the first quarter, beating expectations

Real estate continues deleveraging, and yet 5.3% GDP growth YoY.

Retail sales growth continues to be sluggish (3.1% vs. 4.6% predicted) and CPI is coming in cool (0.1% vs. 0.3% predicted). My theory for this is that China is actually seeing costs drop more quickly than CPI metrics can keep up. Traditional big-ticket household spending categories are housing, transportation, and education. Housing prices are obviously on the decline, but transportation costs are also decreasing due to the combination of cheaper EVs and an expanding HSR network. Education costs have been clamped down on after the crackdown on private tutoring, while average education outcomes have been raised by the crackdown on gaming. Meanwhile, traditional recurring costs like food and energy have been pushed downward by increasing trade with Russia as well as the rise of cheap solar.

It may be time to revisit the notion of ever-increasing consumption value as being important for economic growth. In this case, you can get the same quality of life with substantially less money. Why spend more to pad the top line retail sales number?

!Broadcasting equipment was the giveaway for me !<

In communist Vienna:

In Vienna, the public sector takes direct responsibility for housing the population. The city of Vienna is the landlord for 220,000 housing units, about one-fourth of the city’s housing stock, and oversees a further 200,000 housing units managed by the private sector.

In communist Netherlands:

Public housing in the Netherlands is called social housing, and it’s one of the biggest public housing sectors in Europe. 42 percent of Amsterdam’s housing is actually social housing.

What an unusual… Coincidence.

I came across some interesting numbers today that put China’s fisheries in perspective. China contributes something like 35% of the world’s fish output and from that China makes up 19.2% of the world’s wild catch and 61.5% of the world’s aquaculture production. In fact, 73% of China’s fish output is from aquaculture, and much of the remaining 27% includes freshwater sources.

People should really just go to Xinjiang. It’s not that complicated.

Term limits support populism? What? No way!

The difference is that Russia likely has the domestic capability to scale drone manufacturing from parts.

Gotcha, I think that’s what I’m missing. Thanks!

Exchange creating value is fucking absurd.

Sure, but that would happen on an individual basis and not in aggregate. Unless monetary supply grows outside of economic growth (leading to inflation), the market as a whole should not be worth more than it’s constituent parts.

A stock market that always goes up is just poor allocation of capital, right? Wealth must come from somewhere and flow somewhere. If a stock market continues to see growth, it inherently means wealth will flow towards those with the greatest stock value (the shareholders). By extension, wealth must be created by the workers, and this type of stock market serves only to transfer wealth from workers to shareholders.

A stock market is supposed to be used to efficiently allocate capital between different options, so assessing the aggregate value of a market sounds like it doesn’t capture the actual point of the market, right? Assuming no economic growth and fixed interest in an entirely free market, you’d expect that stock market returns should be ~nil since it should efficiently allocate capital to where it’s needed: profit in one sector and loss in another sector should equalize.

All this is to say: Japan’s Nikkei has been going up despite a recession, and China’s Hang Seng has been going down despite 5% growth. Yet, everyone points to the Chinese stock market as if it’s an indicator for China’s economy.

Ok but seriously, if you get the chance travel to Xinjiang. The food is incredible, the province is so incredibly beautiful, there’s a ton of magical historical sites, and people there are very friendly.

At that point you might as well say “Happy New Year” to better capture the spirit of the holiday. Calling it the Lunar New Year just serves to tamp down on what is the new year to many cultures.

For what it’s worth, that’s what I say - happy new year with no modifier.

I was surprised too.

Israel’s strikes on Rafah during the Superbowl ig

I’m sorry, who approved this tweet?

Why do people call it Lunar New Year now? Was the word China too spooky for them? It just feels like English-speaking Westerners combining the Spring Festival, Seollal, Tet, etc. because they can’t possibly understand that Asians aren’t an ethnically homogenous group.