Miscellaneous News

siegecrossbow said:

War isn’t possible within a span of months. You need to do massive mobilization ahead of time and that isn’t something you can do against a country the size of China within a span of months. Also, you need full industrial capacity to sustain a prolonged military operations.

In short, small scale clash? Maybe. Full scale war, most probably not.

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What is the political objective for the US here if a limited war breaks out in the SCS?

A limited war where a US or Chinese ship is sunk is almost guaranteed to escalate into a full scale war. I don’t see how America will call for de-escalation once a warship is sunk.

Petrolicious88 said:

What is the political objective for the US here if a limited war breaks out in the SCS?

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Bolstering the administration's ratings in time for the elections by getting labelled as a successful "wartime presidency".

Petrolicious88 said:

What is the political objective for the US here if a limited war breaks out in the SCS?

A limited war where a US or Chinese ship is sunk is almost guaranteed to escalate into a full scale war. I don’t see how America will call for de-escalation once a warship is sunk.

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Im not so sure about that! Remember Trade war with China easy to win. Lol May be Trump will go full retard again

The US is in a mess right now economically, socially and politically. Nothing is working for them at the moment. And they don't have any solutions or answers. They won't admit it but they can feel the crown slipping on their head. As a result they are now increasingly becoming emotional and irrational in their statements and actions. The US right now is like a wounded tiger. Very dangerous.

I think at this point talk of war between the US and China is pretty baseless and needlessly inflammatory.

If Trump wants a war with China, he can have one any time he wants by simply telling Taiwan America will recognise them if they declare independence. That is the true value of the Taiwan card to America.

But all of Trump’s moves are not designed to pit America directly against China, as he learnt his lesson from his trade war that that doesn’t work to his or America’s advantage.

Instead what Trump is doing is applying pressure on friends and allies to fight China for him.

The western MSM is just being used to rally the extensive network of traitors America has spent decades cultivating in friendly and allied nations to come out of the woodworks to apply maximum pressure on their own governments to ‘act tough’ and ‘stand up’ to China based on American fake news and blatant lies from the US government, to advance American/Trump’s interests at the expense of their home nations.

The British humiliating u-turn on Huawei is a recent example, where the British National interest was overridden by traitorous PMs who threatened to effectively cripple the British government unless it toed the American party line.

The western MSM’s and American intelligence agency impacts and limitations in this is pretty clear when you consider that it is only Five Eyes countries are most swayed. It’s no co-incidence that they all have English as their primary language, and thus are most susceptible to American MSM manipulation. In addition, the Five Eyes network has given US intelligence direct and unfettered access to the intelligence agencies of the other members, thereby allowing them to easily co-op and subsume them to serve American interests above even the interests of their own Governments.

The American diplomatic offensive is aimed primarily at the Five Eyes countries, and its goal is to use foreign support from them on American trumped up charges against China to lend domestic legitimacy and support to Trump’s attempt to blame all his fkups wholesale on China.

Any actual damage done to China is very much an incidental bonus instead of the primary goal of this current PR blitz.

If anyone is idiotic enough to actually take all this BS seriously and start a fight with China expecting America to pile in with them, they will be desperately disappointed.

It serves Trump’s interest to have China absolutely go to town and kurbstomp someone like India or Vietnam or even the UK militarily as a means of maximising the fear factor surrounding China without America actually suffering any of the damage. Being the most anti-China candidate, a massive overt display of Chinese power, especially military power, would maximise his electoral prospects as American voters turn to him to protect them against big bad China.

Everyone except the Indians see through this ploy and are keeping their heads down.

Five eyes traitors might be willing to push their home nations to economic war against China for America, but even they are not so delusional as to think open military conflict would go their way without them riding the coat tails of America.

1. The US closed the Wuhan consulate when COVID-19 outbreak in that city, evacuated workers there as well
2. The US recently requested to reopen the consulate and redeploy workers
3. China responded to the requirement by Covid-19 test and 14-days isolation
4. The US asked for a waiver but China rejected
5. The US took this movement as an equal encounter action


Can China go in and ransack the Wuhan consulate?

j17wang said:

Does the 37% annualized refer to the fact that GDP decreased by 9% in Q2? Otherwise there is no way they could hit only -6.6% for full 2020 considering Q1 was already -5% and I doubt that there will be positive growth in Q3.

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Red Moon said:

37% drop would mean the 2nd quarter gdp is 63% of 1st quarter. But "annualized" means the actual figure is raised to the 4th power. So the 4th root of 63% is about 89.09%, so the actual drop for the quarter is about 11%. For the first quarter is a bit over 1%.

I would expect a further drop this quarter, but I wouldn't hazard a guess on the amount. As for the 4th quarter, keep in mind that the new Covid spike in the US is very much connected with politics, and the election is not until November. Moreover, by that point you start to see repercussions from bankruptcies, etc.

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localizer said:

QoQ official next week
View attachment 61931

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Just continuing on the figuring out of the U.S. GDP numbers.


So, predicted 2020 GDP change for the first 3 quarters should be 101% x 89.09% x 95% = 85.48%

implying
2020 (first 3 quarters) U.S. GDP = -14.62%

The possible scenario would be:

1. Fourth GDP Q-to-Q growth = 0% (very unlikely IMO)
U.S. 2020 GDP = -14.62%

2. Fourth GDP Q-to-Q growth = -5% (very likely IMO)
U.S. 2020 GDP change = 85.48% x 95% = 81.21%


This would mean U.S. 2020 GDP = -18.79% !

Petrolicious88 said:

The official reason from the State Department for the closure is to protect American intellectual property. But there are other ways to deal with IP protection. You don’t close, let alone evict a consulate (consulate staff are ordered to evict within 72hrs). You do it to create a shockwave and send a message of provocation.

What’s more sad or disheartening is that the Huston consulate is the first consulate China established after normalizing relations with the Us in the 70s. Highly symbolic move with its closure.

How low can relations go from here? Is war even possible in the next several months or 1-2 years?

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Yes that's true. But we know what trump and Pompeo is up to. And that is th demonized China. You know. Huawei, SCS India border. Hong Kong, uyghurs.

BMEWS said:

Gatekeeper what is this El passo you keep refering to....

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ansy1968 said:

Hi BMEWS,

Huge increase in CV19 infection in the city of EL PASO?

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Sorry, guys I should've made it clearer. You guys are young. Whereas I'm an older guy who's been around the block or two.

Let me explain, back when I was a student of economics in the 1980s. Italy's GDP gone pass the UK's for the first time ever. The event was celebrated in Italy as "Il surpasso"! Ever since then, me and my cohorts has called it El passo because it is easier to remember.

So as you can see, passing once a great nation meant quite a lot to italy. So imagine when China pass USA!? The world leading economy for the last 120 years!

Quickie said:

Just continuing on the figuring out of the U.S. GDP numbers.


So, predicted 2020 GDP change for the first 3 quarters should be 101% x 89.09% x 95% = 85.48%

implying
2020 (first 3 quarters) U.S. GDP = -14.62%

The possible scenario would be:

1. Fourth GDP Q-to-Q growth = 0% (very unlikely IMO)
U.S. 2020 GDP = -14.62%

2. Fourth GDP Q-to-Q growth = -5% (very likely IMO)
U.S. 2020 GDP change = 85.48% x 95% = 81.21%


This would mean U.S. 2020 GDP = -18.79% !

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Moving backwards, from the 4th quarter to the first:
1) For the 4th quarter, there are so many separate-but-interrelated issues involved, that the number could go anywhere. There could well be further social explosions, for example, keeping in mind that the elections are in November. What if the losing side refuses to accept? What if Homeland Security, battling against BLM, clashes with whoever is sent to put down the trumpeters? Meanwhile, the course of the epidemic in the US is totally unpredictable right now as well. And what about the long term consequences of the steep and prolonged economic downturn the US is in? The only thing that is certain, in my view, is that if the economy goes up at all during the fourth quarter, it will be by a tiny amount. It could also be zero, or could go down by a small amount, or by a large amount. Best to wait for real numbers, if we're lucky enough to get them.

2) I don't know where you get 101% for the third quarter (I didn't see it in @localizer 's figures). I expect the number to be below 100% frankly, though it's too soon to tell.

3) For the second quarter, keep in mind that it's still an only "estimate". There are others that are a bit kinder, but we'll have the official figure in about a week.

4) For the first quarter, the 95% figure given before was also "annualized" so that, using the same procedure (fourth root), you get about 98.73%

For the first two quarters, this gives you 87.96%, as compared with the 4th quarter of 2019 "seasonally adjusted". You are right that it could go deeper, but since it's impossible to quantify, I would just stick to saying it's deep as hell.

In my view, the actual number doesn't really matter so much; the length of this deep downturn matters more, because this will affect trade flows, relative standing, and ultimately the value and role of the dollar.

Already ASEAN has become China's top trade partner, passing both the EU and the US. Meanwhile, China is also becoming more important for the Europeans. Check this out:

China to become 'export destination country number one' for Germany: IW

Photo taken on Nov. 5, 2019 shows the night view of the Bund in Shanghai, east China. (Photo by Wang Xiang/Xinhua)
China was on its way to become "export destination country number one" for the German economy as the COVID-19 crisis was hitting global trade, according to a study published by the German Economic Institute (IW) on Thursday.
While the situation in many of Germany's export markets continued to deteriorate, "the Chinese economy is already looking ahead with cautious optimism," said Galina Kolev, senior economist and head of the Research Group Macroeconomic Analyses and Business Cycles at IW.
The Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) announced last week that German exports to China only decreased "rather moderately" by 12.3 percent to 7.2 billion euros (8.2 billion U.S. dollars) in May. At the same time, exports to the United States plummeted by 36.5 percent to 6.5 billion euros.
IW noted that the different course of the COVID-19 crisis across the world would change countries' "relative importance" for the German economy in 2020. "China's rise to export destination country number one is of particular symbolic significance," stressed Kolev.
In 2019, China already was, after the United States and France, the third most important customer of Germany's economy with exported goods worth 96.0 billion euros, according to Destatis.
The export gap between China and Germany's biggest export countries had decreased "substantially" in the first five months of the year. Official data for June is yet to be released, but IW is expecting that China already replaced France as Germany's second largest export market last month.
The current COVID-19 crisis had "accelerated a process that has been going on for several decades," said Kolev. The growth of the Chinese economy, which was already slowing down but still remained relatively high by international standards, had made China an "attractive export market."

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