Last week, it became clear that the American economy had slightly declined in the first quarter of 2025. No surprise given the "100 days of chaos" (eg, FT, NPR). The Wall Street Journal gave a good explanation for the (annualized) 0.3% decline: "The U.S. economy contracted in the first three months of 2025, as businesses rushed to stock up on imports ahead of...
Intro LO: The Bloomberg article below gets a different impact once you exclude Shein's low-value items; see diagram below. High value items would probably become too expensive for (very) many people. Hence, US Treasury Secretary. Scott Bessent, views the China-USA status quo as unsustainable (eg, AP, Axios, Reuters). Business leaders have already expressed their...
Intro LO: Last Friday, I published a Dutch blog on this topic: USA: Europe must choose between America and China !? The underlying Dutch article referred to a recent Irish Times article as its source. Subsequently, an Axios Macro article (see below) arrived the next day: The U.S.-China decoupling arrives. In my view, such a decoupling makes no logical and/or...
Recently, I noticed a very intriguing question: Will the world keep buying US Treasuries? (eg, PS-2025, State Street-2024). Following Trump-2025, I actually doubt that - a lot. For early indications, see this recent WSJ article: “Trump’s Tariffs Were Supposed to Boost the Dollar. Why the Opposite Happened. Worries that long-term U.S. growth will fade could matter...
The citizens of several American allies are (allegedly) boycotting tourism towards USA, and also some American goods, especially Tesla’s. I sympathise and agree but would not call my plans a boycott. But what’s in a name? I used to love North America and made many vacation visits. Nowadays, I prefer taking my Japanese full-hybrid car and visit European countries....
Intro LO: The Nikkei Asia article (below) reminds me of one of the seven unresolved prophecies by American clairvoyant Edgar Cayce (1877-1945) about China: On one occasion, Cayce told a group of people that eventually China would become “the cradle of Christianity, as applied in the lives of men.” “Yea, it is far off as man counts time, but only a day in the heart...
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