BC GOVERNMENT
Saved by @Mollyycolllinss

1/11

An article worth thinking about: “As changes to the world structure accelerate, China’s rule is in sharp contrast with the turmoil in the West,” says Beijing.

I agree, but I draw a different conclusion. The world is certainly currently

 2/11

through "a period of turbulent change", in Beijing’s words, and great structural adjustments, but usually when that happens, what matters in the long run is not how stable a system seems but rather how successfully political, economic and social institutions adjust to...
3/11

the new conditions. In the past these adjustments have almost always been messy, chaotic, and disheartening to most, but ultimately they were necessary even if we were unable to judge them so at the time.

I would argue that the world today is undergoing both a reversal...
4/11

and rejection of the current model of globalization and an urgent need for most countries in the world, including China, to initiate a major rebalancing of the way income and wealth (and ultimately political power) is distributed, but there are few if any historical...
5/11

precedents in which this level of restructuring and rebalancing have been neat or orderly.

Beijing's response, which is to do whatever it takes to maintain stability, may look good in the short term, as this strategy always does, but if it prevents the necessary...
6/11

rebalancing (as it has for well over a decade), in the future the Chinese may judge their response much less favorably. We went through similarly turbulent periods in the 1920s and 1930s, and then again in the 1960s and 1970s, and in both cases it seemed that the older...
7/11

democracies of the West were failing the test, unlike the stability-obsessed autocracies. Mussolini in the 1920s and early 1930s, remember, was considered even by many prominent American and English politicians to be one of the world’s few great leaders, mainly because...
8/11

he managed to "stabilize" Italy, even as the older American and European democracies were in turmoil. Forty years later the USSR seemed an oasis of purpose and stability when once again Western Europe and the US seemed on the edge of collapse.
9/11

In both cases we were wrong. My point isn’t that Beijing's response is necessarily the wrong one, and ours necessarily the right one. It is only that when we are in the midst of a period of turbulent change, it isn’t always obvious who is adjusting to new conditions and...
10/11

who isn’t, and it certainly isn’t necessarily the case that countries undergoing the least messy institutional changes are the ones adapting best. History suggests almost the opposite – that countries adjust mainly in the midst of turmoil – but either way we will only...
11/11

know many years from now. It will depend mainly on how the different systems react to the real problems that nearly every country faces today, whether, for example, the US, China or Europe respond forcefully to the current turmoil by aggressively rebalancing income.

More from Michael Pettis

Michael Pettis
Michael Pettis
@michaelxpettis
1/10

The latest IMF report on China was released yesterday and provides a lot of good information and intelligent insight on the Chinese economy. The IMF’s measure of China’s adjusted fiscal deficit (including estimated off-budget

2/10

spending) is projected to rise to 18.2% of GDP in 2020 from 12.6% in 2019. The authors correctly note the worrying surge in debt and warn that Beijing must continue to try to contain financial stability risks, but I notice that they are projecting average GDP...

3/10

growth of just over 6% between 2012 and 2025, including a downward revision of their 2021 forecast from 8.2% to 7.9% (which I still think is a little high).

As I’ve long argued, it will be impossible for China both to control the surge in debt and to achieve growth...

4/10

targets above the real underlying growth rate of the economy, which I suspect is 2-3% at best. I know the IMF is constrained in what it is able to say about the Chinese economy if it wants to remain part of the advisory process, but I do think that after 10 years...

5/10

of watching this game we should be a lot more explicit about the relationship between unreasonably high GDP growth targets and high credit growth. There really is no point in advising Beijing to get financial risks under control while at the same time approving...
WORLD
Michael Pettis
Michael Pettis
@michaelxpettis
1/9

Good article. But while growing international criticism and rising trade tensions may have had some impact, as the article suggests, I don’t think they really explain the great reversal in BRI lending of the past few years.

2/9

As I have been writing since 2011, China’s development lending was always likely to follow the pattern of other countries when they first “went out” (e.g. the US in the 1920s, USSR in the 1950s, Japan in the late 1970s). Because of little historical...

3/9

knowledge and no previous experience, an early rapid rise in development lending would be driven mainly by underestimating risk and an overestimation of their own business "success" in making loans, and would of course be further supported by geopolitical ambitions.

4/9

This combination would inevitably lead to bad lending decisions, followed just as inevitably by debt restructuring, loan losses, and a contraction in development lending. In the 1920s, for example, the US set off quite explicitly and aggressively to displace England in...

5/9

Latin America, and American businesses and banks assumed they “understood” Latin America much better than the English did, in spite of the vast English experience there, but their early displacement of British lending only resulted in the huge loan losses of the 1930s.
ECONOMY
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Michael Pettis
Michael Pettis
@michaelxpettis
1/9

China is aging so rapidly that it urgently needs to address the problem of a rapidly declining work force in a slowly declining population. To give an idea of relative population changes among the three most populous countries, today

2/9

are 4.3 Chinese for every American and 4.7 Chinese of working age (ages 15-64), while there is just over 1 Chinese for every Indian and 1.1 Chinese of working age.

By the end of the century, however, there are expected to be 2.5 Chinese for every American and...

3/9

just 2.4 Chinese of working age, while there will be 1.4 Indians for every Chinese and 1.5 Indians of working age. Over the rest of this century, in other words, while China’s population declines quite rapidly relative to that of the two other most populous countries, it...

4/9

also switches from having a much better dependency ratio than either to having a worse one than either, with far more of its dependents being the elderly rather than children. In effect its working age population will drop by half relative to those of the other two.

5/9

This is going to be a very tough problem to resolve, although to the extent China succeeds, it will be very useful as an example for other countries. I am not sure they are going about it the right way, however. Making seniors make better use of smart technology sounds...
CHINA
Michael Pettis
Michael Pettis
@michaelxpettis
1/10

This is a really tough problem to resolve, especially if the massive increase in inflows from the trade and financial accounts are sustained, as I expect they will be well into 2021.

Clearly the PBoC would like to see the RMB gradually...

2/10

strengthen. This would keep financial markets stable and promote rebalancing, but the RMB has already strengthened a lot, and this puts unwanted pressure on exporters and “international circulation”.

Although PBoC reserves have been flat, other state-controlled Chinese...

3/10

banks have bought large amounts of dollars, but this is expensive. If these banks have half a trillion dollars of exposure, for example, they are losing at least $15-17 billion annually on negative carry, plus another $20-30 billion just this year from the rise of the RMB.

4/10

Beijing seems also to be trying other measures to slow the rise. The regulators are relaxing capital controls on outflows. In mid October the PBoC cut to zero the reserve requirement ratio for banks doing FX forward trading. This requirement was created in 2018 to reduce...

5/10

downward pressure on the RMB. In late October it suspended the counter-cyclical factor in RMB fixing, which was introduced in 2017 also to reduce downward currency pressure. But in both cases while the RMB dropped a few pips on the news, it quickly resumed its upward climb.
ECONOMY
Michael Pettis
Michael Pettis
@michaelxpettis
1/9

While debt-to-GDP ratios already have a limited but very misunderstood use, it seems economists are finding bright new ways of misunderstanding them. Now we say that when nominal interest rates are lower than nominal growth rates, the

2/9

downward pressure on the debt-to-GDP ratio makes rising government debt and larger government deficits more sustainable and more easily justified.

This is totally confused. When the nominal interest rate is lower than the nominal GDP growth rate, it only means that net...

3/9

borrowers are getting a disproportionate share of growth relative to net lenders. This in and of itself changes the comparability of the debt-to-GDP ratio, so the fact that the ratio may decline tells us nothing about its sustainability which, I'm glad to say, isn't...

4/9

a mistake Olivier Blanchard makes in this article.

At least three things matter. First, whether or not rising debt is sustainable depends almost wholly on underlying conditions in the real economy, and only trivially on the arithmetical relationship between...

5/9

the interest rate and the growth rate. Second, this approach simply assumes away financial distress costs, in which case debt capacity is infinite anyway and the interest rate becomes irrelevant. And third, it assumes that the nominal debt level matters independently...
GOVERNMENT

More from Government

PunisherPatriot
PunisherPatriot
@PunisherPatrio3
(Thread) Mid-2020 GITMO Update: Arrests, Indictments, & Executions


So before we get started, let us first understand that before Trump was POTUS GITMO (Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp) was a fraction of the size it now is. This can be clearly confirmed by the following visuals, identifying a significant amount of expansion...

for what is expected to be tens of thousands of new ex-elite prisoners. Well, those who are not executed via military tribunal at least. ow, if you are not aware of these indictments I am referring to, that makes perfect sense because they are still sealed and not yet...

Public knowledge. Please allow me to enlighten you. These equate to roughly 222,00 sealed indictments and pertain to the most disturbing and corrupt crimes against humanity. These range from human trafficking, organ trafficking...

child sex trafficking, slavery, treason, terrorism, fraud, misuse of AI, genocide, brainwashing, defamation, 5G endangerment, religious discrimination, misrepresentation, censorship, privacy infringement, and prevention of saving humanity from biotech endangerment.
GOVERNMENT
Operation Cupcake
Operation Cupcake
@PhillipsBarrie
Trevor Chinn has funded various Labour MPs over the years including Owen Smith, Tony Blair, Joan Ryan, Ruth Smeeth, Tom Watson, Ian Austin, Rachel Reeves, Lisa Nandy, David Lammy, Liz Kendall, Dan Jarvis, Tristram Hunt, Jack Dromey, Liam Byrne. #LabourLeaks #StarmerOut #BICOM


Chinn has funded BOTH Labour Friends of Israel and Conservative Friends of Israel . The multi-millionaire pro-Israel lobbyist donated $62,000 to Keir Starmer to win the UK Labour Party’s leadership election. April 2020 #LabourLeaks #StarmerOut #BICOM

Tom Watson, former BICOM staffer Ruth Smeeth and Labour Friends of Israel’s then chair Joan Ryan.

All three played key roles in promoting the smear campaign that Corbyn’s Labour Party was a hotbed of anti-Semitism. BICOM is important to Starmer. #LabourLeaks #Defence #Brexit

Hoping to remove Corbyn as leader. Chinn funded Corbyn’s rival in the resultant leadership election, Owen Smith.

Smith took donations for his campaign from Chinn totaling $33,000, the register shows. #BICOM #LabourLeaks #StarmerOut

The BICOM group arranges for influential figures to take trips to Israel. These have included trips to the Herzliya conference, a major “security” event at which powerful business and political figures discuss how to reinforce Israeli occupation and apartheid. #StarmerOut #BICOM
GOVERNMENT
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Seth Abramson
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
(1 of 2) Paul Manafort—a longtime associate of Howard Liebengood Sr.—is an exec at Event Strategies, which planned the 1/6 rally that ended with a breach of security at the Capitol, where Howard Liebengood Jr. worked security (USCP). 2 days later Liebengood Jr. committed suicide.

(2 of 2) I believe this is a coincidence. That said, because I don't think Manafort aiding and abetting a rally that ended in insurrection is coincidence, I have to assume that—out of an abundance of caution—law enforcement will investigate any possible Manafort-Liebengood link.

(PS) It is vital that no one presume connections where there may be none. My point is that as a criminal investigative matter, Manafort will be investigated for any role he had in the Save America March, and Liebengood's suicide would naturally be investigated due to its context.

(PS2) I'm sure there'll be those who say that a Donald Trump event giving tons of money to a company that enriches Paul Manafort at a time when Trump continues to need Manafort to stay quiet and Manafort is having money problems is a mere coincidence.

*That* I do not agree with.

(PS3) By the same token, as a federal criminal investigative matter, when you are about to have numerous investigations into whether security at a government building had been pre-compromised and someone who worked security at that building commits suicide, it gets investigated.
GOVERNMENT
Arinola Ifeoma -Join the Official APC Party today
Arinola Ifeoma -Join t...
@iyaboawokoya
I am going to take the context for this thread from this piece by my good brother @mabziz in 2018-3 years ago. One thing I am so perturbed about is the response of our Attorney General's office to issues of state security. I have no personal grouse against @MalamiSan, but


2. I do have a professional grouse against him. I feel he is not alive to his duties. I feel that he is also not empowering his Director of Public Prosecutions or his Solicitor General. There is clearly a lot that befuddles me and this is because I am a seasoned lawyer and can't/

3. understand why law is not being used as the instrument it was designed for-to enforce law and order. Let us take the case of Nnamdi Kanu-this man was arraigned in Nigeria on a charge of treason/treasonable felony-he was on bail & he jumped bail. Why has he not been extradited?

4. Is it that Kanu is somehow bigger than Nigeria? What has happened to his surety who failed to produce him? Who is prosecuting him? Our Federal Ministry of Justice? Should Malami not explain to Nigeria why Nnamdi Kanu is still taunting Nigeria daily & still actively destroying/

5. our unity everyday. He is putting the lives of many people at risk and stoking ethnic dissent easily. The Fulani herdsmen dilemma, the burning of Lagos State and his coordination of same on phone-in radio channels, his videos are all stoking a Yoruba/Igbo carnage. Same with/
GOVERNMENT
Neil Tester
Neil Tester
@NTtweeting
I know you’ve all been waiting for my thread on today’s @DHSCgovuk White Paper https://t.co/lrNsuFoCum
and the accompanying recommendations from @NHSEngland https://t.co/810SaS9euc Wait no longer 😀 1/9


2/9 I’m not trying to cover everything in the documents but here are some thoughts on things others might not focus on so much. Good to see consistent messages about the strategic roles of the voluntary sector and local government. Detailed work needed to bring that alive.


3/9 Very pleased to see issues core to @RichmondGroup14 priorities at the centre of the challenges the White Paper aims to address: namely the growing needs of people with long-term and multiple conditions, the role of mental health in that mix and the impact of Covid on that.


4/9 White Paper rightly acknowledges that a new legal framework is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for integration and improvement. Culture, behaviour, relationships and leadership will be what make the most difference, though a better governance platform will help.


5/9 Important clarity in both the White Paper and @NHSEngland FAQs document that voluntary sector provision retains a key role as part of the planned changes to competition and procurement.
GOVERNMENT

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1. Now that Stan Lee is being eulogized far and wide, it's important to remember how marginal Stan Lee and his collaborators (Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko) were in the 1950s and 1960s.

2. Marvel Comics (before that Atlas) was just a cog in the machine of a bottom pulp publisher run by Martin Goodman, the husband of one of Lee's cousins. It was the lowest of the low in the publishing world.

3. Now Mario Puzo (not yet the author of the Godfather) shared offices with Stan Lee in the 1950s and 1960s. Puzo wrote for garrish men's adventure magazines and, like Lee, dreamed of writing a novel & breaking out. But Puzo looked down on Lee.

4. Flo Steinberg, 1960s secretary at Marvel: "They were always making jokes about us. They'd come in and giggle. mario Puzo would look in and would see us all working on his way to the office and say, 'Work faster, little elves. Christmas is coming.'"

5. When JFK was killed, the whole office of Magazine Management was stunned and quiet. Except Lee. He continued working. "He was still working on the comic books," Puzo said. "Like that was the most important thing in the world."
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Art Historian* \U0001fa94
Art Historian* 🪔...
@Arthistorian18
The last Hindu king of Pakistan.

The name Amarkot is known to all in our subcontinent as the birthplace of Emperor Akbar. When Humayun was fleeing from Sher Shah, Rana Prasad of Amarkot sheltered him and this is where Emperor Akbar was born.

#Thread
1/19
@talesofBharat


They have always maintained friendly relations with the rulers. The Mughal court and the Rana of Amarkot had special respect because Emperor Akbar was born in the shelter of Amarkot Raj. They did not even have to attend court regularly.

2/19

Dara Shikohar provided Rana supplies to Amarkot during his expedition to Kandahar.
But another reason why the name of this Amarkot is inextricably linked with the history of the subcontinent is the partition of the country.
Sodha is the family name of the Maharajas of..

3/19

Amarkot,They were originally known as Sodha Rajputs. Despite possessing a very small kingdom, he was far ahead in terms of wealth and honor. During the British rule, Rana Ratan Singh led the anti-British movement in Sindh. In 1753, the British occupied the state of Amarkot,
4/19

which was his and his ancestral home, and hanged Rana Ratan Singh on a high platform on the walls of Amarkot fort. It hangs in front for a few days. Even today, a folk song called "Mor tor tilaya rana" is very popular in Sindhi language.
After the capture of the fort by the
5/19
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Vibhu Vashisth
Vibhu Vashisth
@VIBHU_Tweet
THE LESSER KNOWN MAHARANA OF MEWAR:RANA KUMBHA
Kumbalgarh Fort is one of most spectacular sites of India,atop a hill abt 3600ft above sea lvl in the https://t.co/LkjmzzBhE2's second largest wall is surrounding it.A fort wall second only to Great wall of China,still not so famous.


This longest wall of India stretches to almost 36Km and encompasses a few hills, many step wells and over 360 temples and palaces. Birth place of the Great Maharana Pratap, this fort is named after another Great Maharana of Mewar, who is not given his due in the History.


Builder of many architectural marvels like the Kumbhalgarh Fort, an erudite scholar, a patron of arts, music, culture & a great warrior was the Great Maharana Kumbha. Yet we don't know much about him. Let's get to know him a little.


Maharana Kumbha was the undefeated King of Mewar from 1433-1468CE.He never lost any battles &kept Mewar out of the reach of Islamic Invaders till the time he was alive. Born on Makar Sakranti to Maharana Mokal & Saubhagya Devi, Rana Kumbha was only 13 when he ascended the throne.


His father was killed by his own relatives in a political conspiracy. He was a powerful King about 8ft tall &charismatic personality,a hardcore Hindu Rajput who could shed his life for Hindu honour without thinking twice.He was an ardent skillful warrior who never lost a battle.
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sriram
sriram
@SriramKannan77
Sri Varaha Charama Shlokam

sthithE manasi susvasthE sarIrE sathi yO nara:
dhAthusAmyE sthithE smarthA visvarUpam cha maamajam (1)

tathastham mriyamANam thu kAshtA paashaNa sannibham
aham smarAmi madh bhaktham nayAmi paramAm gathim (2)


Meaning:

Oh Bhumi Devi! The entire universe is my body (sarIram).
I do not have births or deaths .

When my bhakthAs with mahA visvAsam (utmost faith) surrender to me, while they are still in a state of tranquil mind and healthy body and reflect about Me as as SarvAdharan (root cause
of all),
NiyanthA (One who commands from within),
sarva sEshi (the ultimate),

aasrayaNeeyan (One who is fit to be worshipped),
Sarva VyApthan (all-pervasive) and
Nithya sannihithan (One who is always near),
THEN
I think of them at their last moments, when they are totally unconscious like a log or a stone
and lead them by archirAdhi

maargam to My parama padham and bless them to have nithya kaimkarya bhAgyam to Me there.
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raina douris
raina douris
@RahRahRaina
fascinated by this man, mario cortellucci, and his outsized influence on ontario and GTA politics. cortellucci, who lives in vaughan and ran as a far-right candidate for the italian senate back in 2018 - is a major ford donor...


his name might sound familiar because the new cortellucci vaughan hospital at mackenzie health, the one doug ford has been touting lately as a covid-centric facility, is named after him and his family

but his name also pops up in a LOT of other ford projects. for instance - he controls the long term lease on big parts of toronto's portlands... where doug ford once proposed building an nfl stadium and monorail... https://t.co/weOMJ51bVF


cortellucci, who is a developer, also owns a large chunk of the greenbelt. doug ford's desire to develop the greenbelt has been

and late last year he rolled back the mandate of conservation authorities there, prompting the resignations of several members of the greenbelt advisory
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