🇺🇸🗯🇨🇳— 🇹🇼 Taipei Times | China remains biggest challenge to trade, US says | February 24, 2024:

"China remains the biggest challenge to the international trading system, the Office of the US Trade Representative said in its annual report to the US Congress on China’s WTO compliance released on Friday.

“It has been 22 years since China acceded to the WTO, and China still embraces a state-directed, nonmarket approach to the economy and trade, which runs counter to the norms and principles embodied by the WTO,” a release from the office quoted US Trade Representative Katherine Tai (戴琪) as saying.

“Even more problematic, China’s approach targets industries for global market domination by Chinese companies using an array of constantly evolving nonmarket policies and practices,” Tai said.

“This report details the breadth and scale of China’s nonmarket policies and practices and the serious harm that they cause to workers, businesses and industries in the United States and around the world,” she added. “It is a stark reminder that the members of the international trading system must continue to work together to defend our shared interests against these many harmful policies and practices, particularly in sectors targeted by China’s industrial plans.”

China’s “socialist market economy,” which it was pursuing when it joined the WTO in 2001, “has turned decidedly predatory,” the report says."

#Geoeconomics

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🇺🇸🏦📈 Jim Reid, Deutsche Bank’s head of global economics and thematic research, has said that the U.S. stock market is “rivalling 2000 and 1929 in terms of being its most concentrated in history.”

🔗 unusual_whales

🇩🇪📝💥🇷🇺🎢 — 🏴 ZeroHedge | Germany Confirms Leaked Audio Of Its Top Generals Discussing Blowing Up The Crimean Bridge | March 02, 2024:

"In a huge development and absolute smoking gun revelation, the government of Germany has confirmed the authenticity of a leaked audio recording file published by Russia's state-backed RT. The leak was first published by RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan, who described that she received it from Russian security officials."

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🇻🇪🛢🛢Venezuela firma acuerdo con la OPEP y espera ubicarse entre los 5 países con mayores reservas de gas en el mundo.

https://venezuela-news.com/venezuela-acuerdo-opep-gas/

🇺🇸❌🇷🇺 — 🏴 ZeroHedge | The Endgame, Part I: The Russo-Ukrainian War And Geopolitics Of Europe | By Tuomas Malinen | March 03, 2024:

"(...)

Scenario I: NATO, the erratic

(...)

To believe that the NATO leadership is simply erratic in their decisions, in the sense that they are deliberately over-stepping the red lines of Kremlin, requires that there exists a massive deficit by recent leaders of NATO to understand the communications coming from Moscow. These deficits would need to be so massive that believing in this scenario would require questioning the sanity of NATO leadership, because they are effectively over-stepping the red lines of a country with the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons."

(...)

Scenario II: NATO, the aggressor

NATO is effectively run by the U.S., which covers some 22% of its budget. The U.S. also played a major role in the formation of its first ever military structure. By also being the largest nuclear power in the alliance, the U.S. can be seen wielding uncontested power in NATO's decision making process. The rather strange occurrence of escalations in Ukraine under democratic rules in the U.S. (Obama and Biden) can be seen either as a weakness of leadership which President Putin took advantage of, or as weakness exploited by the “Deep State”. The aggressive stance taken by NATO in Ukraine, a non-member country, hints to the latter.

(...)

Regardless of which of the two scenarios the current NATO leadership is following, the implications for Europe and the world are dire. This is because they both point to deepening escalation. This implies that we have entered the most dangerous period of European history since the late 1930's."

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🇦🇺❌💰 An Australian bank is restricting users from purchasing cryptocurrency just as #Bitcoin achieves a new all-time high in the country.

https://twitter.com/WhaleFUD/status/1764297750718386302

💰🤬OTC desk are out of Bitcoin.
Expect new ATH soon.

💰Only 80 days left before we will have a Spot #Ethereum ETF.

https://twitter.com/rovercrc/status/1764238538457882655?s=20

🇺🇸🇻🇪🇨🇴 I feel like oil investors don't understand the difference between highly depleted locations like Texas and much younger oil locations in Latin America.

My thesis is this, my Latin American countries are basically Texas in 1920s, i.e. decades of cheap conventional oil ahead.

The Texan oil industry began its birth in 1866, just after the civil war, in a little town between Houston and Dallas called Nagodoches.

A man named Lyne T. Barret used an auger, fastened to a pipe to drill that first well.

By 1890, Nagodoches, by this time called "Oil Springs", would have more than 40 oil wells.

By 1894, another major discovery had been made in nearby Corsicana, and the oil field operators built the first modern refinery, which would receive oil shipments by rail.

In 1901, Texas had truly become an oil state. Deeper, modern wells had so much pressure on them that they would be called "gushers" due to the massive amounts of crude that would uncontrollably shoot out of them.

By 1930, the Texas economy was wholly dependent on oil, with many major conventional oil fields being discovered from 1900-1930.

And yet at this time, the Texan oil industry was still young, with production just starting to take off.

It would be decades till production peaked.

By the time WW2 rolled around, Texas was the nation's economic powerhouse. Despite its oil industry starting later, it had become the largest in the nation.

Pipelines from Texas going all over the country were being built. It was Texas oil production that helped win WW2.

By 1971, conventional drillers were pulling nearly 3.5M barrels out of the ground every day in Texas.

It was around this time that OPEC was formed, the gold standard broke, and in response to the Arab-Israeli war and a peak in US conventional, OPEC started limiting exports.

Now let's compare to South America.

South America's oil industry began nearly 100 years after that of the United States.

Even Venezuela - which still holds some of the largest known reserves - didn't start producing large amounts of crude until the 1950s.

Compare to Colombia for example. Nearly all of the exploration and production has occurred in the populated areas west of the Andes.

But the vast area to the east has barely even been explored.

In Guyana, vast oil fields have only recently been discovered, and only more recently started producing.

What keeps South America from becoming more highly developed is stability and FDI, NOT a lack of conventional resources.

In Brazil, the military founded Petrobras has maintained growing production for decades.

My thesis is simple, South America's conventional reserves have only relatively recently begun exploitation.

The tight reserves, from which nearly all US oil growth since the 1980s has some from, are practically untapped.

I think we political stability and exploration, Latin American oil will deliver economic prosperity to the region for decades to come.

What has kept Latin America's oil industry from growing has been politics and grift.

It wasn't a lack of conventional reserves that led to the downfall of Venezuela - it was a lack of investment.

I expect any LatAm country under a free market will see oil production grow.

🔗 https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1764310046609940555.html

🇲🇽🇨🇳🇷🇺 Mexico wants to join BRICS in 2024

🔗 BRICS Info