In this episode of On The Margin Mike is joined by returning guests Grant Williams & Luke Gromen. We welcome back two financial market veterans for a special episode exploring the fracturing geopolitical landscape between the east and the west. Grant and Luke share their insight surrounding China’s declaration of war on the U.S, how the current monetary system could collapse China’s economy, the consequences of globalization, what the end game is for the dollar & how to prepare for the changing world order as two global superpowers collide.
Timestamp:
00:00 ・ introductions
00:55 ・ The great power competition: China vs U.S
08:39 ・ Is it ethical to be in business with China?
18:44 ・ The consequences of globalization
20:11 ・ A battle of ideologies between the east and the west
24:51 ・ The current structure of the monetary system
31:30 ・ Inflation is the only way out of a sovereign debt crisis
31:30 ・ Emblematic of moral decay
49:38 ・ Understanding the financial oppression
55:06 ・ Opinion on how Bitcoin plays in all this
Charlie Rose Interview with Sir James Goldsmith on Trade, 1994
Goldsmith warned elites about the dangers of free trade.
Timestamps:
00:00・Introduction
00:55・The great power competition: China vs U.S
08:37・The difference in financial markets between China & the U.S
18:42・The consequences of globalization
20:08・A battle of ideologies between the east and the west
24:48・The current structure of the monetary system
28:45・Coinbase Prime Ad
30:02・Ledger Ad
31:26・Inflation is the only way out of a sovereign debt crisis
36:52・The end of an empire
41:15・Financial repression
49:32・What assets to buy during financial repression
54:58・Grant & Luke’s framework for Bitcoin
The Militarization of the South China Sea
Tensions between the U.S. and China have been steadily escalating on a range of issues, but there’s one place where a clash of superpowers would be most likely to happen: the South China Sea. Even with a new U.S. president, the disagreements that led to this moment won’t be easy to resolve. So how did this body of water become a major flashpoint in U.S.-China relations?
U.S.-China ‘cold war’ threatens global recession and financial crisis by 2020, says Roubini
Dr. Doom lives up to his moniker
.. Roubini pointed to the ongoing U.S.-China trade conflict as the likeliest trigger of the next crisis. “There is a cold war between the U.S. and China,” he said. “We have a global rivalry . . . about who is going to be controlling the industries of the future: artificial intelligence, automation, and 5G.”
Because the standoff has evolved into a one about national security and geopolitics, Roubini predicted that “there will be a trade and tech war between the U.S. and China that’s going to get worse.”
Roubini dismissed the trade truce declared by U.S. President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinpeng over the weekend as mere talk, though stock market investors appeared to think otherwise this week. The S&P 500 index SPX, -0.05% closed at a record high Monday, while the Dow Jones Industrial AverageDJIA, -0.09% and Nasdaq Composite index COMP, -0.11% also gained to be within 1% of their record closes.
The uncertainty that the standoff has created is forcing businesses to delay or cancel plans to make additional investments, Roubini added. “There’s already been, in the data, a collapse in [capital expenditures] and once capex is down, industrial production is down, and then you have the beginning of a global recession that starts in
- tech, then spreads to
- manufacturing, then to
- industry and then it goes to
- services,” he said.
The Sino-American trade dispute will have even further consequences than just triggering the next recession, as it will cause “a complete decoupling of the global economy” as private entities and countries will have to choose whether to do business with China or the U.S., and it will lead to a reconstruction of “the entire global tech supply chain,” which will be a drag on economic growth going forward.
He compared the predicted U.S.-China “cold war” with that between the Soviet Union and the U.S. during the last century, arguing that the coming war will be more disruptive. “This divorce is going to get ugly compared to the divorce with the U.S. and the Soviet Union,” because there was little economic integration between America and Russia prior to the conflict.