Good news: the Middle East is aging

November 30, 2023 0

In 2021, researchers Hannes Weber and Richard Cincotta theorized that countries with a median age of 25 or younger among their citizens are more prone to revolutions. Previous studies had already established a correlation between a young demographic and a higher risk of war or political violence. Data from the 1990s revealed that countries where…

By Michel Santi

Compensate the descendants of slaves

November 5, 2023 0

The movement is unstoppable. In the same week, King Charles expresses regrets for the British colonial violence committed in Kenya, and German President Steinmeier apologizes to Tanzania for the atrocities committed by Germans. The question is burning: will European countries now be forced to allocate a portion of their taxpayers’ funds to substantially compensate the…

By Michel Santi

American Sanctions: A Double-Edged Sword

September 24, 2023 0

Sanctions are a lever frequently employed, certainly because it allows the rulers who use and abuse them to avoid costly armed conflicts. Sanctions represent a kind of “low-cost” warfare. Not quite, in reality, because these retaliatory measures against a state – far from harming its officials – primarily punish the most vulnerable under the yoke…

By Michel Santi

China: Revolt of the Party’s Elderly Leaders ?

September 7, 2023 0

In Beijing, it’s the revolt of the elderly! Those who have led the Communist Party, these former leaders who presided over and orchestrated China’s rise to power until Xi’s accession, are now demanding accountability. It has recently come to light that they gathered in late August in the Hebei Province, specifically in the coastal city…

By Michel Santi

China: a shadow of itself

August 27, 2023 0

China has become one of the most expensive countries in the world to raise and support a family. The collapse of consumption and overall living standards is wreaking havoc among young Chinese couples, who now have little motivation to start a family. Chinese fertility is declining rapidly despite the pro-natalist policy adopted by the government…

By Michel Santi

France is angry, France is hungry

July 5, 2023 0

The flour war in 1775 sparked around 300 riots throughout France and was caused by the state’s abolition of price controls on bread, driven by Turgot’s influence. Turgot, who had elevated “laissez-faire” as an economic principle almost akin to divine law or inherent in natural laws, had not at all concerned himself with the rising…

By Michel Santi

The Strange Defeat

June 26, 2023 0

Clearly, for Russia, it was a chronicle of an announced debacle. They invaded the largest country in Europe with barely 150,000 soldiers, while the USSR mobilized nearly a million men in 1968 to occupy a country (Czechoslovakia) that represented only one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory and a quarter of its population at that time. Stalin would…

By Michel Santi

Russia at war with OPEC

June 11, 2023 0

It is necessary to conjugate the striking force of OPEC in the past. This group of countries that used to meet in Vienna, deciding unanimously to reduce their production and using their monopoly to drive up oil prices to the detriment of nations and continents eager to consume it, no longer impresses much. How distant…

By Michel Santi

Europe: a sleeping beauty

April 24, 2023 0

How not to be shocked by the near-economic disappearance of Europe? The “acceleration of the European economy” mentioned by Emmanuel Macron in China this April is a tale that no longer comforts or deceives anyone. Readers: your first electric car will most likely be Chinese, as China has now surpassed Germany as the world’s second-largest…

By Michel Santi

Is our money still safe in a bank?

March 27, 2023 0

In the CS rescue operation, the Confederation, the SNB and the regulator (Finma) took a decision with serious consequences: to sacrifice Tier 1 bonds, nicknamed “CoCo bonds” or “contingent convertible bonds”. These are hybrid securities between capital and debt, of better quality and which take precedence over equities, a sort of first mortgage. The authorities…

By Michel Santi

CS: the infernal chronology

March 22, 2023 0

  Credit Suisse fines by Year: 2022: $700 million 2021: $280 million 2018: $90 million 2017: $5.4 billion 2016: $240 million 2014: $3.7 billion 2012: $120 million 2009: $536 million 2008: $15 million 2003: $275 million 2002: $350 million   Credit Suisse has been fined over 50 times for a total of $11.4 billion since…

By Michel Santi

Strategy of pain

February 26, 2023 0

  Eurozone supercore inflation is at 6.0% and is by no means peaking. In Japan, inflation increased by 4.4% in January compared to January 2022: strongest annual inflationary surge since 1981! In the USA, inflation was at 7% for January, and revised upwards for the 4th quarter of 2022. Very disturbing, these figures show that…

By Michel Santi

End game

February 12, 2023 0

  The gold standard was a system where the currency of a country was linked to gold and which could materialize either by defining a certain quantity of metal in exchange for the American dollar, or indirectly through currencies having a fixed parity against the greenback. As early as 1944 with Bretton Woods, only central…

By Michel Santi

Make the plane greener ?

January 30, 2023 0

  The loyalty programs of aviation companies (frequent flyer program) are 40 years old. They were first created in 1979 by the now defunct Texas International Airlines. Eager to give impetus to its stagnant clientele and to give luster to its brand, the solution advocated – and followed little by little by others – was…

By Michel Santi

This China which now exports inflation !

January 18, 2023 0

  While it has been THE fundamental source of deflation for the past 20 years, China will now export inflation. This country locked up for 2 years nearly 19% of the universal population that were prevented from consuming. This 1.4 billion individual now liberated will rush to buy, go out, live… with the global inflationary…

By Michel Santi

The EV, symbol of a shift in world power?

January 16, 2023 0

  Sales of electric cars are exploding on a global scale. Last year saw an increase of 60% compared to 2021 with nearly 11 million vehicles put into circulation. It’s simple: EV now account for 13.2% of all global sales, having thus tripled in 2 years since 2020. Germany, Great Britain, France and China are…

By Michel Santi

Governance Quo Vadis ?

December 29, 2022 0

  In China, for 3 years now the propagandist machine has been calling the West a liar and incompetent in the face of its management of Covid, literally demonizing Western vaccines described as counterproductive. You have to understand why China has opened up suddenly in recent days by removing all coercive health measures. It was…

By Michel Santi

A US dilemma ?

December 26, 2022 0

  The United States is not wrong to support Ukraine because a Russian defeat is in their interest. However, the American and Ukrainian objectives do not quite coincide because the USA has achieved theirs while the Ukrainians have not yet. Therefore, the former are eager to bring Russia back to the negotiating table when the…

By Michel Santi

Superower …

December 3, 2022 0

  Europe will never manage to impose itself whit a currency that barely accounts for 30% in world trade and transactions, when the $, on the other hand, crushes the whole of the top of its 88%! Europe may struggle, but the extraterritoriality of US law is here to stay.

By Michel Santi

Is China still credible ?

November 28, 2022 0

  Even better than Mao, surpassing Lenin, Xi Jinping methodically is building a cult around himself over the years. Often preaching with mysticism, surrounded by unconditional Marxist doctrines, he benefits from the aura of the master that China never ceased to glorify since the end of the 1970s. Describing Marx as the ” Greatest thinker…

By Michel Santi

Inflation is everywhere

November 18, 2022 0

Even Japan, country of Quantitative Easing, of negative interest rates, of a acutely aging population, is enduring inflation on all fronts. So let’s expect an acceleration in the pace of interest rate hikes globally, despite all the falsely reassuring messages from financial markets that are absolutely not far-sighted…as usual.  

By Michel Santi

Crypto crédibles et crédules?

November 14, 2022 0

  N’est-il pas ironique que ces crypto monnaies, dont la raison d’être fut à l’origine de proposer un système alternatif aux banques et à l’argent, soient aujourd’hui prises la main dans le sac pour commettre les mêmes abus et malversations que le système qu’elles n’ont cessé de dénoncer? Je me souviens de la crise bancaire…

By Michel Santi

Demographic regression

November 13, 2022 0

  The abolition of the one-child policy in China was not followed by a boom in the birth rate. Quite the contrary, in fact, because this graph shows that this country is close to demographic regression which will be its misfortune in the decades to come, and which will force it to drastically review its…

By Michel Santi

Euthanasia of the rentiers ?

November 12, 2022 0

  Hope is that inflation has peaked but…inflation is the solution. After a long period in which the opposite has been true, perhaps it is the easiest and maybe even fairest way forward. If we’re to get rid of the massive piles of debt our economies piled up, then we need inflation and nominal growth…

By Michel Santi

Truss debacle: markets turned whistleblowers

November 3, 2022 0

“We meant to change a nation, and instead, we changed a world” was an emblematic declaration by Ronald Reagan who shared throughout his Presidency with Margaret Thatcher fundamentally individualistic obsessions where the State represented the absolute threat against freedom and against property. And, in fact, their advent – of Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States – provided these…

By Michel Santi

The Chinese Mess

October 23, 2022 0

  No one dares to claim anymore that China will soon become the world’s largest economy. From Goldman Sachs which announced fifteen years ago that it would be number 1 in 2026, to Nomura which predicted it for 2028, to JP Morgan which saw it by 2031… The question with the experts was not so…

By Michel Santi

America’s superpower

October 6, 2022 0

  The Dollar is becoming scarce, because the whole world wants and lacks it. This problem – recurring since the 1960s – of scarcity of the American currency constitutes an incredible headache for the countries indebted in this currency when the latter is brought to appreciate because their debts and their interests become more expensive…

By Michel Santi

Checkmate for Russia?

September 10, 2022 0

  The oil price cap decided a few days ago by the G7 is an original, unprecedented measure to be taken very seriously. The member countries of this exclusive club will therefore refuse to buy its oil from Russia at a price that will exceed a certain level which will be fixed later. Surely Russia…

By Michel Santi

I want you to panic

September 1, 2022 0

  Canada is a breadbasket: it is the 4th largest exporter of grains and vegetables in the world. This country also has one of the most efficient harvesting techniques available. However, its food stalls will no longer be as well stocked, and this in the near future, because the federal government has just decreed a…

By Michel Santi

German strategy

August 30, 2022 0

  Very interesting this substantial decline in road traffic in favor of rail in Germany from the moment the universal train ticket at 9 euros was instituted. That’s right: travelling/moving around becomes accessible again to those who couldn’t afford it.

By Michel Santi

Putin and the european chaos

August 21, 2022 0

  They were all grossly wrong, those who predicted a collapse in Russian oil production. Putin effectively defied all forecasts because, with 10.8 million barrels/day (mb/d) pumped last July, Russian oil production is almost at the level of 11 mb/d last January, i.e. before the war. In fact, it has been three months since this…

By Michel Santi

Germany: a country undone

August 5, 2022 0

  The energy crisis is upsetting the balance of power in Europe, as we finally have realised that Germany is indeed quite fallible. The country’s moral authority was constantly being unleashed upon Mario Draghi during his time as president of the ECB because of his active monetary policy. Germany’s arrogance went as far as proposing…

By Michel Santi