Deposits, real estate, businesses, and infrastructure facilities are all collateral for Chinese loans

Donald Trump was not at the Davos summit last year, but even from a distance of a few thousand kilometres, the US president still managed to overawe many of the forum’s participants. What will happen this time?

Saudi Aramco (the Saudi Arabian Oil Company) is the world’s largest petroleum business. It owns more than 100 oil and gas fields in Saudi Arabia with reserves of at least 264 billion barrels of oil, which is estimated to be approximately one-fourth of the world’s known reserves of this raw material.

It’s revealing that Saudi Arabia is the first country the American president has visited since his inauguration. That was a first in US history. The choice of Saudi Arabia is all the more interesting because throughout the last year Washington’s relations with Riyadh have been strained. For example, Barack Obama got a decidedly cool reception when he visited Saudi Arabia in April 2016. And now we see this unexpected reversal.

It is no secret that America is governed by the US Federal Reserve System. The Federal Reserve’s main shareholders are in charge of the money and so are also in charge of America. To strengthen and maintain their power, these money bosses need ‘their own’ story. And that is why they are rewriting history – not just in textbooks and Hollywood films, but on banknotes too. Over the past century, America’s history has been well ‘edited’ on the country’s banknotes and their design has been changed more than once. 

China’s leaders well remember the words of Barack Obama, who stated last May 14 that the TPP’s basic premise «allows America – and not countries like China» to shape the rules of international trade. Now China has the opportunity to make a retaliatory move, by claiming that it has become the arbiter of international trade.

The financial crisis of 2007-2009 effectively terminated the process of globalization. In 2015 world trade suddenly dropped by more than 10% for the first time since 2009. Nothing like this has been seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. But some politicians, public figures, scholars, and journalists continue to talk about globalization as an «objective» and «progressive» process, even though it has already ended…

The International Monetary Fund was perched on a precarious branch that has now been cut down out from under them. The IMF Executive Board met in Washington on the evening of Sept. 14. The biggest issue on their agenda was whether to approve a $1 billion loan disbursement to Ukraine. And they did. Except for the director representing Russia on that board, who voted against the payout…

In December 2015, the US Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) decided to raise interest rates.  For the first time in seven years the Fed hiked the rate by a quarter percentage point.  The target range for the fed funds rate was set at 0.25 – 0.50%…

Following the Iran nuclear deal, Washington announced it would begin lifting economic sanctions against Tehran. Iranian banks were allowed to reconnect to the SWIFT communications network, which handles international payment transactions, the ban on Iranian oil exports was lifted, and Washington finally decided to unfreeze Iran’s financial assets held abroad (the assets were seized in 2012). No-one really knows the volume and structure of these assets. Some Iranian officials have put the total amount at $130 billion, while the Institute of International Finance in Washington has estimated it at $100 billion…