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Showing posts with the label Rise and fall of Empires

USA IS 250 YEARS OLD: MOST EMPIRES AND MANY CHINESE DYNASTIES LAST BETWEEN 200 TO 300 YEARS.

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The US 'Empire" is flashing the common signals of an Empire in the last stage of decline. 1. Severe Debt Spirals and Currency Debasement Throughout history, (from the Spanish Empire, to the Roman Empire and nearly every Chinese Dynasty) late-stage empires consistently spent far more than they collected, resulting in massive debt and the "debasement" (or loss of purchasing power) of their currency.  The total US national debt has escalated sharply, surpassing $39 trillion. It is on track to hit a staggering 120 percent of GDP over the next decade.  An increasing percentage of the Federal budget is now spent purely on paying interest to debt holders.  Meanwhile, global trust in the US dollar's long-term dominance is gradually weakening as China, BRICS countries and ASEAN continue to reduce their dependence on the USD, and global Central Banks buy Gold at a record pace 2. Deepening Political Polarisation  Empires facing decay lose their ‘asabiyyah’—a term coined b...

USD/JPY: Musings on the Rise and Fall of Economies.

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The chart above shows USD/JPY from 1971 at 6-monthly intervals. It's rather frightening to see that USD/JPY used to be as cheap as 350 Yen to USD1.00. Compared to this the current range of USD/JPY 140 to 150 is fantastic. What has happened to USD/JPY  has also happened to the GBP/SGD and the USD/SGD and now AUD/SGD.  If I remember correctly, in the early 70's GBP/SGD was around 7.00 (today it's 1.73) and USD/SGD was around 3.60. (today it's 1.28). So if you take a long term view and the big picture I would dare to say that exchange rates are a valid and good indicator of the rise and fall of economies. When I  take a look at SGD/AUD, I wonder if the good old days of the Lucky Country  are over. SGD/AUD is now around 1.22 It used to be that SGD/AUD was <1. This brings me to what I quoted from the Bible on this blog in 2008-15 years ago. I was reflecting on the unpredictability of financial markets. The image below is a n-dimensional continuous wavelet transform of ...