Tag: Random Thoughts

Historically, China was a big buyer and still a big holder of US gov debt, which to some extent led to the ultra-low interest rate environment.

Nowadays, China is still helping keep the US interest rate low, indirectly. I think by not providing good return opportunities, China is forcing money to go to other places, indirectly providing more money (with low return alternative) in the global market for the US gov.

It’s not just impacting foreign capital interested in China, but Chinese money as well.

Alternatively, if China has attractive opportunities all over the place, it will compete for global money one way or another.

What’s a good “crowd”?

How do people know they can trust themselves collectively?

Democracy in the US won’t work if the mass can’t think/vote reasonably or behave as “adults”.

If we just use words like “respect” each other – well it’s a good quality but not enough.

I think of some key elements:

a) a crowd needs to be able to deduce correctly – like 1+2=3. Given “1” and “2”, they know those two add up to 3.

b) a crowd needs to be able to double check the facts – like they can verify “1” is “1”, so that misinformation won’t cause much harm.

c) a crowd needs to be able to correct itself. If somehow 1+2 = 10 is the mainstream idea, the crowd can find out they were wrong and make it 1+2=3 in a timely manner.

d) in many more cases, it’s not a deterministic problem. There is no one correct answer, but probably a rang of answers like 1.5-2.5. In this case, people who say 2 don’t need to correct people who say it’s 1.5 or 2.5. Or there is no right or wrong, but just a preference between 1-10. In that case, people needs to recognize the fact that there is a distribution, and a “10” shouldn’t kick a “1” out of the crowd, or vice versa.

 

When lawmakers hide their personal interests behind initiatives, it’s a loss to the people.

It also makes the law less sacred.

It encourages less qualified people to win seats for their own benefits in the future – and a slippery slope to fight for their own interests.

 

China’s stock market is back. Everyone know.

China rolled out policies to help its stock market & economy. This makes sense.

What are the missing parts?

Some might say geopolitical tension is still an unsolved issue.

I won’t disagree. But I feel it’s not as extreme as before.

Some may say a deeper structural reform.

Fair; but in short term this might not change.

What I think is missing (and China can start to think in short term) is how China can better participate & even organize global affairs & how the world economy can grow better with a stronger China.

Historically, China didn’t excel on this. During times when its economy was leading the world, it didn’t take much care of the world. It could give stuff to nearby countries; it could invent and other can learn; however, it didn’t actively “organize the world”.

A strong economy that can’t lead is a loss to the world, I think.

How to lead? How to make other countries live better as China is a bigger part of global GDP? Not by giving free money but in a healthy, organic way.

That’s the question I haven’t seen much discussion.

China implemented one-child policy from 1980 to 2015 (36 years).

This might be the largest social experiment that has ever been done globally.

Only-child policy is rare. Only China has done this.

The impact could be negligible for some families, as they would have had only one child anyway.

But collectively, this has significant impact – e.g. it reduced the population: two ppl turned into one people.

One consequence that many might have ignored – half of the families may “lose” their “last name”.

In China, children usually keep their father’s name. So families with only one girl as their child would “suffer” from this one-child policy.

This might be in China vs. say in the US, as Chinese last names are shared among different families but last names in the US are often unique. If there were one-child policy in the US, ultimately, half of the last names would disappear!

What a loss of culture.

A very random thought on two seemingly unrelated events.

Hamas political leader was killed in Iran.

Iran uses Huawei equipments I assume.

Huawei also needs foundry which uses ASML.

ASML and Japan’s equipment makers are exported to be exempted from a new drafted rule.

Is this weird that these two things are happening & making to the headlines this week?

Is there any possibility that someone from China “helped” US/Israel on Hamas and someone from the US “helped” China on semi control?

This is like a prisoner swap on another level.

The “Wanting it all” mentality is dangerous.

In Chinese, a trendy phrase is “既要又要还要”. It’s often used to describe/complain what regulators want in China in recent years.

Some examples:

China wants economic growth and security, and it wants high tech.

When local gov wants growth, it wants a market participant that can do the construction (industrial park, infra, city updates etc.), plus bringing in good businesses, and it doesn’t want to give monetary support.

In economics, there is this impossible trinity – fixed exchange rate, free flow of capital, and independent monetary policy. China wants it all – policy needs to be “independent” and not influenced by others; it doesn’t want RMB to depreciate fast which could be a “loss of face”; and it wants foreign flows/investments to support its “open” narrative.

It’s not just China. US has this “wanting it all” mentality in drug pricing and supply (insulin for example) – US wants innovation in biotech; it wants low drug price; it wants de-risked supply chains. Companies are put into a hard position and are challenged if decisions like this are made (Novo Nordisk to discontinue Levemir in the US).

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One doesn’t become a leader just by making requests; one leads with directions.

“Crypto capital of the planet”

“Fire Gary Gensler” (SEC Chair)

..

This does seem logical from Trump’s point of view –

if Trump know what words can be “most relevant” for a specific group of people, he will just say it and get their votes, as long as it’s not contradictory with Trump’s other statements.

plus, the more eye-catching the moment is, the more “free marketing” Trump gets.

oh, and the crypto industry must be super rich and can make big donations I suppose.

and this is something PRC opposes – good!

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Btw, some people floated the idea of Trump picking Jamie Dimon as Treasury Secretary.. I guess Jamie Dimon and the world crypto are very hard to mingle.

Probably the JD Vance pick has already lowered the chance of Trump working with traditional Wall Street people?

but I don’t know if the JD Vance pick (for mass mfg workers I assume) and the rich crypto moguls can fit into one photo…

Maybe Trump is just leveraging crypto + Vance to get as many votes as possible first – that’s all Trump needs indeed. If that’s the case, policies from Trump at this stage are less about what should be done / what’s good for the long run, but just what’s popular. Maybe this has always been the case, for most campaigns…