

President Xi's Chinese strategy to out-compete Western democracy
Think this is something the West needs to take very seriously. There are a range of strategy advantages that President Xi's "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" has over Western-style democracy including: ability to pursue long-term strategic objectives ( vs managing from election to election eg 3 year strategy). Corporations in China, working as a team to out-compete the West. Not influenced by taxpayer-sense of entitlment, a phenomena that has gripped Western democracy,


Jim O'Neill - key issues at Chinese National Congress
More pertinent questions come to mind – two in particular. First, will the modest rise of the Chinese consumer continue to fuel 6-7% annual growth? And, second, will the somewhat undefined Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – continue to be a major priority for China’s leadership? As for the first question, despite the slower growth trend this year, China will still add around $1 trillion or more to its nominal GDP, giving it a $12 trillion economy by the end of this year – nearl

Recession risk warning for 2019
Louis-Vincent Gave on Tech, Fed Balance Sheet, and More: “In our system today, there are four central banks that matter a lot and have a disproportionate impact on global markets: the Fed, the Bank of Japan, the ECB, and People's Bank of China. Starting from really six months ago, we’ve gone from zero central banks tightening to now two, because (in addition to the Fed) the Chinese central bank is also tightening.” “So, you have 2 out of 4 that are now tightening and 2 of out

100-year future assessment from Nobel laureate
Articles from 2010 still relevant today.http://puzzlefinancialadvice.com.au/2017/AFR/110816_AFR_Nobel_laureate_Mike_Spence_the_West_must_embrace_change_or_whither.pdf "In the100-year view of Nobel laureate economist MichaelSpence, the current global economic woesare linked to the slow and painful adaptation of the developed world to the growing economic cloutof China, India, Brazil and other developing economies. Spence says it has not yet

Would you like to save on household electricity bills?
Here is a government web site to make it easy to shop around for gas and electricity prices. https://www.energymadeeasy.gov.au/ Everyone's electricity prices (on the east coast of Australia) have gone up a lot over the last 5 years. It clearly is a complex and compound problem BUT ..... your only electricity expenses. I recently checked with ClickEnergy (our supplier) and was able to get a ~22% discount. We had switched to ClickEnergy about 5 years ago, and had got a 10% d

Do shares always produce good returns over the long run? No. 2 Examples.
There are periods of long-term history when shares do not produce good returns over 20 or 30 years. Therefore it is important that you look for signs that might indicate that the period ahead is one of those periods. Here are two examples of poor long-term returns from shares. US shares 1800-1860. Japanese shares 1989-2009. One of the indicators of very long-term poor returns ahead, is if that share market has historically extreme cyclically-adjusted P/E ratios - like the US

Developed world cash and bond yields in now in rising cycle. Why important?
In this paper, we discuss: the evidence for us now being in an interest rate rising cycle and the reasons why this is important to investors. But in short, the reasons why this is important are: At the end of a cash rate rising cycle, it is extremely common to have a crisis or crash. See Appendix C. Most listed securities like shares and listed property, are priced of bond yields. As bond yields rise, a higher discount rate needs to be applied to determine the capital value (