the world has a new bank?....anybody need a loan?

[Ricboff]

LMAO


[h=1]Israel applies to join China-backed AIIB investment bank[/h]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/01/us-asia-aiib-israel-idUSKBN0MS46J20150401

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signed a letter of application for Israelto join the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the Israeli Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.

 

[Ricboff]

http://www.valuewalk.com/2015/04/aiib-the-end-of-american-domination/


AIIB: The End of American Domination



It goes that a wolf, in one of Aesop’s fables, was passing through a pasture and came upon some shepherds in a hut dining on a haunch of mutton. The wolf approached and said to the shepherds: “What a clamor you would raise if I were to do as you are doing!”
The moral: Men are apt to condemn in others the very things they practice themselves.
Which brings us to the United States government and the hissy fit it’s throwing over the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The affair points, first and foremost, to the hypocrisies endemic in America today. More importantly, it shows that America’s place in the world — and by association, the dollar’s place in the world — is diminishing. Those who understand this are in position to prepare for what’s to come.
The infrastructure bank, known as the AIIB, is the brainchild of China. Given China’s wealth, size, newfound global openness and expanding power and influence around the world, the Chinese have begun building doppelgangers of Western institutions that for years have shaped global economic policies. China and Russia, for instance, are behind a push to create a new iteration of the International Monetary Fund that would aid less-developed nations and do so without “the harassment of countries that do not agree with some foreign policy decisions made by the United States and their allies.”
Now comes the AIIB, designed to compete against the World Bank and its Asian offshoot, the Asian Development Bank. The AIIB mission: To finance infrastructure projects throughout Eurasia and Africa.
Like a schoolyard bully no one respects anymore, the U.S. has belittled the AIIB, claiming any Chinese-led lending institution will fail to impose rules and standards that would protect the environment (not that America has such a pristine record of doing so, but that’s neither here nor there).
The U.S. had a chance to join the bank as a founding member. It spurned that opportunity … and then in a fit of ignorance laced with latent jealousy, it told its key allies to spurn the bank, too.
Only … NO ONE LISTENED!
And therein we find a flashing marquee sign pointing to a very painful reality for Americans who blindly buy into the awkward — and fading — notion of American Exceptionalism.
Nothing More Than a Bully

It is no surprise that a rash of more than 20 Central, Southern and Southeast Asian nations have signed on as AIIB members, including America’s regional ally, South Korea. It’s probably no surprise that Russia and Turkey have joined, as have the Saudis and other Middle Eastern nations that are purportedly friendly to America.
But it should come as a shocker that Britain — America’s closest ally — signed on as a founding member of the AIIB … despite Washington’s protestations. It should also cause a mental ripple that Australia, Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and Switzerland have joined. Japan will join, too. Taiwan and Norway are on deck, as well. That leaves the U.S. (and Canada, to a much lesser degree) conspicuously absent.

Why, you have to wonder, is the U.S. playing the role of intransigent narcissist as the rest of world rushes to join a bank that will help lift the living standards of several billion people from Southeastern Asia all the way to West Africa?
Very, very simple.
The U.S. dollar.
America fears that the Asian/European economic cooperation necessary inside the AIIB — and the developing-nation acceptance of AIIB investments — will undermine dollar hegemony. For once, the U.S. is right. That is exactly what will happen — and, honestly, is already happening.
America has spent the post-World War II decades imposing its will on the world, in the process pissing off a lot of people, even our friends. Some of that is reflected, even if covertly, in decisions made by Western nations to join the AIIB.
And, yet, anger at America isn’t the only reason, or the best reason, to join the AIIB. Opportunity is — which is exactly what every nation is pursuing when they join the AIIB.
The bank’s footprint covers a (very large) swath of the world where economies and consumers are rapidly emerging. If I’m Britain or Germany — or Australia or Brazil — I absolutely want deep access to those economies, and I don’t care if I disregard the wishes of my friend, because my friend’s wishes run counter to my personal success.
Key Protection

For America, this is the most serious existential threat we face as a nation.
This isn’t just a story about friends snubbing our desires. It’s the story of the knock-on effects here at home of a world in which dollar hegemony recedes into history. Painful repercussions radiate from that.
Because of the size of our national debt — now exceeding $18 trillion — America must constantly rollover boatloads of U.S. Treasury paper, one-third of which we sell globally to fund our profligacy. As demand for the dollar wanes (and the AIIB is just another example of why that will happen), U.S. interest rates must rise in order to attract a similar level of investment from global buyers of our debt.
That, in turn, raises the cost of keeping the lights on in America. It also raises the costs — likely beyond affordability — of keeping U.S. troops stationed in various parts of the world, which ultimately reduces our influence. And it screams through the U.S. economy, leaving in its wake hardship and increasing poverty (and remember: we are a country where fully one-half the population already cannot afford a $500 emergency expense).
The AIIB, and our friends who have joined the bank as founding members, brings into harsh focus the troubling reality that we are now in the midst of an empire’s collapse. It’s hard to see from the inside, and not something most of us want to accept.
But the dots methodically continue to connect. The only protection is having some of your wealth outside the dollar. When the end of the U.S. dollar comes — and it will — the rising value of foreign currencies relative to the dollar will be the only saving grace protecting your lifestyle from the radiating pain.
Until next time, stay Sovereign…
Jeff D. Opdyke

 

[Ricboff]

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/a0a0...NUM__/nbe/FirstFTEurope/product#axzz3WTlJUfd3


um, Mr.Eliot nails it. Self-inflicted. From Bush to Obama.....the planet collectively has said enough. The once well respected bully needs to rise...............


[h=1]Time US leadership woke up to new economic era[/h]



This past month may be remembered as the moment the United States lost its role as the underwriter of the global economic system. True, there have been any number of periods of frustration for the US before, and times when American behaviour was hardly multilateralist, such as the 1971 Nixon shock, ending the convertibility of the dollar into gold. But I can think of no event since Bretton Woods comparable to the combination of China’s effort to establish a major new institution and the failure of the US to persuade dozens of its traditional allies, starting with Britain, to stay out of it.
This failure of strategy and tactics was a long time coming, and it should lead to a comprehensive review of the US approach to global economics. With China’s economic size rivalling America’s and emerging markets accounting for at least half of world output, the global economic architecture needs substantial adjustment. Political pressures from all sides in the US have rendered it increasingly dysfunctional.

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Largely because of resistance from the right, the US stands alone in the world in failing to approve the International Monetary Fund governance reforms that Washington itself pushed for in 2009. By supplementing IMF resources, this change would have bolstered confidence in the global economy. More important, it would come closer to giving countries such as China and India a share of IMF votes commensurate with their new economic heft.
Meanwhile, pressures from the left have led to pervasive restrictions on infrastructure projects financed through existing development banks, which consequently have receded as funders, even as many developing countries now see infrastructure finance as their principal external funding need.
With US commitments unhonoured and US-backed policies blocking the kinds of finance other countries want to provide or receive through the existing institutions, the way was clear for China to establish the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. There is room for argument about the tactical approach that should have been taken once the initiative was put forward. But the larger question now is one of strategy. Here are three precepts that US leaders should keep in mind.
First, American leadership must have a bipartisan foundation at home, be free from gross hypocrisy and be restrained in the pursuit of self-interest. As long as one of our major parties is opposed to essentially all trade agreements, and the other is resistant to funding international organisations, the US will not be in a position to shape the global economic system.



Other countries are legitimately frustrated when US officials ask them to adjust their policies — then insist that American state regulators, independent agencies and far-reaching judicial actions are beyond their control. This is especially true when many foreign businesses assert that US actions raise real rule of law problems.
The legitimacy of US leadership depends on our resisting the temptation to abuse it in pursuit of parochial interest, even when that interest appears compelling. We cannot expect to maintain the dollar’s primary role in the international system if we are too aggressive about limiting its use in pursuit of particular security objectives.
Second, in global as well as domestic politics, the middle class counts the most. It sometimes seems that the prevailing global agenda combines elite concerns about matters such as intellectual property, investment protection and regulatory harmonisation with moral concerns about global poverty and posterity, while offering little to those in the middle. Approaches that do not serve the working class in industrial countries (and rising urban populations in developing ones) are unlikely to work out well in the long run.
Third, we may be headed into a world where capital is abundant and deflationary pressures are substantial. Demand could be in short supply for some time. In no big industrialised country do markets expect real interest rates to be much above zero in 2020 or inflation targets to be achieved. In the future, the priority must be promoting investment, not imposing austerity. The present system places the onus of adjustment on “borrowing” countries. The world now requires a symmetric system, with pressure also placed on “surplus” countries.
These precepts are just a beginning, and many questions remain. There are questions about global public goods, about acting with the speed and clarity that the current era requires, about co-operation between governmental and non-governmental actors, and much more. What is crucial is that the events of the past month will be seen by future historians not as the end of an era, but as a salutary wake up call.
The writer is Charles W Eliot university professor at Harvard and a former US Treasury secretary

 

[Suzie]

ok whos di ck do i have to suck or just spread em for ?:massage:

 

[Ricboff]

Putin is desperate. He has no choice; sell out to China to save his economy. Give the Chinese an inch they'll take a mile-- they seek ownership. Putin? concede . His disdain for America/west is so strong he is breaking down massive barriers with China, and quickly.

http://www.businessinsider.com/r-le...russia-invites-china-into-oil-business-2015-4


Russia's freezing north has never been the most welcoming place for foreign travelers, and its onshore oil riches have always been state secrets. But when the order comes from the Kremlin to open up, people obey.
Last September, President Vladimir Putin, who has been seeking new markets in Asia for Russian energy exports to replace traditional customers in Europe, announced that he would welcome Chinese investment in Vankor, a vast new oil field in remote eastern Siberia owned by the state firm Rosneft.
Since then, delegations from both China and India have been flown out to visit the field in the remote tundra.
Some of the workers, who spend four weeks at a time at the isolated station — where temperatures can fall as low as minus 60 Celsius (minus 76 Fahrenheit) — have duly taken up Mandarin.
"No problem. We will work with the Chinese workers if need be," said Alexei Zyryanov, deputy head of an oil and gas production unit.
All of Vankor's output of 440,000 barrels per day of crude is already shipped east, via the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline, which includes a spur feeding China's northeast.
But a proposed Chinese investment in a stake in the project would go far further than Moscow has ever gone before to luring Beijing into its hydrocarbon industry.
Rarely has Moscow considered offering an ownership stake in such a big strategic onshore deposit to outsiders, despite decades of interest from Western majors. The offer is the more remarkable for being made to China, a rival for decades with which Russia nearly went to war in the 1960s over a border dispute.
Rosneft confirmed it had reached a draft agreement to sell a 10% stake in Vankor to China.


The Kremlin has made much of its "pivot to Asia," seeking new energy markets since Western governments imposed sanctions on Moscow over the Ukraine crisis last year.
Last year, China overtook Germany as Russia's biggest buyer of crude oil, thanks to Rosneft's securing deals to boost supplies via the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline and another crossing Kazakhstan.














....Putin, you boyz becoming dependent on China ? ......... .....