Suchergebnisse

In a matter of days, ExxonMobil will complete its $60 billion acquisition of Pioneer Natural Resources, which is one of the concerns that have made drilling for shale in the Permian basin a highly lucrative endeavor for American energy. However, before you conclude that it's a tribute to American ingenuity, there's a twist here that may surprise you involving a host of foreign actors.Pioneer's founder Scott Sheffield is being named by the US Federal Trade Commission in attempting to coordinate--that is, collude--with OPEC+ on the pricing of energy products. Aside from the company he wishes to keep being rather dodgy sorts including Russia's Putin, there are free market principles being violated here that are more pertinents to the FTC's mission. So, the FTC is advising ExxonMobil that its purchase of Pioneer will only push through if the combined entity does not have Sheffield as a board member or an adviser:
Scott Sheffield, founder and longtime CEO of a leading
American oil producer, attempted to collude with OPEC and its allies to
inflate prices, federal regulators alleged on Thursday. The Federal Trade Commission said Sheffield, then CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources, exchanged hundreds of text messages discussing
pricing, production and oil market dynamics with officials at the
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, the oil
cartel led by Saudi Arabia.



Regulators say Sheffield
used WhatsApp conversations, in-person meetings and public statements
to try to "align oil production" in the Permian Basin in Texas with that
of OPEC and OPEC+, the wider group that includes Russia. "Mr. Sheffield's communications were designed to pad Pioneer's bottom
line — as well as those of oil companies in OPEC and OPEC+ member states
— at the expense of US households and businesses," the FTC complaint
said.  With no charges being made, Sheffield and the firms involves have decided not to contest the FTC's prohibition of his involvement. From a political angle, prosecuting a pillar of the US energy at a time of historically elevated oil prices doesn't seem to me like a winning election strategy. So, the FTC is just making a slap on the wrist for what would otherwise be a massive case of collusion. Also remember that the US is friendly with several unsavory regimes within OPEC. Still, it would've been interesting if it'd have gone to trial to learn how this guy worked with the likes of Venezuela's Maduro and other characters to screw US consumers in the interests of greater (unwarranted) profits. Me? I try to use the least of the dastardly substance as possible to avoid enriching these kinds of folks.

The adversaries during more cordial times. Unbeknownst to many, one of the linchpins of the post-WWII global infrastructure is coming under sustained attack... from its main beneficiary. The United States has been extraordinarily fortunate that its national debt is regarded as being among--if not the--safest investment around. IOUs in the form of US Treasuries are a standard dollar holding across the world, and this demand allows the US to run an unimaginable debt of $34.58 trillion at the time of writing.Would it be strange if the US were to put its debt's status as a safe asset in jeopardy? Well, that's precisely what's going on with the House of Representatives advancing legislation--the REPO Act--meant to use Russia's Treasury holdings and suchlike for funding Ukraine's defense from Russian invasion. The REPO Act, which would authorize Biden to confiscate the frozen
Russian assets in U.S. banks and transfer them to a special fund for
Ukraine, is part of the foreign aid package that was stalled for months
in the House. More than $6 billion of the $300 billion in frozen Russian
assets are sitting in U.S. banks. Most of the $300 billion are in
Germany, France and Belgium.To be sure, Vladimir Putin hedged his bets by keeping much more euros than dollars in his reserve holdings:[F]ollowing Putin's invasion of Ukraine, all of the Group of
Seven (G7) countries including the U.S., U.K., Canada, France, Germany,
Italy and Japan banded together and froze all of the $300 billion
dollars of Russian foreign currency reserves held in banks in those
countries, most of the money in Europe."The
Russians were surprised when, right after the war started, the
Europeans took the exact same measures as the United States, freezing
all of the reserves that were there and the Japanese did the same, which
is why most of Russia's reserves today are frozen in western banks,"
said Chris Miller a professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts
University.Now, there are two main takes on the implications of giving Ukraine the confiscated reserves of Russia. Critics say that other countries will lose faith in investing in American sovereign debt since the US does not have apparent qualms about taking away other countries' investments. For instance, here is Christopher Caldwell:If Russia, China and other diplomatic rivals were to decide that their
dollar assets were vulnerable and that they could no longer trust the
dollar as a means of exchange, we would feel the pain of that $34
trillion in debt in a way that we don't now. Retaining the advantages of
a reserve currency depends on our behaving as a trustworthy and neutral
custodian of others' assets. If we start stealing people's money, that
could change...For decades now, the United States has been deferring hard decisions at
home and abroad and papering over partisan divisions with the tens of
trillions of dollars that our advantageous international position has
allowed us to borrow. Our options, though, are narrowing. If [Speaker Mike] Johnson
thinks the United States is "projecting weakness" now, wait till he
sees it without its reserve currency.Meanwhile, the REPO Act's champions high-mindedly echo Michael McFaul. In the NBC News article in the initial link:McFaul, whose been lobbying for the REPO Act for months,
clapped back at Caldwell's assertion and said the use of Russian assets
for Ukraine would send an important message to autocratic nations around
the world. "There are those that say, 'Well, this will
hurt the dollar. It's bad for our reputation.' I have a pushback to
that. I don't want criminals investing in American Treasury bonds,"
McFaul said.Actually, I side more with the REPO Act skeptics in the sense that "beggars can't be choosers": The US is able to fund its chronically huge budget deficits by not being too picky about its creditors. There are any number of regimes with questionable good governance records--you can easily identify them yourselves from a list--that lend tens of billions of dollars to the United States. Will they take fright if the US proceeds with legislation meant to strip Russia of billions? You know, we may find out real soon... and the consequences of an answer in the affirmative could literally reshape the postwar global infrastructure.AN ASIDE regarding the EU: With the bulk of Russian foreign exchange reserves in the EU, the latter are understandably resistant to US President Joe Biden's pleas to also donate frozen Russian assets to Ukraine. With the relatively new euro single currency in a precarious state ever since global financial crisis, its users are not exactly excited about the Yanks pressuring them to also use seized Russian monies to fund Ukraine. Having the bulk of the frozen Russian reserves and being right next door, the EU is collectively nowhere near as gung-ho about the matter. At most, EU suggestions are half-hearted like just using interest on frozen Russian reserves to fund Ukraine. People act in their interests, and the Europeans are understandably reticent despite (or because of) their enormous distrust of Russia.

Outbound 'r' Us. China is famously in dire economic straits, but how's Japan really doing to solve its longstanding problems like a dearth of working-age citizens? Here's a wrinkle in what is effectively Japan's attempt to devalue its way to prosperity: Just as the yen has fallen to a 34-year low of 153-something to the dollar, the resulting peanuts wages in Japan vis-a-vis those in other developed countries are making younger folks depart in search of higher pay. With similar visa programs [to Australia's] in the U.K., Canada and New Zealand
recovering post pandemic, the outflow of talent risks exacerbating
Japan's acute labor shortage. It's also a sign that many younger
Japanese aren't buying into the nation's economic optimism as it exits
from decades of deflation. "Youth are questioning Japan's economic outlook," said Yuya Kikkawa,
an economist at Meiji Yasuda Research Institute. "Living conditions are
far tougher than the headline inflation figure suggests."

The Bank of Japan finally scrapped the world's last negative interest
rate last month amid signs a virtuous cycle of wage gains is feeding
demand-led inflation. But even after Japanese labor unions won their
biggest wage hike in more than 30 years last month, there remains a
notable gap in real wages with other advanced economies. In 2022, average annual wages in Japan were $41,509, compared with
Australia's $59,408 and $77,463 in the U.S., according to the latest
data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.You see, the old (pre-inflation) deal was for Japanese workers to accept lower wages in exchange for job security during uncertain economic times. However, that deal no longer works as the cost of living has risen:A long-running trade off that put job security ahead of higher pay made
more sense when prices were barely moving. Now with inflation at its
strongest in decades, Japanese are starting to realize that years of
static wages leave many of them budgeting each month before their next
pay check."Japan's wages hadn't risen at all for 20 years while other countries
were increasing theirs," said Atsushi Takeda, chief economist at Itochu
Research Institute. "With the yen getting weaker, the gap has become
even bigger."

Some 14,398 Japanese were granted working holiday visas in Australia
in fiscal 2022-23, the highest number in Australian government data
going back to 2001. It allows 18- to 30-year-olds (or 35 for some
countries) to have a 12-month holiday and work in roles ranging from
farming to hospitality, nursing, construction or office work to fund
their trip. There's also an option to extend as long as three years.So, not only is Japan lacking working-age people to take up the nation's workload, but they are also leaving in ever-larger numbers since the pay at home is comparatively low by OECD standards. Even in Japan as its stock market hits record highs, the "main street" reality is rather grimmer.

With apologies to Rodney Crowell... Excuse me mister but what did you say? / My hard-earned money's all gone away / Xi ain't into capitalism you see / The stock market is just no place to be. Voila, An American Dream is a catchy ditty that I've turned into a lament for the loss of the so-called "Pacific Century" that academics so love[d] to talk about. Supposedly, China's economic ascent would power the entire Asia-Pacific into a period of global dominance. Let's just say that hasn't been how things have turned out. In the interests of "national security," the "national interest," or whatever the Communist Party claims is best in a patriarchal sense, it's gone after industry after industry--digital payments, after-school tutoring, residential real estate... the list goes on and on. Given the level of state intervention in economic matters, it's ironic that the PRC keeps wanting to shed its designation as a "non-market economy" by the United States and others. It's derogatory--Vietnam wants to shed the label ASAP--but accurate so far the PRC goes insofar as winners and losers are not determined by the market but rather by government fiat. Given limited space to air discontent over state policies, disgruntled Chinese investors have taken to using the US embassy social media account to bash the Communist Party, of all channels. Presumably, the Yanks are less likely to censor criticism of the authoritarians:Many
Chinese are venting their frustration at the slowing economy and the
weak stock market in an unconventional place: the social media account
of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. A
post on Friday on protecting wild giraffes by the U.S. embassy on
Weibo, a Chinese platform similar to X, has attracted 130,000 comments
and 15,000 reposts as of Sunday, many of them unrelated to wildlife
conservation. "Could you spare us some missiles to bomb away the Shanghai Stock Exchange?" one user wrote in an repost of the article...The
Weibo account of the U.S. embassy in China "has become the Wailing Wall
of Chinese retail equity investors", another user wrote.The U.S. embassy did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.The Pacific Century has been crushed underfoot by Chinese authorities who are obviously more interested in maintaining their grip on power than the (financial) well-being of their citizens. I've even penned a song about it. Sort of.

Bing prompt: "Draw a businessman leaving China".Hot on the heels of the previous post about how Chinese are showing at the United States' southern border seeking asylum from increasingly dire economic conditions in the PRC, we get more news of this sort. Just as people are leaving China, so is capital: For the first time its records, the PRC has seen a net outflow of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). On balance, more FDI is leaving than entering China, once the world's most notable destination for investment. From the Nikkei Asia Review: Outflows of foreign direct investment in China have exceeded inflows
for the first time as tensions with the U.S. over semiconductor
technology and concerns about increased anti-spying activity heighten
risks. The shift was reflected in balance-of-payments data for the
July-September quarter released Friday by the State Administration of
Foreign Exchange.FDI came to minus $11.8 billion, with more
withdrawals and downsizing than new investments for factory construction
and other purposes. This marked the first negative figure in data going
back to 1998.To be sure, there are overseas precursors for this shift. The US is keen on banning cutting-edge knowledge on semiconductors and artificial intelligence from leaking to China:Escalating tensions with the U.S. are one reason for the decline in
foreign investment. In a survey taken last fall by the American Chamber
of Commerce in the People's Republic of China, 66% of member respondents
cited rising bilateral tensions as a business challenge in China. In August, the U.S. announced tighter restrictions on chip
and artificial intelligence investment in China. Washington is
coordinating with Beijing ahead of a summit meeting between Presidents
Joe Biden and Xi Jinping in November, but the U.S. remains committed to
technology restrictions in the name of economic security.Looking
at foreign investment in the semiconductor field by destination, China's
share has already shrunk from 48% in 2018 to 1% in 2022, according to
U.S. research firm Rhodium Group. In contrast, the U.S. share rose from zero to 37%. The combined share of India, Singapore and Malaysia grew from 10% to 38%.However, American chip and AI concerns obviously do not make up all potential sources of FDI to China. It is here where a decidedly unfriendly foreign investment policy climate factors in. You name it: from corporate espionage to various forms of harassment of overseas businesses under dubious pretenses... today's PRC leadership does not think much of how others perceive these actions meant to promote domestic industry at the expense of foreign concerns. Europeans, for instance, cite only cosmetic efforts to improve prospects for FDI:Beijing has been seeking to reverse capital outflows in the face of mounting economic challenges. But such efforts appear to have failed to assure investors. The China International Import Expo (CIIE), an annual event
launched by President Xi Jinping in 2018 to portray China as an open
market and improve its trade ties, kicked off on Sunday. But the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China criticized the event last week as a "showcase."



"European businesses are becoming disillusioned as symbolic
gestures take the place of tangible results needed to restore business
confidence," the chamber said in a Friday statement. "The CIIE was originally intended as a showcase of China's opening
up and reform agenda, but it has proven to be largely smoke and mirrors
so far," Carlo D'Andrea, vice president of the chamber, said in the
statement. Having done nearly everything possible to discourage FDI, is it any wonder it's leaving China?

The blog's first AI image c/o Bing: "Draw a Chinese person walking through a Panamanian jungle." A usually good indicator of an underwhelming economy is of a country's citizens departing it for greener pastures. The year is 2023, not 1882 when the US passed the Chinese Exclusion Act to stop a massive influx of Chinese immigrants. Moreover, isn't the 21st century supposed to have been the Asian Century according to some prognosticators? My belief is that policy missteps by Xi Jinping have greatly dented the forward momentum of China in recent decades, recently exacerbated by endless lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. At any rate, you may be surprised that the PRC--not some Latin American country--now ranks fourth in sending folks across the Darién Gap linking South and Central America with hopes of entering the United States. From the Associated Press: Chinese
people were the fourth-highest nationality, after Venezuelans,
Ecuadorians, and Haitians, crossing the Darién Gap during the first nine
months of this year, according to Panamanian immigration authorities. Chinese
asylum-seekers who spoke to The Associated Press, as well as observers,
say they are seeking to escape an increasingly repressive political
climate and bleak economic prospects.They
also reflect a broader presence of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border —
Asians, South Americans, and Africans — who made September the
second-highest month of illegal crossings and the U.S. government's 2023
budget year the second-highest on record.As bad as things may be Stateside, let's say they are decidedly worse in China (where you certainly aren't free in a conventional sense). The pandemic and China's COVID-19 policies, which included tight border
controls, temporarily stemmed the exodus that rose dramatically in 2018
when President Xi Jinping amended the constitution to scrap the
presidential term limit. Now emigration has resumed, with China's economy struggling to rebound and youth unemployment high. The United Nations has projected China will lose 310,000 people through emigration this year, compared with 120,000 in 2012..."This
wave of emigration reflects despair toward China," Cai Xia,
editor-in-chief of the online commentary site of Yibao and a former
professor at the Central Party School of the Chinese Communist Party in
Beijing."They've
lost hope for the future of the country," said Cai, who now lives in
the U.S. "You see among them the educated and the uneducated,
white-collar workers, as well as small business owners, and those from
well-off families."Those
who can't get a visa are finding other ways to flee the world's most
populous nation. Many are showing up at the U.S.-Mexico border to seek
asylum. The Border Patrol made 22,187 arrests of Chinese for crossing
the border illegally from Mexico from January through September, nearly
13 times the same period in 2022. Arrests peaked at 4,010 in September,
up 70% from August. The vast majority were single adults.A common route involves landing in Ecuador and then continuing northward to reach the border: The
popular route to the U.S. is through Ecuador, which has no visa
requirements for Chinese nationals. Migrants from China join Latin
Americans there to trek north through the once-impenetrable Darién and
across several Central American countries before reaching the U.S.
border. The journey is well-known enough it has its own name in Chinese:
walk the line, or "zouxian." The monthly number of Chinese migrants crossing the Darién has been
rising gradually, from 913 in January to 2,588 in September. For the
first nine months of this year, Panamanian immigration authorities
registered 15,567 Chinese citizens crossing the Darién. By comparison,
2,005 Chinese people trekked through the rainforest in 2022, and just
376 in total from 2010 to 2021.If there is something that will shame the PRC into adopting sensible economic policies that benefit its general population, then its citizens fleeing China for distant America en masse during its supposed renaissance should be it. In the final analysis, the folks who've made China uninvestable are the PRC's leaders and not some malign foreign influence these leaders like to blame. The fruits of Xi Jinpingism are plain to see at the US-Mexico border.

Just one flagrant American ESG violation among countless others.This news story from Bloomberg had me laffing so hard it hurt: Despite the action being rather novel--banning investment in US Treasuries over environmental, social and governance [ESG] grounds--it is undoubtedly true that America is an ESG disaster. Offhand, we can cite endless ESG offenses that the US has perpetuated on its citizens and the rest of the world. Among others:Environmental: Being the world's second-largest carbon emitter and, historically speaking, by far the world's largest;Social: Maintaining a persistent racial underclass of nearly half of blacks who have experienced inter-generational poverty despite accounting for less than 15% of the overall population;Governance: Inflicting far more gun deaths annually than any other country by allowing largely unfettered sale and ownership of military-style weapons. Now, it is not news to anyone that the US is a super-polluting, racialized and hyper-violent nation. However, it is news when others like the German state of Baden-Württemberg start calling a spade a spade... and put their money where their mouth is at: That's because the new environmental, social and good governance filters
have resulted in US Treasuries ending up on an investing blacklist, due
to America's failure to ratify a number of treaties in areas including
women's rights and controversial weapons...The bulk of Baden-Württemberg's exclusions impact its equity and
corporate bond portfolios. The law establishes the United Nations
Sustainable Development Goals, the European Union's Taxonomy Regulation
and the Paris Agreement on climate change as the basis for future
investment decisions.Lest you think it's just one German state objecting to America, Inc., there are others:Back in Germany, meanwhile, other states have taken similar steps.
Baden-Württemberg, the only one of Germany's 16 states with a coalition
government led by the Greens, was inspired by a similar law in the
smaller state of Schleswig-Holstein, where bans apply to US Treasuries
as well as to fossil-fuel companies. And the pension funds of
Brandenburg, Hesse and Germany's richest state North Rhine-Westphalia
are this year allocating as much as €11 billion to Paris-aligned stock
indexes that exclude ESG laggards alongside Baden-Württemberg. While I do not doubt the sincerity of these actions, I am not convinced that what international ESG-related treaties a country has ratified should constitute the basis for assigning ESG ratings to sovereign debt. Solability, for instance, has a "Global Sustainable Competitiveness Index" (GSCI) that takes into account a number of indicators similar to conventional bond credit ratings.Ah well, I guess it's the thought that counts for these Germans.  

 Each day brings news of a distressed US bank about to take leave for the Great Central Bank In the Sky. Aren't US banks supposed to be safer now with the advent of greater macroprudential regulation? A common way to gauge the soundness of banks is through the use of stress tests that simulate how these financial institutions would fare in the wake of financial, well, stress. While Americans bicker about whether the 2019 loophole exempting midsize banks holding between $100 to $250 billion in assets from stress testing led to their currently precarious situation, even that may not have saved them.Comparatively speaking, stress tests conducted Stateside may not be sufficiently rigorous in simulating scenarios that are detrimental to financial sustainability. It is fairly obvious that the higher rates we have these days are causing mismatches between what banks earn and what they must pay out. Oddly, however, recent US stress tests have not involved rising but rather falling interest rates. See the illustration above and commentary from the Peterson Institute:But it's not only for 2023 that this feature appears. Indeed, every
severely adverse scenario used by the Fed since 2015 has the 3-month
Treasury bill rate ending up at 0.1 percent. Many historic episodes of
severe economic downturn have indeed been accompanied by low interest
rates, as the Fed used its policy tools to support aggregate demand. But
it is a bit strange that not since 2015 has a stress test involved
rising interest rates.
One of the advantages of stress testing the banks every year is that
their robustness to a variety of contrasting stresses can be assessed.
Just repeating a broadly similar scenario year after year misses the
opportunity to provide supervisors with potentially important
information on vulnerabilities. It can also result in policymakers
assuming that the banks are robust to more types of shock than is really
the case.
Yet pointlessly repeating a broadly similar scenario each year is exactly what the Fed has been doing, as we can show here.Have other regulatory authorities been administering stress tests as lax and unrealistic as American ones? Thankfully for the rest of the world, the answer is no. The European Central Bank--and remember that Switzerland is not an ECB member for those thinking of a certain defunct bank--has done its homework by simulating interest rate rises just as we are experiencing now:Overall, our [ECB]  analysis shows that the euro area banking sector would
remain broadly resilient to a variety of interest rate shocks. That
would hold also under a baseline scenario of an economic slowdown in
2023 with the risk of a shallow recession, such as the scenario included
in the December 2022 Eurosystem staff macroeconomic projections.
Profitability would increase overall, driven by [higher] net interest income.
However, provisions would also increase, reflecting potential
difficulties for borrowers. Results for the overall impact on solvency
remain on average fairly muted with great heterogeneity across banks,
within and across different business modelsThe same hold true for Australian banks. Down under, their stress tests have likewise gamed out the implications of higher interest rates:Higher inflation and higher interest rates could lead to larger credit losses despite continued, albeit
slower, economic growth. The stress testing model can provide insights into the magnitude of potential
credit losses and how important they could be for the capital positions of large and mid-sized banks. The
model applies two principal stresses to examine the resilience of the banking system to higher inflation
and interest rates:
Higher inflation and higher interest rates on mortgages squeeze households' real incomes, making
it more difficult to service debt, which could lead to more defaults and larger credit losses for
banks. Similarly, higher input costs and higher interest rates passed onto business loans can make it
more difficult for businesses to service their debts, potentially leading to higher default rates
(see 'Chapter 2: Household and Business Finances in Australia'). Higher interest rates typically reduce the prices of housing and commercial property that are held as
collateral by banks against their loans, which increases LGDs as well as PDs on loans.  Having conducted these sorts of tests well before 2023, Australian banks look to be on firming footing. While we hope that contagion does not spread to the Eurozone and the land down under, it certainly bears questioning why US stress tests did not involve scenarios involving deteriorating financial conditions due to sustained central bank rate rises in the face of persistently elevated inflation. While the subject matter can come across as esoteric, such things do impact Joe Average since taxpayers will ultimately foot the bill for cleaning up the mess caused by unstressful stress tests giving false comfort to financial authorities about the soundness of banks they regulate.  UPDATE 1: Also see Krishna Guha's commentary in the FT. He warns that while the ECB did conduct asset side stress tests (e.g., holding low-yielding securities), it did not test how vulnerable Eurozone banks were to depositor flight like what has happened Stateside. That said, European depositors tend not to move their money around.UPDATE 2: Former Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation chief Sheila Bair says the same thing about the latest batch of stress tests that banks passed: They did not model rising interest rates.

At least Chinese state media's take on the topic is obvious.Puns on the term "offshoring"--moving one's production facilities abroad, or having foreign-based concerns manufacture components for you--have proliferated. Some time thereafter came the term "reshoring" to denote moving back production to where something was once manufactured. (A US firm moving its plant back to America from China would be the most obvious example.)  Now we have the slightly more convoluted term "friendshoring" care of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Like reshoring, friendshoring concerns moving production to locales more favorable to the company in question. For instance, if you had a plant in China, you may be moving it to Mexico to avoid Communist Party persecution of foreign firms through discriminatory regulation. Hence, both reshoring and friendshoring concern moving business activities to where authorities are more favorably disposed. However, the difference is that while reshoring is moving production back to where something was once made, friendshoring does not presume moving back, and the destination can be anyplace where authorities are amicable. That is, your risk of being put out of business by some Western-hating foreign autocrat is mitigated.Or is it? There are a number of viewpoints out there regarding whether friendshoring is actually beneficial. The consulting firm Korn Ferry cautions that this practice may instead create enemies among countries you have chosen to leave. It boils down to the extent to which companies want to involve themselves in international politics:"Friend-shoring can be extremely
risky," says Tom Wrobleski, co-leader
of Korn Ferry's Supply Chain Talent Optimization
practice. "You're picking sides and can unintentionally forge bad blood
with other countries." In the long term, this could backfire if
the country your company relies on—for lithium for batteries, say, or
precious metals for computer chips—feels alienated...The puzzle grows still more complicated when it's infused with values
and politics, says Wrobleski, who says these considerations play an
important role in the decision-making process. "There must be balance
between political alignment and the actual reason for doing business in
a particular country," says Wrobleski. Speaking of politics, the Wall Street Journal adds that the wider effect of firms choosing sides by classifying the world into friends and foes through their location decisions could result in the fragmentation of global supply chains. "Unfriendly" countries may feel antagonized and choose to keep to themselves more. In so doing, key commodities and burgeoning markets that were previously open for business may become increasingly unavailable.  This situation may partly explain the higher inflation being experienced worldwide nowadays. In economic jargon, diminished global economic integration increases trade frictions and therefore the ease and cost of doing business worldwide. Weighing matters, Raghuram Rajan urges us to "just say no" to friendshoring. Insofar as many poor countries are led by authoritarian figures who may come across as business unfriendly to Western firms, development may be hampered:The benefits [of trade between rich and poor countries] are obvious. Final products are significantly less
expensive, so even the poorest people in rich countries can buy them. At the same time, developing countries participate in the production
process, using their most valuable resource: Low-cost labour. As their
workers gain skills, their own manufacturers move to more sophisticated
production processes, climbing the value chain. As workers' incomes
rise, they buy more rich-country products...If any forthcoming friend-shoring mandates were to apply such a broad
categorisation, they would have devastating effects on international
trade. After all, friend-shoring will typically mean trading with
countries that have similar values and institutions; and that, in
practice, will mean transacting only with countries at similar levels of
development...
The benefits of a global supply chain stem precisely from the fact
that it involves countries with very different income levels, allowing
each to bring its comparative advantage to the production process, PhD
researchers from one, for example, and unskilled assembly-line workers
from another. Friend-shoring would tend to eliminate this dynamic,
thereby increasing production costs and consumer prices. While some
labor unions would welcome the reduced competition, the rest of us would
regret it.On top of diminished trade benefits, Rajan reiterates that friendshoring may encourage protectionism among those being discriminated against. What is a global supply chain manager to do? I'll have more to say about this topic in the future, but for now, it's safe to say that each company will need to weight the benefits of more predictable supply chains with likely costlier production in friendlier locations and the potential loss of market access to aggrieved "unfriendly" countries. PS: If you have doubt the admittedly unwieldy term "friendshoring" is real, the IMF is already observing greater FDI among geopolitically aligned countries. The IMF further estimates potentially large efficiency losses due to this phenomenon. 

SoftBank-ARM was a fine idea at the time; now it's a brilliant mistake. Hard as it may be to believe given how downtrodden it is now, Japan's SoftBank was once regarded as a formidable presence on the global technology stage. Sure, it always carried a fairly high level of debt, but its principal Masayoshi Son was regarded as an Asian tech visionary in the mold of a Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Just as Japan, Inc. gorged on buying US properties in the 1980s, SoftBank gobbled global tech shares in the 2000s, culminating in the creation of Vision Fund for venture capital. Launched in 2017, the Vision Fund's losses have dragged down Softbank as of late. Casting such a wide net, some purchases were bound to be successes (like Alibaba) while others were duds (like WeWork). Unfortunately, it seems SoftBank has had more of the latter than the former.  Arguably SoftBank's crowning purchase was the UK's ARM Holdings for $32 billion in 2016. Based in the college town of Cambridge, ARM licenses leading-edge microchip designs used in almost all of today's smartphones. Such licensing revenue is huge. However, ARM has been shopped around for a number of years now to help resuscitate its parent company's finances. From an international political economy standpoint, what is interesting is that ARM has chosen not to make its initial public offering (semantically a re-offering) on the London Stock Exchange where it was listed prior to SoftBank's 2016 purchase. Spurning national pride, it has chosen to list in the United States. So much for UK government entreaties to lure ARM back home, at least financially:  "After engagement with the British Government and the [Financial
Conduct Authority] over several months, SoftBank and Arm have determined
that pursuing a U.S.-only listing of Arm in 2023 is the best path
forward for the company and its stakeholders," Arm CEO Rene Haas said in
a statement. Arm did not completely rule out the possibility of
listing in London in the future, saying it was "proud of its British
heritage" and may consider a subsequent listing in the U.K. at a later
date. It provided no further details.The decision comes despite
intensive lobbying efforts by the British government to persuade the
chip designer to list its shares in the U.K. capital. With 6,000 staff
globally and 3,000 based in the U.K., Cambridge-based Arm is widely
regarded as the jewel in the crown of the British tech industry.The
company is a major force in the semiconductor market, licensing its
microchip designs to some of the world's largest consumer tech
manufacturers. Around 95% of smartphones globally, including the Apple
iPhone, contain Arm-based processors.London
has relaxed its listings rules in an effort to attract leading global
tech companies to go public in the U.K. It faces barriers, with venture
capitalists complaining of a lack of understanding of often loss-making
tech ventures.Although the soon-to-be defunct Softbank-ARM linkup has many interesting
angles to it, there are two of particular note here: The fall of
Masayoshi Son who though the world was his (tech) oyster is one. Another is the London Stock Exchange's
inability to attract tech IPOs. With many of its listings consisting of
traditional industries like energy and finance, the UK reputation as an investment destination for technology could literally
have received a shot in the ARM. But alas, it has just been announced that ARM will soon list Stateside a few weeks after the UK was spurned:SoftBank Group Corp's chip maker Arm Ltd has filed with regulators confidentially for a U.S.
stock market listing, Arm said on Saturday, setting the stage for this
year's largest initial public offering. The
IPO registration shows that Softbank is pressing ahead with the
blockbuster offering despite adverse market conditions, after saying in March that it planned to list Arm in the U.S. stock market.U.S.
IPOs, excluding listings for special purpose acquisition companies, are
down about 22% to a total of just $2.35 billion year-to-date, according
to Dealogic, as stock market volatility and economic uncertainty put
many IPO hopefuls off.Arm plans to sell
its shares on Nasdaq later this year, seeking to raise between $8
billion and $10 billion, people familiar with the matter said. In a
statement, which confirmed an earlier Reuters report on the planned IPO,
Arm said the size and price range for the offering has not yet been
determined.The Matthew Effect is alive and well in tech, I guess. Given the UK's self-inflicted harm over Brexit, it is not unexpected that one of its national champions would prefer to list in the capital- and tech-intensive United States which already has many of tech's top firms. Maybe the UK will get a consolation prize of a secondary listing a few years down the road, but for now, it has come up empty.5/19 UPDATE: The ARM sale probably couldn't come sooner as the SoftBank Vision fund has just announced a scarcely believable $39B loss.

I have a confession to make in being on board "team transitory", or the belief that the recent (global) increase in inflation is due to largely temporary factors. As these factors fade, we are set to resume the previous economic environment of relatively benign inflation. On the demand side, these temporary factors include increased demand for consumer goods as people stayed more at home due to the pandemic. Economic stimulus provided by rich countries to their citizens further fueled this demand. On the supply side, disruptions in goods production, transportation and retail also arose due to the pandemic. More demand + less supply = inflation. Meanwhile, critics of the idea that high inflation is transitory argue that there have been changes in the world economy which contradict the transitory idea such as the emergence of a major war on the European continent--the first since the end of WWII--causing strains in the availability of commodities like energy and grains. Also, prices of not only goods but also services should be factored in since the latter have increased, too. In other words, inflation is becoming entrenched and is not a temporary phenomenon. Little-noticed in this debate is the International Monetary Fund (IMF) weighing in recently with its most recent take on the matter. According to the IMF, there were longstanding economic phenomena well underway before the pandemic that point to lower inflation whose momentum will be very difficult to overcome. These include: Total factor productivity falling significantly, which lowers economic output;Demographic changes resulting in fewer persons of working age (and more retirees), which also reduces economic output;For developed countries at least, inflows of capital from developing countries in search of more secure returns. While there too are factors pushing up rates such as running sizable national budget deficits (that have to be funded by offering higher returns to lenders), the overall picture in the developed world is of declining rates, on the balance. Here is another IMF chart:  Absent some unforeseen modern-day productivity boom or baby boom, you would generally expect rates to trend downward in the developed countries. As they become older--like China whose population is already falling outright--developing countries should follow the same path. Add in other factors the IMF found also lead to lower rates such as elevated and rising inequality--rich people tend to save more and spend less--as well as the decreasing labor share of income--leaving workers with less disposable income--and the picture for rate moderation is compelling. On this matter at least, I think this IMF research is spot on, with some caveats. We are not quite sure when current (transitory) inflation pressures let up precisely, but they will eventually be swamped by stronger factors favoring lower rates. Aging and diminished productivity along with a handful of other factors will lead us back to a low rate economic environment once more. You have to be brave to bet otherwise.

The UK will soon join this group, but does it really matter?It has somehow come to pass that the UK has now joined an Asia-Pacific trade agreement. OK, so the free trade agreement in question is not the US-led Trans Pacific Partnership, but rather the US-absent Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Moreover, the Pacific is vast: the world's largest ocean is said to contain over half the world's waters. Still, an undeniable fact is that the UK is not in the Pacific. (The last time I checked, it also belonged to this group called the "North Atlantic Treaty Organization".) Chalk this oddity up to the Brexiteer pledge that leaving the European Union would somehow leave it better off by signing up to FTAs worldwide, and not just with the UK's neighbors. There are a few things to unpack before getting to the significance of this announcement, so here's a quick recap:The trade-averse US government has continued post-Trump, meaning the US seems to have no intention of (re-)joining CPTPP. Lacking a firmly "Western" prestige partner, the remaining CPTPP countries likely decided to allow negotiations to proceed with the UK anyway.Now, to the crux of the matter: are there significant economic benefits to be reaped by the UK from this agreement? The UK government estimates that their economy will gain 0.08% as a result over 10 years. 0.08%. To me that seems to be a rounding error instead of a significant gain. Put it down to the UK already having existing FTAs with most CPTPP members and trading far less with these Asia-Pacific nations than with its European neighbors:The
Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership -
or CPTPP - was established in 2018, and includes Australia, Brunei,
Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and
Vietnam. Membership of the CPTPP loosens restrictions on trade between members and reduce tariffs - a form of border tax - on goods.However,
the gains for the UK from joining are expected to be modest. The UK
already has free trade deals with all of the members except Brunei and
Malaysia, some of which were rolled over from its previous membership of
the EU. And
even with some gains in trading the government only estimates it will
add 0.08% to the size of the economy in 10 years. The Office for Budget
Responsibility (OBR), which provides forecasts for the government, has
previously said Brexit would reduce the UK's potential economic growth by about 4% in the long term.Simply put, joining CPTPP would only claw back, oh, 2% of the economic output lost from leaving the EU. It's as close to non-news as you can get in the economic realm.

Of all people, Joe's got the magic touch with petroleum?The endless number of foiled speculators attests to the difficulty of realizing the old adage about how to make money--buy low, sell high. Let's face it: ever-changing markets often result in us doing quite the opposite, and not making money in the process. Now, whenever we are asked to think about who are the least savvy market participants, we often identify governments--or more specifically, government officials. Not being keen market watchers with limited skin in the game--it's taxpayer money they are officially dealing with, not theirs--this sentiment is understandable. Well lo and behold: Quartz is now touting President Joe Biden's timely release from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) as the "oil trade of the year." In retrospect, his release at the near-top of the oil market a few months ago helped ease oil prices. Now that oil prices have come down quite a bit, the SPR is now being refilled. Yes, Biden is buying low after selling high:Instead, it appears the US government made the oil trade of the year:
Releasing 180 million barrels of crude from the Strategic Petroleum
Reserve between March and the end of this year in an effort to blunt the
effect of rising prices, the US government appears to have made about $4 billion, as prices have fallen dramatically over the course of the year.Selling when crude oil prices were high, the US captured billions in
value. By one widely-used measure, the price of crude oil in Texas
peaked at about $124 a barrel in March, and the average price during the
SPR sales period was about $96; today that oil costs just $73 per
barrel. These are paper profits, to be sure: The
US is still aiming to refill the reserve, and prices may rise as it
does so. On Dec. 16, the Department of Energy put out a request
to purchase 3 million new barrels of crude, after releasing about 200
million barrels in 2022. There are currently about 382 million barrels
still in reserve.
His genial manner has caused Joe Biden to be underestimated throughout his life. Can he now be called a market player as well in his eighth decade? T. Boone Pickens, eat your heart out.

 China's epic recurring COVID-19 shutdowns have frustrated multinational corporations aiming for predictability in their supply chains. Sure, China still benefits from having globally-renowned tech clusters. However, having your production capabilities curtailed again and again due to a handful of (relatively mild) COVID-19 cases doesn't encourage foreign firms, as you would expect.Not so long ago, I covered Vietnam's emergence as a major assembly hub for South Korea's Samsung [1, 2]. In the years since, it's developed a reputation as a reliable production center for MNCs. It was perhaps inevitable that Apple, frustrated like many others with the PRC's lockdown shenanigans, would look to set up shop elsewhere. Voila! Apple is coming to Vietnam:For the first time ever Apple is moving some iPad production out of
China and shifting it to Vietnam after strict COVID lockdowns in and
around Shanghai led to months of supply chain disruptions, Nikkei Asia
has learned.The U.S. company has also asked multiple component
suppliers to build up their inventories to guard against future
shortages and supply snags, sources said.China's BYD, one of the
leading iPad assemblers, has helped Apple build production lines in
Vietnam and could soon start to produce a small number of the iconic
tablets there, people with knowledge of the matter said.To be sure, Apple already makes its wireless earphones in Vietnam. It makes business sense: experiment first with some components, and then shift further assembly work if things go well:The iPad will become the second major line of Apple products made in the
Southeast Asian country, following the AirPods earbud series. The move
highlights not only Apple's continuous efforts to diversify its supply
chain but also the growing importance of Vietnam to the company. Also keep in mind that Vietnam is still mostly an assembly hub--stick socket A into socket B sort of mundane work. Many of the components for the "Vietnam-made" iPad will still come from, you guessed it, China. Hence, Apple wants to bolster supplier capabilities in parts of China that have a lower likelihood of being shut down based on the historical record:To further guard against supply chain disruptions, Apple has also
asked suppliers to build up additional supplies of components such as
printed circuit boards and mechanical and electronics parts, especially
those made in and around Shanghai, where COVID-related restrictions led
to shortages and logistic delays. In addition, the company has asked
suppliers to move quickly to secure supplies of some chips, especially
power-related ones, for the upcoming iPhones.In
particular, Apple is asking suppliers outside of the lockdown-affected
areas to help build up a couple of months' worth of component supplies
to ensure supply continuity over the next few months. The requests apply
to all of Apple's product lines -- iPhones, iPads, AirPods and MacBooks
-- sources said.
The next step in Vietnam's development is therefore obvious: to move from assembly to manufacturing components as well following in China's footsteps before it became lockdown land.