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Good Friday Morning! Especially to the Atlantic Ocean. Last week, I was talking about the landfall surrounding Idalia. This week, Hurricane Lee achieved Category Five status while I was writing. It’s a stunning storm. Peak hurricane season is always fantastic to watch play out. You never know quite what to expect.
Similarly, our long national nightmare with no football is finally over. College and NFL football are back, and all is well with the world. As always, Go Vols and Go Titans!
This week, I will touch on the strange report that Xi Jinping is skipping the G20 meeting this upcoming week — links to follow.
Quick Hits:
- Hurricane Lee transformed in less than 24 hours from a Category 1 storm to a full-blown Category 5 storm. Colorado State University put together a time-lapse covering 12 hours on Thursday when the storm rapidly intensified from Category 1 to Category 4; the formation is incredible. Some modeling shows Lee topping out with sustained winds in the 195-205 mph range, putting it in rare territory. We’ll have to wait and see on that because it’s difficult for a storm to maintain that level of intensity. Although, the National Hurricane Center does expect Lee to stay near this intensity for the next 4-5 days. There’s a strong model agreement that Lee remains north of the Caribbean through Sunday. Forecast models expect Lee to make a hard northward turn after the weekend. No impacts are expected to the continental US, but it still bears watching. As we head into the weekend, wave and rip current warnings will be up across the Caribbean, eastern coast, and Bermuda. Lee may be the strongest storm of the season this year. Forecasters are monitoring another tropical wave, currently working across Africa, that could pose a risk to the US. But it’s far too early to tell now.
- President Biden announced that he was canceling all oil and gas leases in the Arctic and was considering preserving another 13 million acres in the western Arctic. This is typically the time of year when gas prices start falling after the summer surge. However, US gas prices are the highest for this season in a decade. And there are signs more increases could be on the way, with OPEC and Russia announcing further production cuts to shore up the price of oil at higher levels. The White House had already drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to the lowest levels in 40 years. It did not do any work to refill it. Higher oil prices helped juice headline inflation numbers throughout 2021 and 2022. There are concerns the policies of the moment could increase headline inflation, too.
Where you can find me this week
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Chinese “Tourists” Spy on America under Biden’s Nose – Conservative Institute
The “Bad News is Good News” Economy – Conservative Institute
TEMU – The Latest Chinese Spyware App – Conservative Institute
Xi Jinping skips the G20. No one knows why.
The G20 Summit is scheduled for this week and will be held in New Delhi, India. For reference, the G20 is a meeting of the world’s largest economies and countries, comprising “80% of gross world product (GWP), 75% of international trade, two-thirds of the global population, and 60% of the world’s land area.” Since 2008, the G20 has met every year to discuss various issues in the global economy, and it is a way for countries to exert influence and strength abroad.
An odd news story broke ahead of this summit: Chinese President Xi Jinping won’t attend the event. And no one knows why he suddenly pulled out of the event: “Beijing has said little about why Xi will be absent. In a one-sentence notice on its website Monday, China’s Foreign Ministry announced that Premier Li Qiang would attend instead. At a press briefing later that day, ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning had little to add, only that, “China has all along attached great importance to and taken an active part in G20 events.”
Early reports in the Western press read Xi’s move as an obvious snub. It’s seen as Xi attempting to assert dominance by saying he doesn’t need the West. China has made it no secret it’d like to displace the United States and shift the globe away from the dollar system. Every few months, reports of the BRICS alliance suggest possible movement on that front. Still, everything in those stories is just that: a suggestion.
India even admitted as such, saying de-dollarization is a fantasy at the moment:
Oil trades have sometimes been settled in the Chinese yuan, Russian ruble or Indian rupee, but the idea of “de-dollarization” — or moving away from the U.S. dollar to settle trades in other currencies — is still far away.
“I would like to be able to transact everything in rupees. That’s my personal [view],” India’s Oil and Gas Minister Hardeep Singh Puri told CNBC in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the Business 20 meeting in New Delhi.
However, the U.S. dollar will remain the currency of choice for transactions in international oil markets, he told CNBC’s Tanvir Gill.
“I don’t know what kind of change [the dollar needs to] be affected, but I don’t see it … It’s not so easy.”
When a named member of the BRICs is saying this, you know most of the anti-dollar pieces out there are more propaganda than fact. If the dollar fell in value tomorrow considerably, every other currency would fall with it, and the global economy would falter. The strength of the U.S. dollar is more than American economic might. It’s also about U.S. military might.
The European Union tried to create the Euro to topple the dollar but failed miserably. That’s because the United States is the military of Europe. We matter more than everything there combined and dictate most of the decisions. The U.S. dollar gets its strength from that.
Just because some countries want to move away doesn’t mean they have the power to do so.
That brings us back to Xi and China. China’s economy is in shambles now, its property sector is trash, tensions are high with the West, the war in Ukraine continues, and China has a tough road ahead of it in navigating these currents.
Nikkei, a Japanese financial newspaper, had an interesting view of Xi’s no-show. They blame potential unrest in China’s domestic politics. The article said:
There are signs of turmoil in Chinese domestic politics.
On Monday, it was announced that President Xi Jinping will not attend an upcoming summit of the Group of 20 major economies in India. Premier Li Qiang will take his place.
This will be the first time that Xi has skipped a G20 summit, to which he has consistently attached importance as China’s top leader.
A precursor seems to have been this summer’s Beidaihe meeting, the annual get-together of incumbent and retired leaders of the Chinese Communist Party at the seaside resort of Beidaihe, Hebei Province.
Sources said that at this year’s gathering, a group of retired party elders reprimanded the top leader in ways they had not until now. Xi later expressed his frustration to his closest aides, according to the information gathered.
Sources said that ahead of Beidaihe, party elders convened their own meeting to summarize their opinions before conveying them to the current leaders. The meeting was likely held in the suburbs of Beijing.
Afterward, only several of these elders traveled to Beidaihe to convey their consensus to the current leaders. The face-to-face meeting with the current leaders, including Xi, took place on a single day, the sources said.
The gist of the message was that if the political, economic and social turmoil continues without any effective countermeasures being taken, the party could lose public support, posing a threat to its rule.
We cannot have more turmoil, the elders pointed out.
In a helpful counterbalance, others have said Xi’s absence could be for other reasons. It’s impossible to read because we have nothing to go on. We only see it as a surprising move by China.
Given what we know of China’s economy and weakness, it seems unlikely that Xi is skipping this meeting from a position of strength. Even if he attended, Xi would have little leverage over anyone due to China’s weak economy. That doesn’t mean China won’t be at the event. Representatives will be there. Xi’s lack of attendance is notable, however.
My read is that Xi is skipping out of weakness. Whether or not he’s been reprimanded by past leadership is unclear, but the message conveyed there is accurate. Domestic turmoil is a distinct possibility if Xi does not turn the Chinese economy around. The CCP could lose its power and prestige.
The vision Xi has tried to lay out through the BRICs, the Belt and Road Initiative, and more is all falling apart. China’s economy is weak, and the proof it can support all the initiatives it wants globally is far-fetched. In turn, the U.S. dollar’s strength is wrecking China too.
China and Xi’s vision of a Chinese century, or a post-American global order is fading. One of my concerns about China fading is that it will shift its mindset to one of “We either invade Taiwan now, or never.” If China feels backed into a corner, they could unexpectedly lash out. Further, once China’s awful demographics start taking over, it’ll be harder and harder for them to challenge world powers more every passing day.
So, for now, a weak China is trying to navigate this mess. If the U.S. were wise, they’d try to use that to our advantage. In the meantime, watch to see what China does at this G20. Xi isn’t going for a reason, even if we don’t know it yet.
Links of the week
Inside the saga of the State Department’s missing Iran envoy – Josh Rogin, Washington Post
It’s Official! The Democrats Have a Nonwhite Voter Problem: The data can no longer be denied. – Ruy Teixeira
The strange celebration of the slowing economy – Kelly Evens, CNBC
Biden administration considers forcing migrant families to remain in Texas – LATimes
Migrant crisis will ‘destroy’ New York City, mayor says – The Hill
Twitter Thread(s) of the week
Bill Belichick on the history and evolution of the long snapper is a fascinating listen.
The budget deficit is set to double.
Satire of the week
Biden Attempts To Ease Worries About His Age With Dramatic Face Lift – Onion
White House Assures Inflation Is Only Affecting People Who Need To Buy Stuff – Babylon Bee
Scandal As Country Singer Photographed Driving Sensible Sedan Down Well-Paved City Road – Babylon Bee
Woman Celebrates Labor Day With Six Extra Meetings the Next Day – The Hard Times
Irresponsible Owner Refuses to Clean Up Dog’s Messy Social Media Presence – Reductress
PTSD Barbie excluded from new Barbie Movie: “You can be anything.” Except someone with invisible wounds. – Duffel Blog
Thanks for reading!