Xi prepares to eat economic bitterness.     –Foreign Policy magazine article title, 9/7/23 The Chinese mentality was not understood then either in Europe or America: Europe was at the pinnacle of world power, full of confidence in the present and future, and Europeans found the Chinese amusing for their rejection of paper money and their practice of weighing metallic currency on scales.  People presumed that the Chinese were five generations behind us – in reality they

You consider me the young apprenticeCaught between the Scylla and CharybdisHypnotized by you if I should lingerStaring at the ring around your fingerI have only come here seeking knowledgeThings they would not teach me of in collegeI can see the destiny you sold turned into a shining band of gold     -“Wrapped Around Your Finger”, The Police, 1983 Never play chess with a pigeon.  The pigeon just knocks all the pieces over, sh*ts all over the

Four very destabilizing things just happened…part 2     – Title of the 7/9/24 edition of FFTT Last August, the four very destabilizing things we highlighted above kicked off a 1-month period of elevated volatility where only the USD rose; 2.5 months later, the only asset classes up v. 8/2/23 levels were the USD, gold, and oil; critically, new versions of the four highly destabilizing things above have just happened… We believe the factors above could drive