How Low Can You Go: Selling Out Taiwan To Settle U.S. Debt With China?

Static Chaos

Post-Lehman and after the Too Big To Fail Wall Street banks were ultimately bailed out by the American taxpayer, Moral Hazard was cited as a major systemic risk to the global financial system.  Three years later, a NYT OpEd piece has managed to potentially take Moral Hazard to the next level -- the fiscal and ethical system of the U.S. government.

Prep School Scam: Chinese Students Exploited by Endowment-Hungry American Schools

Static Chaos

With growing wealth and the long cultural belief that values higher education above almost everything else, it is  easy to understand why more and more Chinese parents want to send their kids to the United States hoping to get a better education leading to a brighter future.

Provoking China: Selling F-16 to Taiwan or The Currency Bill?

Monday, Oct. 10 marks the 100th anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution that ended the Qing Dynasty as well as 2,000 years of Imperial China.  Sparks have always been flying in the Taiwan Strait between Taiwan and China with the latest being the F-16 fighter planes Taiwan wanted to buy from the U.S.

Rogers: Short Emerging Makets and NASDAQ In a Commodity Bull Cycle

Famous investor Jim Rogers was at Bloomberg on Feb. 28 (clip below) talking about his latest investing strategy. 

'Farmers will drive Laborghini's'

Rogers has been bullish on commodities for a long time and still holds his prediction that gold will reach $2,000 in this decade, and silver will go to $50.  He sees commodity is the middle of a secular bull cycle that will last for a few years. 

China: A Tale of Two [Jekyll and Hyde] Videos

Static Chaos

China may be summarized in the following two contrasting videos - surface prosperity with dangerous undercurrents.

The first one is a 60-second film about China running at New York's Times Square from Jan. 17 to Feb. 14, meant to coincide with Chairman Hu Jintao’s arrival to the U.S. It is part of a multi-billion dollar campaign to renovate China's public image.

New Tension Between North & South Korea Rattles The Market

By Static Chaos

U.S. stocks dropped more than one percent on Tuesday with two Korea's exchanging fire adding to the already worrisome Irish debt crisis in Europe.

The latest with Ireland is that European Union (EU) officials estimate that a rescue package may amount to about 85 billion euros ($114 billion). That news sent S&P issuing a new downgrade on Ireland's sovereign debt.

Google Got Flak Over Leaked Diaoyu/Senkaku Sino-Japanese Boat Clash Videos

By Static Chaos

The video of the infamous collision between Japanese coastguard vessel and a Chinese fishing boat off the disputed Diaoyu or Senkaku Islands in September was recently leaked and surfaced on YouTube (below).

From the YouTube video, the Chinese fishing boat--Minjinyu 5179--collided twice with Japanese coast guard ships Yonakuni, and another collision with patrol boat the Mizuki. The whole footage was 44-minute long, and only the actual collision part is posted here.

Curious Crude Oil & Silver Market Actions Warrant A CFTC Investigation

Once again we find some strange activity occurring in these markets from a trading perspective, and it is time that the increased staff and resources of the CFTC enforcement division look into these two markets in particular.

China Furious at The Nobel Peace Prize Award

By Static Chaos

Jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for "two decades of non-violent struggle for human rights". China is totally livid and called the award "an obscenity" as reported by Reuters.

U.S Government Tops in User Data Request - 4,287 in Six Months!

In one of my posts published in April this year, I briefly mentioned that Google unveiled a “transparency tool” that gives information about requests it receives for user data or content removal from government agencies.  The government data is recorded from around the world in an effort to shed light on censorship and flow of information according to Google.