14 Comments

This is a very interesting comment on Xi Jin-peng by Mr. Gave. I lived in Hong Kong for 11 years (1990 t0 2002) and still have contacts there. Hong Kong has gone from 3 weeks hotel quarantine in February, 2022 to NO hotel quarantine in November (in time for the Rugby 7's tournament to start again this month after almost 3 years of cancellation). THis is after following China's Zero Covid policy for the last 3 years. Could it be that Xi is using Hong Kong to test the change from Zero Covid?

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Your posts are timely and relevant. And enjoy the occasional humor

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Great read very helpful.

I believe the reference to the quote by Goldman's Jeff Currie may be misleading. Certainly 82% of volume 20 years ago if a far different number than 81% of consumption volume today. Therefore the difference in volume is probably greater than 1%.

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A very welcome and insightful read; thank you

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Great article! Good info! Like the thread on all the zero policies... clever! The only area of disagreement I have is that Chinese vaccines are inferior. I’d much rather take an adenovirus based vaccine with its decades of science behind it than the experimental gene therapy of corrupt PFE and MRNA with its toxic nanolipid component any day of the week.

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Always enjoy these Haymakers. However am curious what is meant by "Sweden got it right" in regards to Covid? Read "The Premonition" by Michael Lewis where the thrust clearly was to suppress the spread which meant social isolation but the conclusion here is the opposite perhaps. Hope something was learned for everyone's sake.

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I believe their death rate was no higher than other countries and they avoided the outrageous spending that say the UK and USA incurred. I think the society was also less radicalized as result of the sensible policies.

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Avery well written post - great information - a new perspective to consider. Thank you!!

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It's a shame that any people (Governments) is a position of power refuse to read amazing analysis like this leads us to the usual quote by Winston Churchill: "America can always be counted on to do the right thing after they have tried everything else."

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"So perhaps one way to stop the inflationary waves coming ashore is to retain lockdowns, at least until global inflation abates."

Can anyone make sense of this?

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By locking down parts of the country, you remove/reduce the demand side of an inflationary impulse.

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Don't you also hamper the supply side of the equation? Haven't supply chain issues been a mainstay of the mainstream explanation for the high inflation? Price increases "coming ashore" hints more about the weakness of the currency than domestic demand.

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The lockdowns in China have the effect of reducing demand for commodities (less industrial activity when the working population is locked down = less demand for industrial inputs = less input price pressure), petroleum and petroleum products (people who are locked down are not driving), and discretionary expenditures, especially given the strictness of the lockdown protocols. In essence, the lockdowns have a similar short term impact to what our central banks are trying to engineer by forcing a decrease in demand through interest rate increases and contraction of their currency reserves.

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Thanks. Food for thought.

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