China Belt and Road Initiative

China Belt and Road Initiative

Most Americans don’t have a clue as to the massive investments that China is undertaking in much of the Eastern Hemisphere.  They look at Russia, who do have nuclear weapons, a large land mass and the thug Putin as a leader, but who have a GDP the size of Mexico, as a big threat.

Russia is a “little threat” if we continue to allow Putin & co. to wield power that is out of proportion, as in Crimea.  The real long-term threat to U.S. hegemony, and to the rest of the world, is China, who is still a communist country, but who is led not by Mao-style revolutionaries, but by well-educated, pragmatic business managers and engineers.  Xi Jinping is an old style communist who has a degree in Chemical Engineering.

I first learned of the extent of China’s BRI during a trip to China in 2015.  I also was impressed by a Chinese “bullet train” that I took from Shanghai to Suzhou at 200 km/hr.

This is from a Forbes article dated Sept 4, 2018.

The Belt and Road Initiative Will Affect 60 Percent of the World’s Population

“The most well-known among China’s projects is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), one of the most ambitious undertakings in human history. The biblical-size trade and infrastructure endeavor—a sort of 21st century Silk Road—could cost 12 times as much as what the U.S. spent on the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe following World War II. The BRI has the participation of 76 countries from Asia, Africa and Europe, and is poised not only to reshape globe trade but also raise the living standards for more than half of the world’s population.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the “BRI has great potential for China and participating countries. It could fill large and long-standing infrastructure gaps in partner countries, boosting their growth prospects, strengthening supply chains and trade and increasing employment.”

The BRI, which turns five years old this fall, announced in 2013, will have a strong presence in Eastern Europe, also a prime destination for China FDI, as the countries there offer a wealth of metals, minerals and agricultural products.

According to Stratfor, Chinese companies have invested as much as $300 billion in Eastern Europe over the past decade. Last May, China and Ukraine agreed to cooperate on joint projects valued at nearly $7 billion, and in November, it was announced that China Railway International and China Pacific Construction would build a $2 billion subway line in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. More recently, Chinese engineers with China Harbor Engineering completed a $40 million dredging operation in Ukraine’s Yuzhny Sea Port, allowing it to receive larger ships.

Like the Marshall Plan before it, the BRI will require tremendous amounts of commodities, metals and fuel.

In 2011, members of our investment team and I had the opportunity to see one of China’s high speed trains firsthand. The train averaged 185 miles per hour during our 923-mile trip from Shanghai to Beijing. As I wrote then, “I’ve traveled to all corners of the world and have seen many things during my travels, but viewing China’s explosive growth as it flies by you is something I will never forget.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2018/09/04/chinas-belt-and-road-initiative-opens-up-unprecedented-opportunities/#98d67913e9aa

Ray Gruszecki

December 24, 2019

The Left’s Hatred of Trump

The Left’s Hatred of Trump

I went searching for why Trump is so absolutely hated by our American left.  Trying to get away from the usual saws – “he beat Hillary” he’s a racist, he’s disgusting tweeting troll”, etc., it seems that the main reason for hating this interloper from New York is his pragmatic disregard of the niceties of politics and government in favor of “what works”.  Sometimes this means offending or stepping on the toes of one of the political identities chosen by the left for special favors.  Sometimes it means voicing something, just like Joe Six Pack would, that is offensive to elitist ears.  In foreign affairs, trump doesn’t bow to our friends and foes.  He tells our NATO allies to “pay up”.  That does not endear him to Merkel or Macron or Trudeau. 

He sometimes needlessly belittles and offends highly regarded liberal icons that he should not - for example, John McCain (RIP), whose vote in the senate failed to end Obamacare, the Khans, a Muslim gold star family, and a handicapped reporter.  Of course all of these incidents were seized upon with fury by the biased anti-Trump leftist media and blown all out of proportion.

It is difficult to be entirely fair when it comes to President Trump.  Few would enjoy working for him, and having him as a boss.  On the other hand, we have to admit that what he is doing is working a lot better for the country than what his predecessors were doing, so these backers can say: “ We did not elect him to be a nice guy.  We elected him to do the right job.”

To republicans, conservatives and libertarians, Trump has slowed the cultural and political trend toward secular identity politics and political correctness.  He has retrieved our sense of American exceptionalism that was foundering only in our outback and made it part of more mainstream Americana.  The point is that under Trump, not only are the voices of the Acela and coastal and urban elitists heard, as was increasingly so under Obama and his ilk.  Also heard are the myriad, multi-ethnic and multi-racial and diversely educated voices of middle and “flyover” America.  

This Wall Street Journal article is a bit dated, but it hits many main points.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-real-reason-they-hate-trump-1540148467

 One quote from the article:

“You might dislike the whole package. I wouldn’t choose him as a friend, nor would he choose me. But what I see on the left is often plain, unconditional hatred of which the hater—God forgive him—is proud. It’s discouraging, even disgusting. And it does mean, I believe, that the Trump-hater truly does hate the average American—male or female, black or white. Often he hates America, too.”

The following links reflect a range of primarily anti-Trump rhetoric.  The “Salon” article is particularly scathing and negative.  The “Thought Catalog” links enumerate the same points with pros and cons for each point.  The Rasmussen article is reasonably objective.

https://www.salon.com/2019/08/31/donald-trump-full-up-to-the-eyeballs-with-hate-he-won-on-that-once-and-hopes-to-do-it-again/

https://thoughtcatalog.com/jeremy-london/2018/07/why-do-people-hate-trump

https://thoughtcatalog.com/jeremy-london/2018/07/why-do-people-love-trump/?utm_campaign=article&utm_source=thoughtcatalog&utm_term=jeremy-london&utm_medium=entry_related

https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_ted_rall/why_is_trump_so_hated_it_s_the_tribalism

Ray Gruszecki

December 15, 2019

Impeachment Games

Impeachment Games

It has to be evident to anyone who is at all objective, that the democrats are shooting themselves                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           in the foot with their one-sided impeachment farce.  Even the two articles of impeachment that the house democrats have formulated are considered to be weak, and to have no specific constitutional relevance.  The democrats are impeaching Trump because he is an unrepentant, bull in the china shop outsider, and they cannot stomach him, or control him.



Trump has undone many of the Obama and Bill Clinton era niceties and regulations and obsequious foreign machinations that are so dear to the mid-level managers of the administrative state.  Their dissatisfaction with their executive branch boss was evident in their “testimony”, which effectively coalesced office gossip and innuendo and turned that into “undeniable and irrefutable abuse of power” by Nancy Pelosi, Adams Schiff, Jerry Nadler and others.



The one-sidedness, unfairness and lack of due process evident in the democrat’s handling of their “impeachment” effort will count for naught for the inveterate one third of the country who have rolled their hatred of Trump into their backing of social justice, identity politics, political correctness and lately, socialist tendencies and activities.  Strident voices from the left will try to claim the moral high ground even though their foundation is based on unfairness and lies.



The roughly one third of the country who are on the right of politics will be all over this ill-conceived impeachment effort like flies on horse manure.  They will flock to Fox News in ever greater numbers as CNN and NBC watchers diminish.  Tucker and Hannity and Laura will have field days.



The other third of the country, and in fact most of the country in general will count the money from their better jobs or their Christmas bonuses and say “ho hum” to these Washington impeachment shenanigans.  These “middle” type will probably gravitate to rightist media like Fox because of the veracity they bring, and away from the obvious false stridency of the preponderant left-wing media.  



By November, 2020, barring the Second Coming, or an economic depression or a shooting war, Trump and the republicans should win in a landslide, including both houses of congress, and get on with governing the country, rather than playing impeachment games.  



Ray Gruszecki

December 10, 2019

Impeachment and Aftermath

Impeachment and Aftermath

Most Americans were working and not watching live the House Judiciary Committee hearings on impeachment.  They get the biased snippets from the hearings provided in their evening news by the media, or in the headlined articles in their newspapers.  As is normal in our current news environment, over 90% of these summaries will reflect the opinions and talking points of the democrat party and left-wing which favor impeachment.  Fortunately, most Americans are not completely gullible or stupid since many of them flock to Fox News, or the Wall Street Journal, or other media who are not automatically propaganda outlets for the left.

It’s as if we live in alternate worlds when we are exposed to news from preponderantly left-wing mainstream media, versus the few opposing outlets.  The democrats, the left, and their media accomplices accept the opinions and hearsay testimony of disgruntled executive branch employees and left-wing, anti-Trump “legal experts” as factual evidence that Trump used the power of the presidency for personal gain.  The few and far between  opposing media outlets point to the openly available transcript of the infamous phone call of July 25, 2019, between President Trump and President Zelinsky of Ukraine, and other irrefutable facts to support the conclusion that maybe the phone call wasn’t “perfect”, but that the phone call and the circumstances around it were nowhere near “IMPEACHABLE!”

All the above notwithstanding, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff and Jerold Nadler are hell-bent on impeaching Trump and are organizing writing the House of Representatives based articles of impeachment.  Certainly, the democrats know that the Senate will never convict Trump, so why are they proceeding with this effort, that cannot fail to exacerbate the already rancorous divisions of the country?  One can only conjecture that the democrats wish to besmirch Trump and give him a bloody nose, with impeachment in the house, even more than they already have through their continuing “resistance”.  Although impeachment may have some negative impact on Trump temporarily, he has shown a remarkable ability to overcome all seemingly dire attacks. (i.e. – the Access Hollywood tape, Stormy Daniels, the Steele dossier, etc).

Unfortunately, in this political environment, where the leftists use almost fascistic and revolutionary tactics to punctuate their opinions, we can expect even greater divisions in the country than we already have, and more violence in our streets fueled and financed by George Soros and similar types.  Professor Jonathan Turley, the legal scholar who did not vote for Trump, but who testified before Nadler’s Judicial Committee and expressed a moderate view on the impeachment issue, has already reported threats of violence to himself and his family, for his testimony.  The leftist fascists react to freedom of speech with violence.

Nancy Pelosi has a reputation of being a very astute political operator.  The consensus of many Washington experts is that Pelosi had no choice but to institute impeachment, to preserve the unity of the increasingly activist left-leaning democrat party.  It remains to be seen, whether the 2020 electorate will follow the democrats and the identity politics warriors against the “orange man”.  If the economy stays robust, the stock market stays at record highs, unemployment stays at record lows, middle income wages continue to increase, and no wars ensue, it is difficult to see how impeachment will stop Trump from being elected to a second term.  In fact the democrat’s insistence on impeachment with such nebulous charges may lose them majorities in both houses of congress in 2020.

One third of the electorate are Acela or West Coast or other urban die-hard liberals and will follow the democrats to their promised social justice Nirvana.  One third are republicans and conservatives from “fly-over country” and reject the “trumped-up” impeachment charges and other liberal posturing’s.  The other one third are the real targets of any national election.  They are swing voters who live in the so-called battleground states, those states that cannot be automatically counted as being in one or the other political party’s pocket, (Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Maine, Iowa, Arizona). These states, and ethnic groups (African Americans, Hispanics, etc.) are important electoral focuses. To be noted is the fact that nearly all of these have been positively impacted by the Trump boom economy, and money probably will talk louder than some of Trump’s grating tweets and other New York style gaffes.

Ray Gruszecki

December 6, 2019