If I am correct, and I could be very, very wrong about Oilprice.com, I find it interesting to learn that:
OilPrice.com is a USA TODAY content partner offering oil and energy news and commentary. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.Having said that, this article today, "New 'Silk Road' Could Alter Global Economics" is incredibly fascinating.
There are so many story lines here, I cannot even begin.
The first story line that comes to mind, of course, is the new powers that the president of the United States will have in setting up trade deals with Asia in a "secret deal" worked out between President Obama and the GOP. The Dems, led by Pocahontas, were against this "secret deal."
Be that as it may, here is an interesting observation from the USA Today story about the new Silk Road initiative:
After failed attempts by the US to persuade allies against joining the bank, the US reversed course, and now says that it has always supported the project, a disingenuous position considering the fact that US opposition was hardly a secret. The Wall Street Journal reported in November 2014 that "the U.S. has also lobbied hard against Chinese plans for a new infrastructure development bank…including during teleconferences of the Group of Seven major industrial powers.
The Huffington Post's Alastair Crooke had this to say on the matter: "For very different motives, the key pillars of the region (Iran, Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan) are re-orienting eastwards. It is not fully appreciated in the West how important China's "Belt and Road" initiative is to this move (and Russia, of course is fully integrated into the project).
Regional states can see that China is very serious indeed about creating huge infrastructure projects from Asia to Europe. They can also see what occurred with the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), as the world piled in (to America's very evident dismay). These states intend to be a part of it."I assume everyone in the world except me was aware of this new "Silk Road" initiative. But because my attention was on Greece for the past five years I completely missed this Chinese story.
Seriously, I have never seen the "Silk Road" story mentioned by CNBC (on the net or on television) but hardly a day goes by that there is not yet another story of Greece defaulting. [Bloomberg is reporting tomorrow that the Greeks will blame their problems on the creditors who have been loaning them money. LOL.]
The "Silk Road" story will be archived over at The Big Stories, as part of the Global Power Shift, the growing Russia-China hegemony.
Note that Russia, of course is fully integrated into the project.
There seem to be as many nations signing up to this "big deal" as there were signing the Kyoto Protocol (some of whom have now "unsigned").
There really is a global shift occurring:
- Europe is worried about Greece and Google
- the US is worried about pipelines and railroads
- the Mideast is imploding (three steps back for every half-step forward)
- Africa becomes increasingly irrelevant
- South America -- still there, I guess
