The Million Dollar Way (The Bakken Oil Blog): The Global Economy -- A Few Rambling Observations -- August 15, 2023

Locator: 45461CHINA.

A reader sent me this link. I had seen it earlier; I did not post it -- it did not seem "new" or "noteworthy." I thought this was pretty much common knowledge and the CNBC story was simply more of the same. But now, not so sure. I think it's a huge story. I would have expected Peter Zeihan to have weighed in again on this.

China is in deep trouble. As the reader noted in his e-mail to me, this was just one of many stories on China today.

My not-ready-for-prime-time reply:

Yes, China in huge trouble.

We can start here: https://themilliondollarway.blogspot.com/2023/08/economics-101-china-us-trade-balance.html.

Biden had huge impact. Covid-19 had bigger impact. Ukraine helped upend China’s belt and road initiative. Energy demands. And I haven’t even read the article yet. Oh, let’s add Apple moving out of China and moving to India.

I’ll pull out Peter Zeihan’s book of a few years ago. He predicted this; just not sure of the timeline.

Perhaps more on this later. But it's not just China in trouble right now.

Think Brazil, just to name one.

PBR cut its dividend by a huge amount. Just announced. But look at this: not only was there a huge dividend cut, the pay date was extended by two months, from September to November. PRB has essentially cut one quarterly dividend this year, and reduced it significantly -- if I'm reading this correctly. Dividend history:

And in South America, it's not just Brazil. There are indications much of that continent it becoming unraveled economically -- assuming it was ever "raveled" in the first place.

The EU is in trouble, also. I'll come back to all these stories later, but from The WSJ today: the economic losers in "a new world order." Link here.