Multipolarity Multipolarity

Like Germany hiding in the Euro, China have long played the game of keeping their currency soft, to juice their exports.  
But now, with the accelerator still jammed to the floor on US inflation, it seems that the powers in Beijing might be looking to devalue the Rimimbi even further.  
      
Everyone plays currency games - the trick is not to get caught. And the problem for China might be that they’re on the brink of embarrassing their adversaries. 

Meanwhile, what happens when a miracle becomes a conjuring trick? 
 
After forty years of weaving economic magic, the South Koreans now have the world’s lowest birth rate — and GDP slumping back towards developed economy norms. Are they about to become an early Eastern front runner of  the social problems of the west? And can they afford that - given their tough geopolitical neighbourhood?  

Exorbitant privilege is what they call the US ability to print the global reserve currency. 

So what if the privilege was revoked? 

Plenty of apocalyptic fiction has been written about that moment. But this week we’ve done the modelling to put a number on the dent in US living standards. 

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A diplomatic incident in Latin America has somehow become the focal point for an ever-expanding range of stories - from the Venezuelan elections, to US energy policy to Ecuadorian banana exports to Russia. 
Leading even coolheaded observers to ponder the question: are we approaching the Latin American embassy incident singularity? 

Meanwhile, there are always good tariffs and bad tariffs - and in announcing his new shipbuilding policies, this week Joe Biden’s giving us both a plate of cheese and a plate of chalk.

Finally, Arch-Eurocrat Mario Draghi has made a big speech about European competitiveness. Its 20 years of failure - and its hope for the future. 

Is this the first sign of a continent about to flex its soon to be enviable muscles? Or is it the first twitchings of an arthritic bodybuilder about to pop a hernia? 

Little Rocket Man has a new toy.
This month, Kim Jong Un unveiled a Bond-villain-like missile with an extending tip.

On that tip was what looks to be a hypersonic glide vehicle. 

A hypersonic glide vehicle is the real deal. They're extremely fast. They can manoeuvre at those high speeds. And we don’t yet know if it’s possible to shoot them down. 

On paper, this means that North Korea has more advanced potentially-nuclear missiles than the West. 

On paper, this is bad news. 

But the story gets worse.

It was almost certainly given to them by the Chinese or the Russians. 

Why?

Could North Korea be the vehicle to do for the East China Sea what the Houthis have done for the Red Sea? Undermining US power, and leaving America’s regional allies - in this case Japan and South Korea - scrambling for new, more multipolar patterns of allegiances. 

Malcom Kyeyune is a columnist for Compact Magazine, a regular writer UnHerd, an expert on modern warfare, and a friend of the show. 

In this week’s Special Episode, he’ll be laying out a broad range of potential futures for the region.

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Be excellent to each other, and -
Get us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/multipolarpod
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The Atlanticists versus the Autonomists -  the European civil war coming soon to a bureaucracy near you. 
It’s long been a theme of this show that the continent is being slowly capsized by its long term problems, related to energy and productivity. 

We’ll be picking through three news items that tell the short term story of the continent’s woes.  

Terrible producer confidence numbers out of Germany, oil prices back to a fresh spike even in the teeth of an incipient recession, and Poland’s Donald Tusk softening the rhetorical ground for continental conscription. 

Then, we’ll be panning back.

To look at the dilemma Europe now faces. That between the Atlantacists - who want to shelter under America’s aegis, but thereby have to toe the party line on geopolitics; 

and the autonomists - who want to break for something genuinely multipolar, gaining their energy independence, but at sea in an increasingly dangerous world. 

The war now spans the continent. And it cuts both ways. 

In Germany, the AfD and Sahra Wagenknecht are rising from either side of the political aisle, but both promising to overturn the Atlantacist geopolitical settlement. 

Meanwhile,  as she gets closer to the French Presidency, Marine Le Pen is kowtowing to the NATO line. 

And Georgia Meloni’s promised populist rule has been set back onto the Atlantacists straight and narrow by the Italian presidency. 

With constant talk of remilitarising while the continent is broke, are we doomed to spend the next decade stuck in a world where all European citizens are compelled to pretend that our dear leaders are building an army that doesn’t actually exist? 

Of course, this is the Premium Week, so we’ll be prancing through this dog and pony show for free for fifteen of those 65 minutes. After that, you’re welcome to sign up on our patreon. Five dollars, pounds or Euros, cancel any time. 

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New research from Bloomberg says that Beijing is steering the Chinese economy away from the recent real estate boom, and into high tech manufacturing. 
It’s a drive estimated to be worth 19% of GDP by 2026. 

Running the numbers, not only is China Collapse Theory once again proved false, the market may even have under-priced how much gas there still is in the tank. 
 
Meanwhile, the Francis Scott Key Bridge has collapsed, effectively blockading Baltimore Port for a long time to come. 

The 80 billion dollars in cargo and 140 000 jobs tied to it is bad enough. 

But the blow to US pride might turn out to be worse. Across the country, infrastructure is crumbling; while replacing it is becoming ever-more expensive.

Finally, as the US Fed debt pile moves towards 100 per cent of GDP, warnings are being sounded about an American Liz Truss Moment. 

Trussification has become a byword for politicians being strung up by the bond markets.  The only questions outstanding are: who exactly is the Truss who is about to be strung up? And who is organising the stringing?

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This is a special edition of Multipolarity on  The Economic Consequences Of The War. 
In 1919, JM Keynes wrote The Economic Consequences of the Peace. Predicting the death of the old world order after Europe’s first unsuccessful attempt at suicide. 

We aren’t yet at peace, but the economic consequences of the present war in the middle of Europe are starting to come into view. 

Consequences for NATO as a new study shows that in order to meet their target of 2% of GDP, European Nato members will need to increase spending by €56 billion every year. 

For sanctions policy as Azerbaijan records a 2000 % spike in car sales from Britain. 

And for industry in The Coming Multipolar Age, as Chinese production leaves Western Production for dust. 

This week: we’re going to be moving through each in turn, to build up a composite picture of what tomorrow will look like, whatever the exact outcome of the Ukraine War. 

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