Is China blinking?, and other developments

1. The forces within the government who want to let stock prices adjust are winning.  Intervention is expensive, and so far it hasn’t achieved valuable ends.

2. The Chinese central bank is cutting interest rates for the fifth time since November.  Additional liquidity is flowing, but where to?  The Prime Minister by the way must sign off on every rate cut.

3. China is cracking down on underground banks and capital flight.  See #2.

4. The allowable rates on term deposits one year and longer have been raised.  This will help limit capital flight but squeeze the profits of the banks.  See #3 and #2.

5. The New Republic is still running articles on whether Stalin might have made it work with advanced computers.

6. A Chinese PLA trooper breaks a world record after not blinking for almost an hour.  The previous world record, 41 minutes by Australia’s Fergal ‘Eyesore’ Fleming, now lies shattered in the dust.

7. Singapore goes to the polls September 11.  What does a Singaporean version of Donald Trump look like?  Bernie Sanders?

8. You can think that China is in for a very bad recession, as I do.  But do not forget that countries hold most of their wealth in the form of human capital, China too.  That said, the conversation will now switch to the Chinese currency, and soon.  Some Chinese agencies are talking about the yuan at seven or eight to the dollar (video at the link, sorry)

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