Are all the low-interest loans China is exporting to periphery countries mostly in USD?

Great post! This is why I love this site.

How do you think this would change the world and america itself, compared to where we are right now? Will America import too much cheap products and further deindustrialize? Will American capitalists seek labor for cheap in the wrecked countries instead of at home? Will the global south be pushed by this maneuver towards some level, however small, of multi-national economic planning, perhaps lead by BRICS in some capacity?

Also, I think the current and possible wars in the future could shift imperialism around in ways we can’t predict without some heavy Marxist insight.

china doesn’t have any direct trump cards other than maybe physically retaking reddit island, but a provocation large enough to incite direct confrontation (and thus one that is also large enough to directly threaten hegemonic legitimacy) is probably enough to do in the empire. the geopolitical edging we are currently experiencing is a side effect of no one wanting to be the bad guy and flip the table, but it’s not like things are getting any less tense.

Braudel suggests that the withdrawal of the Dutch from commerce around 1740 to become ‘the bankers of Europe’ was typical of a recurrent world systemic tendency. The same process was in evidence in Italy in the fifteenth century, and again around 1560, when the leading groups of the Genoese business diaspora gradually relinquished commerce to exercise for about seventy years… After the Dutch, the British replicated the tendency during and after the Great Depression of 1873-96, when ‘the fantastic venture of the industrial revolution’ created an overabundance of money capital. After the equally ‘fantastic venture’ of Fordism-Keynesianism, we may add, US capital since the 1970s has followed a similar trajectory.

reading between the lines (80 years war, anglo-dutch wars, ww1&2), it’s pretty clear we’re being herded by historical forces towards some conflict of eschatological proportion in the near future. it’s not even in real doubt whether or not the us will lose the conflict, the real question seems to be one of how many of us will be left alive after the us system has been turned to ashes.

on a lighter note, i actually think the current plan of ‘making israel die very very slowly’ is actually pretty good. if there is a direct intervention, the us is toast. if they don’t intervene, you get all kinds of domestic unrest in the ruling class to add to the working class dissatisfaction. basically a lose-lose proposition that is faster than supply chain restructuring and is only solved if the euros decide to fall on their swords and actually do something about russia, and even then is only a temp fix.

. Unless China has some trump cards (I’m not seeing them), there’s no way we can escape from this. China’s monetary easing that was timed just after the US fed rate cut was a sign that even China, the strongest economy in the world in real terms, is afraid of what the US recession is going to do. This is the power of monetary imperialism.

I think China will be ‘fine’ by increasing Government spending, that’s what they did after 2008. see

I’m more worried about other global south countries, especially ones with trade/current deficits more dependent on imports.

Yes, not many were paying attention to the loan structures implying there wouldn’t be much of an internal change. However, everyone else already has issues competing on interest rates, and I’d think lowering them would entice money to invest on something; the crisis on the core should come when another tech bubble bursts, no? Which America definitely doesn’t want.

I miss something often enough, but I think you’re overthinking a little.

Remember when all the economics pundits crying about how Biden’s interest rate hike will cause a recession from 2022-2024?

I don’t remember it that way at all. The party line on the interest rate hikes was that the fed was targetting a “soft landing” to prevent a recession.

My friend, I think you are reading too much until things

Based on what you’ve told us about decision-makers in China, I wonder if even they are able to see how the US moves their own pieces across the board (moves like you describe above). And if Chinese decision-makers struggle to see the whole picture, then I highly doubt decision-makers in other countries like Nigeria, Brazil, Vietnam, etc can see it, too.

I really don’t like to assume irrationality or that people don’t act on broadly available information… but I don’t think I have any other explanation. In sports, when a team comes up with a new style of offense, it may take a few seasons for opposing defenses to adjust, but eventually they do. That doesn’t seem to be happening when it comes to the geopolitical maneuvers of the United States.

I don’t mean to sound like an idealist, but if all this is true then I feel like the only solution to eventually checkmate Western hegemony is for the nations of the periphery to develop a proper understanding the situation as it is, and developing the right tools to counter. Specifically, Marxism is the truly the only toolset that I think can both identify these issues and come up with solutions. I would feel uncomfortable saying the CPC needs more Marxists and Marxist analysis since I’m a westerner who is very ignorant of how “Marxist” the CPC is; except that this seems to broadly be an analysis of the situation that you share. But even broader than that, I wonder if there is a role for rigorous Marxists, who’ve been equipped with the right tools (i.e. they’ve read volume 3) to go to the capitalists nations of the periphery and to try to advise them on the situation. Again, this is somewhat idealistic but I think Marxist analysis can show decision-makers in the periphery how they are getting screwed and what they might be able to do about it without even doing a full socialist conversion of their economy. Or at least, what the periphery needs to do collectively since one nation trying to stand up by itself against western hegemony is likely to get crushed.