This type of geopolitical conspiracy would be easy to dismiss from any other source, but speculation of an imminent de-dollarization by some of the world’s largest oil consumers is even more chilling when it’s penned by one of Britain’s most celebrated international journalists…

This counter-factual analysis of China’s path toward capitalism reveals that the country’s biggest cities aren’t necessarily the engines of dynamic Asian progress that modern commentators have suggested, and that the country’s future may lie in rural areas where entrepreneurship and competition have thrived since Deng Xiaoping’s Four Modernizations…

While the world comes to terms with yesterday’s historic call for change, Nouriel Roubini and his team have pulled together a laundry list of the many great challenges that lie ahead…

Further commentary on the interconnected themes of income disparity, agricultural inflation, and selective de-globalization, this time by Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen. Perhaps most compelling is the charge that a rising tide doesn’t lift all ships, and those who have benefited least from a “flattening” of our economic superstructure are often the most exposed to rising prices and shifting patterns of supply and demand. Also of note is the graphic artist chosen to visualize our scramble for scarce natural resources, yet another gifted Walrus alum…

Recent reports have pegged open interest in the world’s largest IPO at nearly US$400 billion. That’s a lot of capital ready to speculate on a still unproven Chinese macroeconomy, particularly in the face of its ongoing structural woes. Could this be the end of the beginning for capitalism in China? Or perhaps the beginning of the end…

The Enduring Allure of China
by Peter Zeihan, Stratfor.com

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) is expected to raise nearly $22 billion in an initial public offering (IPO) — the largest in history — after shares are made available to retail investors Oct. 27. The ICBC offering is the latest in a series of IPOs involving Chinese banks, into which Western investment firms have poured billions since…

Morgan Stanley’s chief global economist adds his voice to the growing choir of doomsayers, predicting heartbreak for employees and consumers throughout the high-cost, developed world. His thesis is simple: growth in the world economy has come not from soaring wages but from bubbalicious home prices, soaring corporate profits, American consumerism and low-cost third-world labour. As jobs continue to stream offshore and the markets pray for a “soft landing”, recession may be the only tune this chorus is willing to sing…

When was the last time you looked at the label on just about anything? Chances are, if the item cost you less than $30, you just participated in the global phenomenon we’ve come to know and love as the Low-Cost Chinese Import. Entire retail franchises have already been built built around this new breed of price-conscious shopper, and while consumers are absolutely beaming at the prospect of $1 placemats and flashlights and coffee pots, little time is spent reflecting on where those items are actually made, and how little the workers are getting paid to actually make them.

The funny thing is, given two items of identical value, informed consumers will typically buy the one that costs them less, regardless of their own apparent nationalism or…