CityLAD88888

You think the demographic problem is bad in the west: China have it 10x worse, demography is destiny, China is at the apex of their growth story, expect to see the next 20 years resemble Japan in the 90s, they're much more ethnically homogeneous and closed than western counterparts so can't keep the plates spinning with immigration. The corporate world are also diversifying supply chains away from China and entrepreneurs are too frightened to do business there for fear of upsetting the CCP or fear that they'll suddenly shut them down. China is toast and it's best years are behind it

Every.single.thread rushing to protect China's image, why? Seriously, it's so weird. 'statistical blip'? Come on, that's the best you can do? and 'demographic dividend' in the last 10 years alone their working age population has gone from 60-odd% to 50-odd%. Seriously, you're a bot aren't you? Either that or you're still sore because the wheels spectacularly came off their covid zero adventure...

Agreed, and this thread reminds me of when I last worked for a US Fintech/Trading firm in the City during Brexit: the London office went ape sh*t to senior mgmt with the line "you take profits in USD so we've basically taken a 20% cut given our GBP denominated salary" ... to which management's response was "well, if GBP went up against USD I'll bet you wouldn't be arguing for a 20% cut" haha ... and highlighted the greenback comment because given what I observed from certain colleagues/clients, the cocaine content of sterling notes probably reached parity with the greenback some years ago

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-01/johnson-weighs-50-year-mortgages-that-children-can-inherit?srnd=premium-uk Bloomberg covered the story quite well I feel, calling it out for the prop that it is, 30 year fixed rate mortgages also being looked at, so basically they're telling us they take 40/45% of yours and my hard earned in tax to punt on a losing trade in the swaps market handing free money to the landlord classes, it's a joke that these clowns are our main 'free market' choice at the ballot box. This is my worry at the moment, we've been here before: Brexit, Covid (particularly), all looked like a perfect storm until they pulled the big prop guns out from nowhere. I agree it seems pretty intractable this time: we're broke, no money left for props, interest rates are going to have to rise, etc. etc. but I wouldn't put it past them ...

Sure, the number of meetings might not be correlated, but to be fair to @simon99 though: they didn't mind calling an 'emergency meeting' in March 2020 at the first whiff of covid woes in order to drop their pants and cut rates 50bps, where was the 'emergency meeting' to whack them up 50bps with the latest inflation print or any point during all this time when inflation's been running red hot?

Interesting, lying flat or "tang ping" (躺平) was/is also a big similar concept on Chinese social media for the past few years (despite the governments attempts to remove mentions of it from social media channels). Young people choosing to just do minimal work, have a simple life, enjoy their spare time etc. because no matter how hard they work they can't achieve anything like their parents generation's success due to sky high property prices, the looming demographic crisis, etc. all weighing on their prospects and growth. Sound familiar? Japan 1990s/2000s? The West post GFC? ... welcome to the demographic curve and asset price inflation.

Really? Not heard that but great news if so, fingers crossed its the surge vaccination/2nd dose ramp up they've been doing or something? I'm obviously pretty keen to get things back to normal quickly personally but I think in fairness we can all see it this time: cases going exponential (many of us, here and beyond spotted the growth pattern at least a week or so ago), definitely seems sensible to delay June 21st a little until vaccines are at a good number

It's about both tbf: see the last paragraph about Gove. Gotta' love the mash, nail on head every time

Plenty, how many priced-out homeless do we have in the UK? Roughly twice the number of covid deaths by Shelter's estimate, they've all inflated house price bubbles.

Election maybe? But what's our opposition choice? Starmer? People seem luke warm from what I can tell, and from Cummings' own (very frank/shocking, agreed) admissions today, seems he feels Corbyn wouldn't have fared much better, pro-remain Lib Dems sadly fading in popularity too ... time to move abroad maybe?

Whataboutary? Sadly all from the fire and ashes shaped horse's mouth today I'm afraid my friend. Where was anyone else saying get tough on: borders, migrant dinghies, returning British citizens, isolating China (like Taiwan unilaterally did) while the WHO were busy politically covering for them and ignoring Science. That's Zero Covid. Plenty of prats who crawled into their holes on the tough calls and then came out and whinging later though To quote the firestarter (who don't get me wrong, has hit the nail on the head today): "A Choice Between Boris Johnson And Jeremy Corbyn Is A System Gone "Extremely Badly Wrong". Face it, the Tory Shower of chit isn't the only problem we have, no one's hands are clean in all this.

And what else did he say "everyone thought closing borders would be racist and/or accusing China", "WHO slow to react, intl. health bodies not ringing alarm bells in January", as well as shining a light on the utter chaos that was Downing St at the time, and on the incompetence of Bojo, it also confirms what I've said here before many a time: leftist woke politics would never allow us to follow the the can-kicking 'utopia' policy (aka Zero Covid), the same 'utopia' those on the left ironically won't shut up about. Equally, to be fair, he's trashed the myth that Bojo and co were 'going for' herd immunity, no one 'wanted it' as such, it was just an inevitability as he explained: it was already spreading etc. etc., just a sadly cruel calculus of how we manage ' waves', NHS capacity, and when vaccines were likely to come online. I mean even NZ and Aus are now grappling with how they'll one day open borders and are as such playing catch up on vaccination. Elsewise largely agreed with the sentiment others have expressed here though: chitshow from a leadership perspective, incompetence.

Pfizer is 88%, and the data for AZ (later roll-out) was only 21 days post vax wasn't it? Plus it's symptomatic infection, not hospitalisations and deaths (against which the vaccines are far more effective).

Yeah I watched a pretty good review of all the factors as to why the UK/US did so poorly, general health and obesity was one thing that came up, so not sure if that plays a significant part too? (I had an awesome time travelling there in 2019 before 'the world ended' and they're generally super healthy even if ageing generally as a society like us). But Japan has been in and out of lockdowns so "zero-covid" was a bit of a mirage though none the less? haha yeah but ultimately agreed, everything's relative and it's, for sure, a far cry from Max-Covid more of an esoteric point about "zero-covid" I guess.

Yeah for sure, no doubt they've done great so far, it's undeniable, agreed. But "zero-covid" nirvana? Just playing devil's advocate really: could it be that Zero-covid is the best stop-gap available ... but a stop-gap none the less (until vaccines come in to do the heavy-lifting)? Still think we should have followed/given that policy a try right at the start before it became endemic don't get me wrong, but at some point you have to open borders right? (as much as some right wing nuts would love to keep immigrants etc. out forever).