These are dark times. It’s been over 6 years since I began writing for CalvinAyre. I have to say, it has been fantastic, and I couldn’t be more thankful to the staff for the freedom they have given me to speak my own voice. As I look at the world crumbling in fear, distrust, mutual recriminations and accusations; as I see trade barriers rise up higher and higher and the cloud of war get thicker; as I see reason fly out the window amid wild racial tensions and censorship intensify as more and more are afraid to speak their minds amid the gathering force of mobs; it’s sites like these that stand for economic liberty that give me hope that there are still people to talk to in this world. I know there always will be, and that keeps me from losing my mind.
True, gambling proper is not my passion. I don’t play poker, I don’t visit casinos, I don’t stake money on games of chance, and I’ve never been to Macau. But in a way, I gamble for a living. I am an economic forecaster, and I stake my own money on my own view of the world. At least in that way I know the thrill of gambling. The only difference is that instead of betting on a game, I bet on reality. I’ve always imagined in the childish part of my mind that when I ultimately win, I would have happiness and security. But now that it is actually happening and I see the world tearing itself apart, mostly what I feel is sadness. A bit of relief that at least I saw it coming, but mostly sadness. In the center of that sadness is a kernel of optimism and hope that will never be extinguished, but right now it’s hard to drill down deep enough to really feel it.
True, I did not see the trigger. I thought the coronavirus hype would blow over. I was wrong. It hasn’t. Now I smell the end game. I believe it’s just around the corner.
The very first article I wrote for this site was dated March 3, 2014. The title was The China Bubble. In it I laid out the end game, namely that Macau stocks are toast and wouldn’t survive the relentless rise in interest rates that was inevitably coming. I linked to a Bloomberg report that the People’s Bank of China was no longer interested in financing U.S. government deficits by increasing their holdings of U.S. debt. Indeed, Chinese holdings of U.S. debt securities topped out 3 months later, in June 2014.