China

Russia and China have prevented the UN Security Council from imposing sanctions on the Syrian government for its alleged use of chemical weapons. On Tuesday they vetoed a UNSC resolution that had been drafted by Britain, France and the United States. The measure won nine votes in favor, while China, Russia and Bolivia opposed it. Russian President Vladimir Putin described the draft resolution as “totally inappropriate” and that it would have undermined efforts to end nearly six-years of conflict in Syria.

For a majority of China watchers, while Beijing's goalseeked GDP reports are largely dismissed as politburo propaganda, most of the attention falls on the PBOC and banking sector's credit creation, and particularly, how this translates into broad money supply, or M2, growth: after all, in a nation which has roughly $35 trillion in bank assets, the biggest variable is how much cash is being injected into the system, and what happens with said cash.

This will be the biggest challenge for developed nations over the next hundred years: depopulation.

Expect strange things to happen in the western world and developed nations in Asia over the next fifty years --  marked by unusual foreign policy moves --  and a craven, almost desperate clamoring for middle eastern, south american and african migrants to replace their withering and decadent societies.

Why?

Credit expansion, or at a minimum, stasis.

Over three years ago, in November 2013, when the world's attention was still largely focused on what the "Big 4" central banks would do with QE and/or interest rates, we wrote an article showing in one simple chart  "How In Five Short Years, China Humiliated The World's Central Banks", and noted that in just the brief period since the financial crisis "Chinese bank assets (and by implication liabilities) have grown by an astounding $15 trillion, bringing the total to over $24 trillion.

One and a half years after the Chinese government violently burst the stock market bubble, leading the massive losses among retail investors, and months after China's third housing bubble since the financial crisis appeared to have peaked, also China has found itself with yet another hot-money funded bubble: commodities.