China

World War III Has Begun

Paul Craig Roberts

The Third World War is currently being fought. How long before it moves into its hot stage?

There is a saying that the whole is greater than the sum of its part. This may be true everywhere, except in China, where the total is whatever some goalseek machine decides it is.

We first saw China's flagrant manipulation of data when the nation released its "better than expected" trade "data" two weeks ago. As shown in the chart below, when it comes to the biggest contributor, imports from Hong Kong, it was beyond simply grotesque and had entered the sublimely ridiculous.

Just 3 short months ago, we detailed how - thanks to the collapse in China's growth and massive commodity inventory gluts, the cost of renting a Dry Bulk Tanker was less than the cost of renting a ferrari for a day...

As Bloomberg reported at the time,

The credit-fueled speculative bubble in China's commodity market, as we detailed previously, exploded this week as the mainstream slowly comes to realize that the gains in industrial metals are not a "sign of strength in China's and the world's economic recovery" but merely the next rotation of fast-money slooshing from Chinese equities to Chinese corporate bonds to Chinese real estate and now to Chinese commodity futures...

China is working on a mission to land a rover on Mars by 2020 aiming to become a global aerospace power by 2030. China’s National Space Administration envisages a joint China-US cooperation on a Mars rescue mission, as depicted in the Hollywood blockbuster “The Martian,” where the agency saved both NASA and Matt Damon from an awful situation. Shanghai Daily reports: Announced in January, the Mars voyage will attempt to recreate the success of the United States’ Viking 1 mission that landed a rover on the Red Planet four decades ago.