The new armaments boom, how to build places for people to live, Eswanti's ship register & Marx to Darwin
Great links, reading and images from Chartbook Newsletter by Adam Tooze
Yozo Hamaguchi Pomegranate, circa 1967
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155 mm
BAE has increased production of 155mm artillery shells under a contract with the UK Ministry of Defence that will see it raise its production capacity eight-fold.
Source: FT
The new armaments boom
The conflict and rising geopolitical tensions elsewhere, including in the Middle East, have boosted the order books of large established players and their suppliers. Global defence spending hit a record $2.2tn last year, while in Europe it rose to $388bn, levels not seen since the cold war, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Source: FT
Build places for people to live!
Homes in Texan cities are cheap and their populations soaring because the state has made urban development easy. California, New York and London are overheating and squeezing out young families because their planning systems place artificial constraints on supply, making urban development extremely difficult.
Source: FT
Global wealth rankings
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Eswatini’s dry port
The website for the shipping registry of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), established in October 2023, appears much like those of more established seafaring nations. A picture of vast cruise ships sits alongside promises of the “highest quality ship maritime services and ship registrations”. Delve deeper though and Eswatini’s nautical credentials start to unravel. For one thing, the African country is landlocked, calling into doubt the assertion that the port of Mbabane, Eswatini’s capital, is situated on the coast of South Africa. It is a “dry port”, 150km from the sea and 30km from a rail link to Maputo on Mozambique’s Indian Ocean coast. Its stated ability to handle “containers, bulk carriers and tankers” seems questionable. The country is following in the wake of other smaller nations that offer their flag to shipowners. …Liberia, Panama and the Marshall Islands now account for nearly half of the global fleet, by tonnage. Countries with loose ties to seafaring have been dubbed “flags of convenience” for levying low or no taxes and offering an escape from burdensome labour laws and other regulatory requirements. Often administered by private companies based elsewhere, these registries are a handy source of additional revenue for small and poor countries. …. Liberia’s, based near Washington, dc, has a good record of maintaining global standards across its fleet. Other registries merely give a “façade of legal oversight” says Richard Meade, editor of Lloyd’s List Intelligence, a trade publication. A blacklist complied by Paris mou, an organisation that aims to “eliminate the operation of substandard ships”, puts the likes of Cameroon, Vanuatu and Comoros near the bottom. Eswatini’s register provisionally comprised 13 cargo ships at the end of January. According to Lloyd’s List, three were placed under sanctions by America for supporting the Syrian regime and have been involved in exporting grain from Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine. … On February 8th San Damian was spied passing through the Bosporus Strait flying an Eswatini flag. “Once a ship has been removed or rejected”, says the spokesperson, “we do not follow them further. If they still use [the flag] it is illegal and invalid.” Less diligent registries are helping to fuel the growth of a “dark fleet”—some 1,400 vessels, according to the Atlantic Council, a think-tank—that operates with little regulatory oversight. They are mostly oil tankers that engage in subterfuge to hide where they are and the origin of their cargo in order to evade sanctions on Russian crude oil. Ownership is often opaque. Mr Meade estimates that 12% of the global tanker fleet is now dark. He notes that Gabon’s registry, now comprising 140 vessels, is the fastest-growing in the world thanks largely to the reflagging of Russian tankers.
Source: Economist
Hamaguchi Yozo, Water melon
Throughout the 1930s, Hamaguchi Yozo lived in Paris where he studied oil painting, watercolor and copperplate printing. Eventually, Hamaguchi became more intent on a career as an oil painter and regularly created sketches and preparatory drawings for his planned paintings. During this period, Hamaguchi met and befriended the American poet e.e. Cummings, who soon became a great admirer of his sketches. Cummings remarked on the beauty of Hamaguchi's work and added they had the potential to become more aesthetically pleasing in print form. Shortly thereafter, Hamaguchi was introduced to the mezzotint medium after Cummings gifted him with a set of intagllio tools. In 1937, Hamaguchi tried his hand at mezzotint and produced his first image, Cat, in which the titular subject is shown reclining with its front paw extended in an indiscernible white space. Hamaguchi's newfound artistic inspiration in Paris was interrupted by the start of World War II in 1939, and he subsequently returned to Japan. Over the course of the 1940s and 1950s, Hamaguchi further refined his mezzotint style and became a popular figure among Japanese art collectors as mezzotint was not yet familiar in Japan and was still considered a predominantly Western medium. Deemed a pioneer, the art world's enthusiasm for Hamaguchi's prints resulted in his first solo exhibition at the Formes Gallery in Tokyo in 1951. Hamaguchi returned to France in 1953 to market his prints in the Parisian art scene. By then, the majority of his new works were monochrome copperplate etchings executed in gray, black, and white such as Gypsies (1954). His prints appealed to European collectors, and led to his acquisition of multiple prestigious awards in Japan, including the “Best Art Piece” at the Contemporary Art Exhibition of Japan.[4][11] Concurrently, Hamaguchi became a member of the Salon d’Automne, an annual Parisian art exhibition that highlighted the latest developments in art, architecture, and design of the 20th century.
Marx to Darwin
Post Office Tower (1965)
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Hamaguchi, Yozo : "Ball of Green Yarn"
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