US household's have bet big on equities. The UK's peace dividend. Protest in China & the sad decline of Busan.
Great links, images, and reading from Chartbook Newsletter by Adam Tooze
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Taíno Culture (Puerto Rico). “Head” (13th-15th century).
This work from Puerto Rico may be what is known as a guaíza, a category of objects in stone, wood, or shell that feature rounded heads and zemí faces. Zemí (or cemí) is a term used by Taíno peoples, the diverse societies that inhabited the Antilles archipelago before European contact, that linguistically relates to a quality akin to sweetness. Zemí refers not to an object or image but to an immaterial, spiritual, and vital force pertaining to deities and ancestors. There are several known zemí identities recorded by the Spanish, some of which have been linked to archaeological images.
Source: The MET
US household exposure to the equity markets - as a share of financial assets held - is at an all-time high.
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And it is above all wealthier households that have gorged on stocks in recent months
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It is common to complain about German defense cuts, but it was the UK that saw the largest swing away from Cold War era defense spending in the 1990s.
Now, Martin Wolf promises a war dividend:
John Van Reenen, chair of the council of economic advisers to the UK’s chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves, has co-authored a paper arguing that a 10 per cent increase in defence research and development triggers a 4 per cent increase in private R&D. In another co-authored paper, he argues that these benefits depend on open and competitive funding of defence innovation. The crucial point, however, is that the need to spend significantly more on defence should be viewed as more than just a necessity and also more than just a cost, though both are true. If done in the right way, it is also an economic opportunity.
Source: FT
Catastrophic health care costs threaten one quarter of all rural households in China.
Source: FT
Toyota (and Japan) placed a big bet on hydrogen. But EVs have left the hydrogen option in the dust.
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Taíno Culture (Puerto Rico). “Three-Cornered Stone (Trigonolito)” (13th-15th century).
Portable-sized sculptures, known as three-pointed stones or trigonolitos, were described by the Spanish chroniclers as having a connection to yucca or cassava, a staple root crop in the Caribbean. Three-pointed stones come in various sizes, from handheld to quite heavy, and feature a diversity of imagery ranging from anthropomorphic and zoomorphic phone. They mainly come from the Greater Antilles, but examples have been found as far south in the windward islands as The Grenadines.
Source: The MET
The sad decline of Busan, Korea’s second city.
For most of the 20th century, Busan was a thriving hub of trade and industry. But the city is now in the throes of an exodus of the young that has left it ageing faster than any other metropolitan area in a country that already has the lowest fertility rate in the world. Located on the south-east tip of the Korean peninsula just across from Japan, Busan’s fortunes have worsened since the 1990s as local industries suffer from South Korea’s transition into a high-tech industrial economy. The Korea Employment Information Service, a government agency, last year officially classified Busan as “at risk of extinction” — when the imbalance between the working and non-working populations makes a city economically unsustainable. The city of 3.3mn shed 600,000 people between 1995 and 2023. Demographers warn this trend is accelerating as the city’s population ages and Seoul tightens its grip over the country’s economy. Busan retains both charms and assets — mountains and beaches, temples and nightlife, famous film and art festivals and proximity both to Japan and to industrial centres clustered along South Korea’s east coast. While it was the birthplace of leading conglomerates Samsung and LG, not one of South Korea’s 100 largest companies is headquartered in the city. “The outflow of young people is getting larger,” said Seo. “Every time I go back, I can see it losing its vitality.” Busan boomed in the second half of the 19th century because of its proximity to Japan — a bridgehead first for Japanese trade and investment and later for colonisation.
Japanese industrialists set up factories in Busan producing cheap goods ranging from rubber and shoes to wood. After Tokyo’s defeat in the second world war, the factories were taken over by Koreans and Busan received a surge of returnees from Japan. North Korea’s 1950 invasion prompted a second wave of arrivals after the South Korean government temporarily retreated from Seoul to Busan. Between 1945 and 1951, the city’s population grew from 280,000 to 840,000. Busan was a thriving hub of trade and industry for most of the 20th century, but its fortunes have since dimmed © Sepavo/Dreamstime.com Busan benefited from a “national development strategy” in the 1960s and 70s that built an industrial corridor between it and Seoul, with Busan’s port serving as the main trading hub for a booming export-oriented economy. But the city’s fortunes turned as South Korea moved beyond the production of cheap consumer goods in which Busan’s factories specialised. A Korean economy increasingly powered by the production and export of more sophisticated goods was exemplified by Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor fabrication plants on the outskirts of Seoul. Universities and research institutes migrated to meet the demand for skilled workers. The port of Incheon on the west coast — closer to Seoul, and more convenient for trading with China — supplanted Busan as the country’s leading export hub. “Successive governments pursued a policy of national centralisation as a way of maximising efficiency to compete with Japan and China,” said Busan’s deputy mayor Lee Jun-seung. “We got left behind.”
Source: Christian Davies and Kang Buseong in FT
There are now more protest incidents recorded in China than during the COVID/A4 protests
Source: Rory Green TSLombard
Story Problem by Cole Swensen
Given: The trees along a river seem constantly in motion; perhaps it’s the rhythm inherent in their equidistant planting, inciting a sense of walking, or perhaps it’s the movement of the river itself, a visio-kinetic echo connected to the viewer. Or is it the triangulation—river, line-of-trees, viewer—in their complex differentials, as, for instance, in a train station when the train on the next track over starts to move and, for a second or two, you’re not sure which, you or it, is actually moving off—and thus, if I stopped walking, would the trees then start? And what would become of the river, now derailed?
Source: Poetry Foundation (May 2024)
Taíno Culture (Puerto Rico). “Figure” (13th-15th century).
This stone pendant, worn by Taíno leaders and healers, features a crouching anthropomorphic figure known as a zemí. Zemí (or cemí) is a term used by Taíno peoples, the diverse societies that inhabited the Antilles archipelago before European contact, that linguistically relates to a quality akin to sweetness. Zemí refers not to an object or image but to an immaterial, spiritual, and vital force pertaining to deities and ancestors. There are several known zemí identities recorded by the Spanish, some of which have been linked to archaeological images.
Source: The MET
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