2018-11-01 Political Anticipation - A GEAB by LEAP Press review

The Global Systemic Crisis at the end of 2018: A day of reckoning… or How ASEAN will save the world
The reinforcement of the transatlantic relationship,[1] secret operations on all sides,[2] skirmishes between the Chinese and North Americans in the China Sea,[3] trade wars, hard rights rising, warning shots on financial markets[4]… It looks like the world is about to switch to “something completely different” (as the Monty Pythons would say). An explosion of markets? Cold War? Hot war? Or labour pains? We invite you to read carefully the ‘calendar of future events’ we are presenting in this bulletin. It clearly reveals that the October-November 2018 period represents a gigantic tipping point for the global systemic crisis that we have been analysing since 2006. Huge restructuring energies are emerging, particularly around ASEAN, in the context of US sanctions against Iran and with mid-term elections in the sights. All this is enough to upset the financial markets which do not know what sauce they will be served with... GEAB 128 - free excerpt

Forthcoming events – From 15 October 2018 to 15 February 2019
Fortunately, LEAP is here and its calendar of forthcoming events will save you again valuable time when reading the news in the coming months.
October/November - North-East Europe: Trident Juncture 18: NATO-led military exercise
45,000 soldiers, 150 aircraft, 70 vessels and around 10,000 vehicles: The Trident Juncture 18 Exercise, scheduled for the end of the month, will be the largest military manoeuvre organised by the Atlantic Alliance since the end of the Cold War. The enemy is imaginary...
Mid-October - Istanbul: Quartet Meeting about Syria
France, Germany, Russia and Turkey are expected to meet in Istanbul in mid-October to discuss the fate of Syria and Idlib in the context of a recent warming of EU-Turkey relations... GEAB 128

Oil, paper and smoke
If you mix oil with paper and throw in a match, what do you think it will happen? This short article is intended to add to our list of oil market features a phenomenon we began to discern last month, but which, in our view, is growing. Most importantly, this phenomenon brings us closer to a ‘day of reckoning’ with potentially cataclysmic consequences. Despite no longer being at the centre of the economic world, we know the degree to which oil remains the pillar of the international monetary and financial system based on the still resisting dollar. Not for long, though… GEAB 128

GAFAM: On their way home?
GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft) have been the masters of the world, but this is coming to an end. Two phenomena are playing a part in this analysis. Firstly, their global monopoly is being challenged increasingly by the emergence of regional competition: In China, the BATX (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi) is spreading well beyond their borders; Europe is now better equipped to prevent its innovations from being systematically bought out by the Americans; Bengalore, the Indian Silicon Valley, will soon follow Europe's example, not to mention the dynamism coming from countries like Rwanda, Uganda or Ghana in Africa, or the Middle East ... GEAB 128

10 years of crisis: A return to GEAB's anticipations of 2006-2007
Currently, the media is marking 10 years of a crisis they didn’t see coming in the first place and questioning experts they did not listen to at the time (at best) or who became experts after its advent (at worst). Hence, it's time to recall that LEAP/E2020 and the GEAB were among the very few who first forecasted the crisis – in the midst of complete media indifference - with a degree of detail that was barely equalled. Every month during the two and a half years that separated LEAP's early anticipations from the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the GEAB put down one by one the development stages of the crisis. If the European media system was unable to focus on what a small independent European think tank without financial expertise was saying, we cannot say the same of people like you who are still reading us today... GEAB 128

Nuclear weapons: old dilemmas, new dangers
Nuclear weapons have posed a challenge to international security since 1945. Today that challenge looms as large as ever. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty has been under severe threat for many years and even more so today. North Korea’s nuclear weapons threaten the global security order and our multilateral system, and Iran’s nuclear activities could form a potential threat. Implementation of arms control treaties is being challenged as well. The way these problems are resolved will have an impact that is felt far into the future... EUObserver

Iraq To Stop Oil Exports To Iran In Compliance With U.S. Sanctions
With a week to go until U.S. sanctions on Iran’s oil snap back, it’s not only Iranian crude exports that the United States looks to cut. Iran’s neighbor Iraq currently trucks small volumes of crude oil from its northern Kirkuk oil field to Iran in exchange for Tehran delivering the same amount of its oil to Iraq’s southern ports. In November, Iraq will halt trucking of oil to Iran to comply with the U.S. sanctions, five sources with knowledge of Iraqi oil export plans told Reuters last week... OilPrice

After Germany’s Merkel Comes Chaos
After a long, initially-successful run promoting European integration and mass immigration, German Chancellor Angela Merkel saw the bottom fall out of her political fortunes this year. This morning she stepped down as leader of the formerly-dominant Christian Democrat party and promised not run again when her term as Chancellor ends in 2021. What happens next is almost certain to be chaotic, as the following chart (courtesy of this morning’s Wall Street Journal) makes clear… Dollar Collapse

‘Rome Says Enough!’: Thousands protest city’s decline
Romans are counting on their mayor to resign as the city falls into a steep decline in both safety and public services. Besides its crumbling infrastructure, the city is also reeling from the brutal murder of a teenager. Some 8,000 Romans took to the streets of the Italian capital on Saturday to protest the “decline” of their city under Mayor Virginia Raggi. They were also protesting a rise in crime highlighted by the recent rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl... Deutsche Welle

This driverless tech start-up aims to replace 15 million truckers in the US and China
Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up TuSimple has deployed autonomous trucks on commercial runs between Tucson and Phoenix in Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada, as the company prepares to expand its operations in the world’s two largest economies by next year. That trial programme in the US, where its two trucks transport consumer goods at speeds of up to 104.6 kilometres per hour (65mph) on their routes, is generating about US$6,600 a week in revenue and given TuSimple a toehold in the vast US freight market, said Chen Mo, the company’s co-founder and chief executive... SCMP

Game Changers in a Digital Future
Martin Shanahan, CEO of IDA Ireland and sponsor of the event, had a clear message for business leaders in the room: “These technologies hold the potential to utterly transform sectors, and in our engagement with clients we’re trying to understand what those changes might be, how they can apply these technologies and how Ireland can be at the forefront of these technologies.” ... Bloomberg