Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

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Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.S        

Malcolm Blair-Robinson UK

The worldwide decline in the value of banking shares and the constant whispers about their stability is unsettling. especially with banks. In that sector there is no smoke without fire. Just now it is not clear whether we see smoke or steam.

Banks are safer than they were pre-crash, but that judgement must be tempered by the nature and size of the crash. Last time it was dodgy property funding in the US that set the overheated system ablaze. This time there is an oil price crash, a slowing of Chinese demand which is having a dangerous knock-on effect in the East. But there is a new danger. The Chinese economy is internally over borrowed, especially in property speculation. There appear to be new cities even, with few people in them. All this has been funded by borrowing.

The Yuan is under speculative attack, which the Chinese government has tried to stem by eye popping use of its vast cash reserves, now down by 25%. If you worry about banks, you must hope it works. For the sub-prime China style is that all the properties and businesses in debt are valued in Yuan, but much of the borrowing is in dollars. If Chinese firms go under, Chinese banks will be in trouble. And in the global economy all banks are linked. Even if China saves its own, the damage to confidence is done. One thing can lead to another.

Set in the mid nineteen nineties, this fast moving thriller lifts the curtain on sex, sleaze and corruption in high places as the long reign of the government totters to an end, following the ousting of the iconic Margaret Thatcher. The novel catches the mood of those times with a host of fictional characters who engage in political intrigue, sex, money laundering and murder, pursued by an Irish investigative journalist and his girlfriend, the daughter of a cabinet minister found dead in a hotel room after bondage sex.

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Last time it was the Americans in Afghanistan. This time it is the Russians in Syria. The common theme of the two is the deaths not just of the sick and wounded, but of the super-brave who volunteer to care for them when they could instead lead ordinary lives in a safe country and earn a good living.

Another common theme is that whatever the sophistication of modern weapons systems, accidents like this, which all combatants know to be PR disasters, will occur. Finally it opens once again the question, what do these wars achieve? First we have unstable and violent Iraq, then we have the same in Afghanistan. Next comes Libya, a failed state turned bandit country. And now Syria. It started as an event within the false dawn of the Arab spring, a quarrel between Sunni and the Alawite ruler and his ally the Shia. The West did nothing to damp down the strife; it encouraged the overthrow of Assad and even announced he had fled. Just look at Syria now. Is there no diplomatic conscience?

Now everybody is mixed up in the fighting, not just IS and Al Qaeda, but Russia, the US, Britain and France and now Turkey and soon Saudi Arabia. They are not fighting each other, neither are they fighting the same enemies. But everyone is fighting a completely pointless war to gain control of a country in ruins. If you are unlucky enough to be Syrian the threat to your safety comes from all directions and is overwhelming. No wonder millions have fled.