International Forecaster Weekly

... perhaps most revealing of all are the startling new estimates of capital outflow that show that China is hemorrhaging capital at an unprecedented rate and selling its US treasuries at an equally furious pace to buoy up the yuan.

Polls regularly show that Americans recognise that their country's international standing has waned. Among the young, this trendline has fallen sharply. Only 15% of 18-29-year-olds believe that America is the "greatest country in the world".

 And if I am right, what we have seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg.  The following are 10 very strange things that have happened in just the past few weeks…

  Tragedy? Farce? Bleak tale with a light at the end of the tunnel? It’s too early to know. But get your popcorn ready, because no matter how it plays out this tale is one that will be well worth watching.

...the popping of the Chinese stock bubble is not just about a plummet in the stock market. The real key to understanding what has taken place in China is often named but seldom explained: shadow banking.

As of press time, Greece was still insisting they would not make their scheduled 1.6 billion euro payment to the IMF. Assuming the payment does not go through, what will happen?

Since they can't find any evidence that Iran has actually engaged in any nuclear weapons program activities, they are instead using the "we can't prove they haven't, either" tactic to demand unprecedented levels of access to Iran's nuclear facilities...

...if there is no debt deal by the end of this month, the Greek debt crisis is going to totally spin out of control and financial chaos will begin to erupt all over Europe. 

The Fed came in and gave AIG an emergency loan it (literally) couldn't refuse, took it over and began running the company completely illegally and in violation of the constitution.

It's a strange time right now. On the one hand there is such a sense of calm in the mainstream financial world. And on the other there is a seething, writhing pot of tension boiling away behind the scenes.

But what is the SDR? And why is it important? Why does China want it to act as a super-sovereign reserve currency? And what does that even mean?

...it's difficult to think of a major area of the economy that has not been supplemented by volunteer networks, community organizations, complementary currencies and other resourceful answers to the question of how the people can take care of themselves in the absence of a solvent government.

 It's a point that's been made many, many times before, but it's no less valid: there are many of us. There are very few of "them." The power to transform this world still rests primarily in our hands...

Could this be, as the Daily Mail and its ilk are all too keen to suggest, simply a case of overworked young investment bankers choosing the easy way out? It’s a possibility. But could it be something much more sinister?

 The world situation is grim at the moment; no one can deny that. But there are plenty of hopeful developments that show the future is not written in stone and there are things that we can do to turn things around.