Golden Year, Colour Evolution, This Week In Political Instability
If you’re an enterprising nine year old looking to top up your pocket money, get yourself a bar of bullion. Gold is up to $4000 an ounce for the first time ever – while the dollar is down ten per cent on the year. The biggest drop since, well, since the gold window closed in 1971. Dedollarisation will always mean something-else-isation — this week’s rally seems to be the latest shake out. Between 2021 and 2027 the EU budget for NGOs was around €1.5bn. The new EU budget proposal is advocating increasing that 600%. While America now thinks that USAID is outdated political technology, the EU is trying to buy the dip. Finally, we’ll have an update on three countries teetering on the brink: France, The Philippines and Georgia. Could the third world quasi-dictatorial basket case on that list actually topple over? And what about the Philippines? You can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity
--------
55:54
--------
55:54
Multipolarity Dialogues: Policy Tensor on China's South-Eastern March
Welcome to Multipolarity Dialogues – a series of interview that scan the geopolitical horizon. We talk to some of the sharpest analysts, thinkers and experts about how they see the world beyond the visible edge of the geopolitical now.On this episode: Anusar Farooqui. Like the public intellectual equivalent of a DC comics superhero, Anusar lives a double life. By day he’s a man who wrote his PhD research on the geometric noise arising from black hole rotation, and went on to found Systematic Portfolios, the New York hedge fund he currently leads as CEO. By night, he is Policy Tensor the writer of a highly regarded Substack that focuses on international relations, grand strategy and economics. Policy Tensor was one of the few analysts to argue in 2022 that the Russian economy was far stronger than commonly believed – in other words, that sanctions would fail.He joins Multipolarity with another warning – about an even greater danger, arguing that the United States might be preparing for the wrong war against China.We will be looking at the big picture strategic position between the US and China – the Thucydides Trap – and why Xi Jinping might take an entirely different route to win back Taiwan.
--------
1:26:11
--------
1:26:11
Premium Edition Teaser: Bold & Bankrupt - The Truth About MMT
Modern Monetary Theory. Magical Money Tree. Whichever name you know it by, everywhere, these days, the intellectual salons hum with people trying to say that they’ve invented that most terrifying of things: a new paradigm. That they have the economic equivalent of Einsteinian Relativity. These people profess that debt is no issue. That a country that prints its own currency can’t go broke. And rather, that by a canny toe-heel on the brakes, countries can juice their economies without slamming into a wall. This week, after talking around the topic on any number of previous episodes, we’re tackling MMT head-on, in an hour long special edition. Andy Collingwood is grilling Philip Pilkington, who claims to have been there at the birth of modern monetary theory in 2013 — and asking him whether there is much more here than a placenta, some hair and three teeth. The answer, it transpires, is yes and no. MMT does indeed represent a new vein of insight. But that insight is only partial. Misapplied, it is as catastrophic to a monetary system as liquid Robert Mugabe. So join us, on a journey, to a magical money tree not so far away…You can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity
--------
13:37
--------
13:37
Special Edition: The Multipolarity Hotline
This week, it's the sensual adventure in Geopolitical ASMR you've all been waiting for.Our two men talking to themselves on their mobile phones in separate locations. With Philip Pilkington presently locked in a hotel room in China, it seems Andrew is penning him Sleepless in Seattle-style voice notes from Northumberland. Dynamic. Digital. Dangerous. Disestablishmentarian.How much of this you can handle is up to you? Two audio essays, half a world away. Later, Phillip Pilkington talks about how much he hates Javier Milei and how hard you should short your pesos.But first Andy Collingwood talking about a nuclear umbrella and how it could be flopped out right in the middle of a Persian Gulf. This is geopolitics, as you've never heard it before.You can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity
--------
1:03:51
--------
1:03:51
Multipolarity Dialogues: Carlos Roa On How The New Golden Road Is Shifting Power South
Multipolarity Dialogues is a new series of interviews that scan the geopolitical horizon. We’ll be talking to some of the sharpest analysts, thinkers, experts, about how they see the world beyond the visible edge of the geopolitical now. This week: Carlos Roa is the Director of Research at the Washington DC Danube Institute. He was formerly the executive editor of National Interest magazine. Last time on the show – an episode well worth seeking out – he offered us a DC Rake’s Progress, sketching the shape of the technocrat class who run Washington, from first infant mewling as a Pentagon intern, to final wrinkled Cruise strike on a Middle Eastern country. This time, he’s got his eyes on something more global. The New Golden Road – and its rivals. There is the Silk Road, there is the Belt-and Road, but there is also a third way to move goods from East to West overland. It is this that Roa has been studying in his recent paper, also titled The New Golden Road. The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, quietly unveiled at a G20 summit in 2023, is designed to link India with Europe via the Arabian Peninsula, stitching together ports, railways, energy pipelines, and digital cables. In this episode Andrew Collingwood talks to Carlos about the deep mechanics, the economics, and the distortions of geopolitical gravity that this grand new interconnector will bring.You can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity
Charting The Rise Of A Multipolar World Order
Philip Pilkington is an unorthodox macroeconomist.
Andrew Collingwood is an equally skeptical journalist.
Lately, both have realised that - post-Ukraine, post-Afghanistan withdrawal - the old, unipolar, US-led world order is in its death throes.
In its wake, something new is being born. But what shape will that take? That will depend on a combustible combination of economics and geopolitics; trade and military muscle.
Each week, our duo take three off-radar news stories and explain how each is shaping our multipolar reality.