Read the latest from Randal Hines on the world’s ongoing financial crisis, and how looking to the past might help with a solution for the future:

“Those who enjoy watching train wrecks will find this column richly rewarding. As the financial press worries over the U.S. debt crisis, the E.U. collapse, Italian political revanchism, and recessions in China and Brazil, a new star may be added to the worry list:

The world’s third largest economy, once nominated to overtake the U.S. by now, Japan’s economy has stumbled badly, and is likely to get worse before it jumps off its own “cliff”. This might, perversely, give central banker’s pause for cheer. After all, some central bankers can recall 1985 as though it were yesterday.

In 1985, the finance ministers of the world’s five biggest economies convened at the Plaza Hotel in New York City to finalize and sign the Plaza Accord, an agreement to devalue the U.S. Dollar against the Japanese Yen and German Deutsche Mark. Prior to the Plaza Accord, the dollar had appreciated approximately 50% against the Yen, D-Mark and British Pound. The coordinated devaluation of the Rockefeller CenterDollar was meant to kick-start the U.S. economy, which was struggling with a large current account deficit, an overvalued currency and an economy still struggling to get back to full unemployment in the wake of the early 1980′s recession.

The Accord was a success and achieved a multitude of firsts. It was the first time central bankers agreed to intervene in the currency markets, the first time the world set interest rate targets and the first time each of the G-5 nations agreed to adjust their own economies. In other words sovereignty was exchanged for globalization. Most importantly, it avoided a chaotic currency war.”

Read more on China, France, America and the world beyond in the latest edition of Carnet Atlantique!

Check out our handy-dandy guide to studying at a top UK school–now available in English and Mandarin!

Behold:

“Oxford offers a distinctive form of undergraduate education, unique in the world to Oxford and Cambridge. What makes us distinctive is:
牛津所提供的是一种独具特色的本科教育，一种不同于世界而只属于牛津剑桥的教育。我们的特色是 :

A Levels, the International Baccalaureate or equivalent qualifications, covering three or four subjects in depth, are the usual preparation for undergraduate study at Cambridge. We ask for the highest grades in these subjects, and assess students not only on their achievements in these exams, but also on their ability and readiness to join in discussion of their subject.
准备进入剑桥大学本科的通常要求是，拥有涵盖3到4门深度学习的学科的A-levels，国际高中毕业文凭（IB）或同等资格的成绩。我们所要的是在这些学科获得高分的学生，并且不仅仅以考试的成绩为唯一的评判学生的标准，加入所学学科的讨论分析的能力和意愿也是重要的考量标准。

If you wish to apply for an undergraduate place here, you need to be in the top one or two per cent of your year group, and doing very well in the subject area you would like to study.
如果你想申请这里的本科，你需要在同年级学生中处在前1%或2%的水平，并且在你所感兴趣的学科表现突出。

The Chinese Senior High School Diploma is not acceptable as an entry qualification for LSE. Applicants from would be expected to offer, either instead or in addition, one of the following:
伦敦政经学院（LSE）不接受中国的高中毕业证书作为用来申请的有效学历证书。申请人需要提供能够替代中国高中毕业证书的或除此之外的，以下证书中的一种.”

Read more about how to get into your top school in the latest edition of Carnet Atlantique!

Oxford offers a distinctive form of undergraduate education, unique in the world to Oxford and Cambridge. What makes us distinctive is:
牛津所提供的是一种独具特色的本科教育，一种不同于世界而只属于牛津剑桥的教育。我们的特色是 :

“It was August of 1981 and Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker was the most unpopular man in America.

Unemployment was 11 percent, the prime interest rate was 21.5 percent, the economy was in a tailspin and it had all been laid at Volcker’s feet. Car dealers mailed him the keys to cars they couldn’t sell. His face appeared on a wanted poster put up by a homebuilders’ association in Kentucky. A parade of farmers hamstrung by high interest rates drove tractors in the streets around the Federal Reserve (Eccles) building. A man armed with guns, a phony bomb and a knife almost made it into a Federal Reserve meeting room before a guard tackled him.

But two years later Volcker was being hailed as a hero. Runaway interest rates had been tamed to the single digits. Volcker would soon be gone from the Fed, departing half-lionized, half-reviled. The years haven’t always been kind of his legacy; some have blamed his policies for the Latin American debt crisis in the 1980s, and for the American savings and loans crisis in the 1980s and ’90s. However, today, the 85-year-old Volcker is perceived as the go-to man for journalists and bloggers who seek a “tell it like it is” commentator on domestic and international finance.”

Check out Carnet Atlantique’s Mary Wilds’ look at the controversial financial figure Paul Volcker in the latest edition of Carnet Atlantique!

Reblogged from China Daily Mail:

SCMP says in its report: “Tokyo considers authorising Japanese military aircraft to take action if China’s planes enter air space near disputed waters

“Japan's defence ministry is considering authorising the country's Air Self-Defence Force (ASDF) jets to fire warning shots when Chinese planes enter air space claimed by Japan, Japanese media reported yesterday.

“Citing sources close to the…

Read more… 673 more words

Reblogged from China Daily Mail:

A report by a top mainland academic institution that suggests China is in a far healthier state than the United States and will soon overtake the world's only superpower economically has sparked controversy, with some analysts casting doubt on it.

China's "national health" has been better than that of the US since 2007, and its advantage will grow further from 2019, when China is expected to become the world's biggest economy, the…

Read more… 507 more words

Julian Crandall Hollick examines taxation in Provence in his latest piece. In a nutshell: all is not well outside Paris.

“Vaisonnais, like everyone else in the world, are convinced they are overtaxed. They look at the new high school, the new day care centre, the newly-restored town square – the Place Montfort – the repaved cobblestone street that leads up to the medieval village. They assume that their taxes have paid for all of this. Most people here are totally unaware that local taxes are directly siphoned off to Paris. Later, Paris sends some of it back to towns like Vaison, but always less than what was raised in the first place.

The warning signs are out for the so-called “rich” who live in the medieval village above the rest of the town. ‘You’re all rich, so we’re not going to spend a centime more on your village! We have to take care of the little people.’

It’s useless to point out that not everyone in the village is rich. There’s Yvette who somehow survives on $600 a month. But social services take care of most of the basics – food, health care, transport. And she’s not a solitary exception. There are others – now old, who were given free housing in the tiny medieval stone houses in the village after the Second World War, when there was little or no affordable housing for the young. But whether it’s because the village is perched on the rock that dominates, or because it’s also full of foreigners (Parisians count as foreigners round here) they are perceived as rich. And in an election year no one worth his political salt is going to be seen spending dwindling public money on them …

This profound mistrust of making money means seeking private money to pay for some of this building is problematic at best. In Paris it may no longer be totally taboo. But in Vaison it borders on apostasy. Agriculture may no longer be the dominant occupation, but it still conditions the Vaison mindset. Peasants have an ingrained mistrust of any innovation because ‘it must always be at someone else’s expense.’”

Read more about the tenuous relationship between Paris and Provence in the latest edition of Carnet Atlantique!

Our London correspondent Austin Ashley weighed in on the (brutally) comical Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, in the latest edition of Carnet Atlantique:

“Johnson, avowedly a member of Cameron’s Conservative party, is riding a wave of post-Olympics popularity. Having achieved the impossible and made the British public laugh with him during his gaffes (rather than at him), rumour has it that his next conquest will be the leadership of the Conservative party. Some are even talking about him becoming Prime Minister one day!

For now though, Boris is trying to downplay the rumours. His speech at the Conservative party conference, while characteristically flamboyant, was hardly a call to arms. Asked whether he is planning to challenge David Cameron, Boris simply responds that he is fully behind the Prime Minister. But then again, asked whether he would run as a Member of Parliament at the same time as being editor of the Spectator newspaper a few years ago, he replied ‘absolutely not’. After a few months, Boris was the Member of Parliament for North Oxford, juggling his editorship of the Spectator, his Oxford constituency, a growing family and a demanding mistress too.

Johnson’s unwelcome and thinly camouflaged apostasy comes as Cameron’s coalition government is internally riven on several fronts, not the least endless debate on Britain’s role vis-à-vis the European Project, whether the U.K. plays spoiler, denying E.U. budget approval. If there is any agreement whatsoever, it is that no one supports the Government’s position, precisely where the agreement both begins and ends.”

Check it out here!

Read more on France, America, China and the world beyond in the latest edition of Carnet Atlantique!

That’s right, your source for all things France, America and the world beyond has just turned two years old! Check out the latest edition of Carnet Atlantique, online now.

In this issue, our editor-in-chief Paul Weinberg recounts his experiences in “invading” Europe as an American. Check it out here!

“We of the Western World came. And, before long, we of the Western World took. Elgin took his marbles. The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art took their pharaohs, Astors, their chateau. Morgan, his paneled English country library. Rockefeller, countless art.

Not content to just ‘invade,’ not content to just ‘loot’ as invading armies are wont to do, we did the next best thing: having discovered Swiss chocolates and English biscuits, and Jaguar, Saab, Volvo–No longer content to ship away marbles and chateau, tapestries, art, libraries, and cars, we consumed the very companies themselves that made the chocolates and biscuits and cars.

Of course, well before that, when North Americas was but thirteen disputatious swampy colonies, the Brits went on their own shopping spree, never thee mind trifles such as marbles, collecting whole colonies and spheres of influence from the Cape to Cairo, India to Indonesia, China to Canada. Not to be outdone: Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Holland, among others, set up vertical industries called ‘colonialism,’ dispatching pioneers, armies, missionaries, fur-traders, spice-traders, slave-traders, ran the shipping infrastructure that moved raw materials across vast oceans continent to continent, shipped finished goods back across vast oceans and ultimately converted it all into middle-classes and democracy. On both sides of the transaction: initially giving birth to middle classes in the colonial power; subsequently, in the societies they seduced and violated.”

Read more on France, America and the world beyond in the latest edition of Carnet Atlantique, online now!

In today’s Big Business news, we bring you China’s Hanlong Group, which has just acquired one of the largest iron ore mines in West Africa. Horraaaay!

China Daily reports that the deal is worth a fair chunk of change:

“The acquisition will start on February 26 and end on March 1, 2013 after documents are submitted to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, officials with the privately-held Hanlong Group said Friday.

Hanlong will pay A$0.45 per share to buy Sundance shares — a price agreed upon in August 2012. The offer will save Hanlong 2 billion yuan ($315 million) for the deal, which was originally valued at A$1.7 billion ($1.76 billion).

Sundance controls the Mbalam Iron Ore Mine in Cameroon and the Republic of Congo. Hanlong executives have disclosed that the company is in talks with leading state firms to jointly develop the mine.

Hanlong is investing $5 billion to develop its first mining project in Mbalam, as well as build a 550-km railway and a shipping port. It is slated to start operating in 2014, the company officials said.”

So it’s worth more than a billion dollars, but why exactly is this news making headlines around the world?

The Economic Times dropped a very brief line about it:

“The mine holds 865 million to 925 million tonnes of iron ore … unnamed observers said Hanlong’s control of the mine would give China more influence in setting international iron ore prices.

Major investments and acquisitions by China in natural resources projects overseas, including Africa, have helped fuel its rise to become the world’s second-largest economy.

Xinhua said that Hanlong Group has combined assets of 36 billion yuan ($5.7 billion) with ownership or stakes in more than 30 firms.”

It’s not only iron ore–for more insight into China’s growing influence on the world’s mineral markets, we turn to Mining.com, which recently published an article about China’s rise to prominence in silver markets:

“China has transformed from a ‘relatively small player’ on the silver market as recently as the 1990′s into the world’s second largest silver fabricator with a burgeoning share of both global supply and demand.

China’s share of global silver demand and supply currently stands at 17% and 14% respectively, while the country is expected to soon become the world’s second-largest producer of the precious metal.

Total silver demand in China increased more than two-fold during the period from 2002 to 2011, rising from 67.1 million ounces to 170.7 million, with gains driven by both vigorous economic growth and liberalization of the country’s silver market.

Demand for silver has seen especially strong gains in China’s jewelry and investment markets. During the period from 2002 – 2011 the country’s silver jewelery market grew by 211% to reach 54.4 million ounces.”

Read more on China, France, America and the world beyond in the latest edition of Carnet Atlantique!

It’s almost here! Join us in celebrating our 2nd anniversary with the very first issue of Carnet Atlantique in 2013! Featuring more on international politics, China, currency and coalitions, the latest edition goes live in just a few days. Keep your eyes on this space!!

If you’re travelling by train from Beijing to Guangzhou, the journey will now take eight hours instead of twenty. God bless us, everyone!

Yes, Al Jazeera has reported that China just launched a 2,000+ km rail line connecting the capital to Guangzhou, a major economic hub:

“The rail line includes 35 stops in major cities such as Zhenghzhou, Wuhan on the Yangze River and Gangsha. 

State media have reported that December 26 was chosen as the date to open the Beijing-Guangzhou line to commemorate the birth of the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong in 1893. 

Railway is an essential part in China’s transportation system, and its government plans to build a grid of high-speed railways with four east-west lines and four north-south lines by 2020.

China’s high-speed rail network was established in 2007, but has fast become the world’s largest with 8,358 kilometres of track at the end of 2010. That is expected to almost double to 16,000km by 2020.”

Unfortunately, according to Al Jazeera, the railway network has been plagued by graft and safety scandals, most notably a deadly bullet train collision in July 2011 that killed 40 people and led to public outrage.

For a marvellous look at the intricacies and flaws of rail advancements in China, check out this piece in Vanity Fair by Simon Winchester. Although it was published in 2011, it’s definitely still worth checking out, especially for the prose:

“Shanghai’s Rainbow Bridge Station is sited next to the city’s old (but newly rebuilt) domestic airport and in a fast-growing nexus of skyscrapers, restaurants, and subway lines (the city had no subway lines until 1995 and now has 11, each one built deeper than the last).

The station is run by a woman, Bao Zhenghong. She is a little under 40, pretty, brisk, friendly, with a blue diamond-shaped badge of authority (over dozens of men, at least) on the sleeve of her no-nonsense uniform blouse. As she paced down the concourse marble she remarked, between shy grins and blushes, that she had started work as a menial at a suburban station 20 years ago, on graduation from technical school. She could not in her wildest dreams, she said, have imagined being so swiftly promoted to take total control of this $2.3 billion glass monument (built in only two years) to China’s newness. Hers is the largest station in Asia, with 60 platforms: it sees 250,000 passengers a day, is made of 80,000 tons of steel, is home to countless stores and restaurants and viewing galleries, and is powered by the biggest solar-panel array in creation.”

Read more on China, France, America and the world beyond in the latest edition of Carnet Atlantique!

Our two-year anniversary is fast approaching! We’ll be talking currency, coalitions and all things China in just under a week. Keep your eyes on this space!!