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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Snowshoe who wrote (169607)	3/18/2021 5:12:59 AM
From: TobagoJack	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217740

zerohedge.com In the meantime, a giggle, re the recent lost of 1st place in freedom and drop to 107th place, of Team Hong Kong Waiting to see how many move to the better climates of Team UK :0) Investment / speculation wins are not taxed in HK. hongkongfp.com Hong Kong axed from economic freedom index after years at top spot, now ranked 107th as part of Chinaby CANDICE CHAU 13:31, 4 MARCH 2021 Print More by Candice Chau Hong Kong is now counted as part of China and has been excluded from a US think tank’s economic freedom index. The Heritage Foundation scrapped the city’s 2021 listing saying that its economic policies are “ultimately controlled from Beijing.” In the 27th edition of the Index of Economic Freedom, Hong Kong is no longer listed separately despite topping the chart for 25 consecutive years. Hong Kong has been ranked the freest economy in the world since 1995, until it was overtaken by Singapore in 2020 after the foundation cited “intensifying uncertainties related to security issues” due to the government’s response to the 2019 anti-extradition bill protests. The Hong Kong government often boasted of the accolade in promotional material for the city. In 2019 – after Hong Kong became the only economy that had scored over 90 – Financial Secretary Paul Chan said: “This achievement reaffirms the Government’s steadfast commitment in upholding the free market principles over the years.” In this year’s index, the conservative think tank explained that the ranking would only include “independent countries where government exercise sovereign control of economic policies.” “No doubt both Hong Kong and Macau, as Special Administrative Regions, enjoy economic policies that in many respects offer their citizens more economic freedom than is available to the average citizen of China, but developments in recent years have demonstrated unambiguously that those policies are ultimately controlled from Beijing,” the report read. The Index’s website had also removed Hong Kong’s standalone page, and no results were shown when “Hong Kong” was typed in the search bar. Index of Economic Freedom 2021. Photo: Heritage Foundation, via website screenshot.Singapore topped the ranking again this year, with a score of 89.7. China scored 58.4, and was ranked 20th among the 40 economies in the Asia-Pacific region, and 107th in the world among the 178 countries examined. The report also stated that China’s score was dampened by a decline in trust and destabilised global relationships due to issues such as “restrictions on Hong Kong’s autonomy, the persecution of China’s Uighur minority, and Beijing’s cyberwarfare activities.” ‘Political bias’Speaking in Beijing, Hong Kong finance chief Paul Chan said he did not agree with the foundation’s analysis: “When they arrived at that decision, they must have been clouded by their ideological inclination and political bias,” he said according to RTHK. Billy Mak, associate professor of the Department of Finance and Decision Sciences at the Hong Kong Baptist University, told HKFP that the think tank’s decision to stop listing Hong Kong as an independent economy could harm the study’s credibility: “This is an academic issue, if you use the previous classifications, you can conduct different comparisons between countries and regions over the years, but now that you suddenly changed the evaluation criteria, there may be discrepancies between the new and old data.” Mak added that by not listing Hong Kong as a separate economy in the index, it may be difficult for researchers or the government to understand and compare the situation in Hong Kong to those of other regions. HKFP has reached out to the government for comment.

To: Snowshoe who wrote (169607)	3/18/2021 11:50:19 AM
From: marcher	2 Recommendations Recommended By sense Snowshoe Respond to of 217740

--early days of green energy-- that's what carter said... in 1979: "...The White House itself once harvested the power of the sun. On June 20, 1979, the Carter administration installed 32 panels designed to harvest the sun's rays and use them to heat water... By 1986, the Reagan administration had gutted the research and development budgets for renewable energy at the then-fledgling U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) and eliminated tax breaks for the deployment of wind turbines and solar technologies—recommitting the nation to reliance on cheap but polluting fossil fuels, often from foreign suppliers. ...And in 1986 the Reagan administration quietly dismantled the White House solar panel installation while resurfacing the roof. "Hey! That system is working. Why don't you keep it?" recalls mechanical engineer Fred Morse..." scientificamerican.com

To: Snowshoe who wrote (169607)	3/18/2021 6:52:12 PM
From: TobagoJack	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217740

I see the monologues happening in your neighbourhood are looking promising the world gets to view America telling Team China the usual, and listen to Team China telling Team America to go pound sand am wondering what the two sides are supposed to negotiate about :0) bloomberg.com U.S.-China Tensions Exposed Quickly at Start of Alaska Talks Nick Wadhams 19 March 2021, 01:00 GMT+8 The first face-to-face talks between senior U.S. and Chinese officials since President Joe Biden took office got off to a rough start on Thursday, with each side sharply criticizing the other over a range of contentious issues. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken began his remarks at the meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, by vowing to raise concerns about recent cyber attacks, the treatment of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang and Beijing’s increasing control over Hong Kong. He said China’s actions threatened the international order and human rights. “The alternative to a rules-based order is a world in which might makes right and winner takes all and that would be a far more violent and unstable world,” Blinken said. Chinese officials shot back in kind, with State Councilor Yang Jiechi offering a lengthy monologue in which he said Western nations don’t represent global public opinion and called the U.S. the “champion” of cyber-attacks. “Many people within the United States actually have little confidence in the democracy of the United States,” he said, citing the killing of Black Americans and the Black Lives Matter movement. Near the end of his opening remarks, he said Blinken’s comments weren’t “normal” and added that in response “mine aren’t either.” The combativeness signaled just how difficult the talks will be. The two sides scheduled a series of three negotiating sessions on Thursday and Friday, but the U.S. sought to set low expectations for a breakthrough. Coming into the meeting, it was increasingly clear that despite Biden’s criticism of former President Donald Trump, he’s unlikely to make major changes to his predecessor’s hard-line approach to China. On human rights in Xinjiang , on Hong Kong’s and even on tariffs, Trump-era policies remain in place. “At least initially, they’re sticking with what Trump left them,” said Aaron Frieberg, a professor of foreign policy at Princeton University and a national security aide under President George W. Bush. “On concrete things like saying China is committing genocide in Xinjiang -- that was a land mine left for them on the way out the door -- instead of trying to work around it, they just embraced it.” Earlier: U.S. Cautions China Meeting Unlikely to Yield Breakthrough China is the most prominent example of Biden’s continuity with Trump so far, but there are others: On Saudi Arabia, Biden held back from sanctioning Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman even as he went beyond Trump by publicly implicating him in the death of columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Biden is taking up Trump’s push to reinvigorate the Quad alliance of the U.S., Australia, Japan and India. Blinken has praised Trump’s “Abraham Accords,” the rapprochement between Israel and countries in the Middle East. And while Republicans in Congress accuse Biden of weakness, he is sticking to opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany, is refusing to remove sanctions on Iran unless it returns to compliance with the nuclear accord that Trump abandoned and is keeping up a frequent resort to financial sanctions as a tool to express disapproval. Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal. LEARN MORE