Where finance and media intersect with reality.
And why warehouse receipts originated by foreign participants in China could be the latest incarnation of eurodollars.
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TLDR: Washington’s $55 billion IMF quota increase, criticised by the WSJ as a bad deal, is better understood as a strategic, one-off liquidity concession to China — wrapped in multilateral optics — to head off a destabilising dollar crunch and BRI unraveling. It also helps accelerate America’s pivot away from weakening multilateral influence toward more controllable bilateral dollar swap arrangements.
What looks like a desperate plea from a dollar-rich sovereign is in reality a sophisticated signal about how the plumbing of global finance actually works — and who still controls it in 2026.
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Everyone’s suddenly talking about backwardation, physical differentials and time-spreads. But what do any of these terms really mean? And why do they matter?
Being an extortionist’s preferred currency does not a reserve currency make.
Because that’s what the Blind Spot was made for. Today we assess the emerging anti ‘energy lockdown’ narrative and the Trumpian market manipulation grift that may just be a cover for dual-use finance.
Policymakers are beginning to recognise the importance of homegrown private-sector initiatives in countering dollar-backed stablecoins.
In an information war that’s gone kinetic, the first casualty is still the truth.
Of course not. All attention has been on Iran. But it’s important, because it’s a mirror of the West’s private credit crisis.