We are witnessing implied volatility on all asset classes simply collapse to the lowest levels witnessed in 20 years, or at least the lowest levels achieved prior to the GFC in early 2007.
Today Korea is one of the most economically and technologically advanced nations on the planet, but it wasn't always like that. Merely fifty years ago it was one of the poorest places on Earth.
Recent developments indicate that North Korea is very quietly beginning to expand its commercial interests. Some of this is due to internal change, but it would seem that much larger geopolitical forces are at work.
We can all pretend that debt doesn’t matter. We can pretend that demographics don’t matter. We can pretend that raising taxes aids rather than frustrates an economy, and we can pretend that citizens will continue to bend over and be sodomized by central bankers.
Embargos as a rule rarely achieve their intended goal of overthrowing governments. Instead, embargos tend to deprive the poor of basic necessities, enrich government cronies while giving the government an excuse for why their economic policies are failing.
The majority of global growth in the next decade will instead be generated by "frontier markets". in fact, over the past five years, 43 of the 47 highest-growth economies have come from the frontier.
