Bi-Weekly Geopolitical Report
Bi-Weekly Geopolitical Report – The Oil Weapon Returns (October 2, 2023)
Bill O’Grady | PDF Oil is arguably the most critical commodity. Although food is perhaps more essential to life, most food production today is dependent on fossil fuels. Daniel Yergin’s epic history of oil, The Prize,[1] examines who had oil, who needed oil, and what they did to secure it. Due to oil’s importance, there… Read More »
Bi-Weekly Geopolitical Report – Goodbye Prigozhin (September 18, 2023)
Bill O’Grady | PDF On August 23, an executive jet carrying seven passengers and three crew members crashed near Moscow on a flight to St. Petersburg. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, a private Russian military company, was reportedly one of the passengers. Prigozhin was having an eventful summer. He had led an… Read More »
Bi-Weekly Geopolitical Report – Reflections on the New Cold War (August 21, 2023)
Bill O’Grady | PDF Note: Due to the Labor Day holiday in two weeks, the next edition of this report will be published on September 18. Our geopolitical research over the past 15 years has had a consistent theme—that U.S. hegemony is under strain. Essentially, costs of America’s hegemonic role have become unbearable for the… Read More »
Bi-Weekly Geopolitical Report – The Economics of National Defense in Great Power Competition (August 7, 2023)
Patrick Fearon-Hernandez, CFA | PDF Tensions between the United States and China continue to worsen, with the two nations hurtling toward each other in a geopolitical game of chicken that, in a worst case scenario, could potentially end up in war. In the distance, a few possible off-ramps still hold promise, but the two powers… Read More »
Bi-Weekly Geopolitical Report – China’s Collapsing Population (July 24, 2023)
Patrick Fearon-Hernandez, CFA | PDF In early 2020, we published a detailed, multi-part analysis of global demographic trends (see our Weekly Geopolitical Report from February 10, 2020). That report showed how falling birth rates and rising life expectancies have led to slower population growth, population aging, and weaker economic activity in countries ranging from China… Read More »
Bi-Weekly Geopolitical Report – The 2023 Mid-Year Geopolitical Outlook: The Polycrisis (July 10, 2023)
Bill O’Grady, Thomas Wash, and Patrick Fearon-Hernandez, CFA | PDF As is our custom, we update our geopolitical outlook for the remainder of the year as the first half comes to a close. This report is less a series of predictions as it is a list of potential geopolitical issues that we believe will dominate… Read More »
Bi-Weekly Geopolitical Report – Distinguishing My Wife From a Hat, an AI Story (June 26, 2023)
Thomas Wash | PDF In his book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales, Oliver Sacks, a neurologist, details his experience with patients suffering from varying neurological disorders. In one such case, he dealt with a man who had lost the ability to recognize faces. The patient was a… Read More »
Bi-Weekly Geopolitical Report – The Issue of the Terms of Trade (June 12, 2023)
Bill O’Grady | PDF In a recent Bi-Weekly Geopolitical Report, we discussed the emergence of the petroyuan. One of the important aspects of that report was that foreign nations were beginning to pay for oil in their own currencies. As we noted in the report, George Shultz and Henry Kissinger negotiated a deal with the… Read More »
Bi-Weekly Geopolitical Report – China’s New National Security Law (May 30, 2023)
Bill O’Grady | PDF In late April, China released a new version of its national security law. Shortly thereafter, some prominent U.S. firms were raided by national security operatives, and there were reports of database access being restricted. In this report, we will discuss the new law and who has run afoul of the rules… Read More »