The real reason for the Petronas delay

[TerriblePerson]

[quote=“investor”]

@TerriblePerson

Russia and China, regardless of how you feel about the way their country is governed, are no more politically unstable than the U.S.

Russia as stable as the US? Really? How many revolutions and defaults has the US had over the past 100 years?

As for China, it is an oligarchy with a huge, impoverished lower class population. I would take the US with its large middle class and stable democracy any day.

There’s a reason why the US dollar is the world’s reserve currency and US Treasury bills are its de facto risk-free asset. Unless everyone else is wrong and you’re correct, of course.[/quote]

I’m not going to argue monetary policies. America is de-facto risk free for now but is bubbling on trouble once again. And the 2008 burst and the dot com fizzle show that pegging ones economy to American foresight isn’t always the best policy.

But as for political stability, I believe you’ve chosen the century mark to fit your own narrative. China’s inequal distribution of income is somewhat replicated in the United States right now. The divide between the rich and poor is a siginficant political issue in the lower 48.

I think when you comment on the United States as a safe harbour, you are picturing the the baby boom generation of the 50s and 60s and the recovery growth from two world wars, which has slowed down no matter how many rising tides are created. That`s when the middle class was robust and an actual political force. That’s not 2014.

And its not like it is impossible to see the United States as a nation that slips in to chaos. If you open the lens up a mere 50 years, in no way can you say that is true – unless civil wars and revolutions are only worth marking in Asia and Russia.

And simply saying that if you invested in an American stock 100 years ago, you’d be rich is inaccurate without specifics. If you had invested in a dot.com business in the late 90s, you might not be so rich. The same can be said about investing wealth managers such as Bernie Madoff. There is quite a bit of risk in any investment regardless of where it is placed, and I’m not so certain that the U.S. would be where I want to be hedging my bets.

Now, that doesn’t mean you aren’t right about national monetary policies. But it is innaccurate to say that Chinese and Russian economists can’t see that they can do business without U.S. interference. And there is a lot of LNG out there, not just in the countries you’ve named. China has its own reserves that it hasn’t even begun to frack in to.

I firmly believe that Petronas is going to build its terminal on Lelu. That seems like a done deal. All they are doing is squeezing Canada for concessions. And no, I don’t admire that as I don’t feel it is my inherent responsibility to add the riches of the very wealthy.

[PLA]

@investor

Russia as stable as the US? Really? How many revolutions and defaults has the US had over the past 100 years?

Did you not forget that a few years back the US nearly defaulted before deciding to lift the debt ceiling once more? This is one of many.

As for China, it is an oligarchy with a huge, impoverished lower class population.

China only has lower and upper class residents, their middle class population are nearly nonexistent. China is also one of USA’s functioning credit cards.

I would take the US with its large middle class and stable democracy any day.

The US style electoral system is not a good example to look up to.

There’s a reason why the US dollar is the world’s reserve currency and US Treasury bills are its de facto risk-free asset.

That could change at some point, depending on what the US politicians are doing right now.

@investor

If you’d done the same in Russia, you would possibly have been imprisoned, bankrupted, seen your money confiscated, or sent to a gulag in that time.

Before Putin, there was Boris Yeltsin. That guy literally let the oligarchs run the country after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia today still has some corruption going on, but imagine what would’ve been like if it weren’t for Putin.

@investor

Astro - you just sound crazy now.

He maybe a conspiracy theorist from time to time (ie: Fukushima, coastline full of LNG, North America Union, etc…), but we can’t ignore the fact that the US is still at the crossroads. Whatever the direction the Americans are going will have some impact on us.