On the day that China’s President Xi Jinping announced approximately $100 billion equivalent in new funding for Belt and Road Initiative development projects, U.S. President Joe Biden, according to Bloomberg News’ informed sources, decided to request $100 billion in new funding for wars against Russia and China. The contrast in policies for improving human living standards, vs. destroying human life, could not be clearer.
It is estimated that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has, in its first 10 years of operation, created just over $1 trillion worth of investment and construction projects in some 150 countries around the world, with the largest categories of new, physical-economic assets being energy and power, transport, metals, and public utilities including health and education. On Oct. 18, President Xi announced that the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China will create new financing facilities for up to 350 billion yuan (ca. $48 billion); and in addition, a new 80 billion yuan (ca. $11 billion) will be injected into the official funding facility of the BRI, the Silk Road Fund.
On the same day, Bloomberg News reported from “people familiar with the matter” that the Biden White House will, likely by the end of this week, send a request to Congress for $100 billion in new money from taxpayers for wars, with a bar to immigration thrown in. Reported portions of this total vary among various media reports which have now appeared, but it is clear this will be Biden’s push to fund the “Ukraine war” against Russia for at least another full year; to meet all of Israel’s requests for air defense rockets and other arms and intelligence in making war on Palestinian territories; to fund more arms provision to Taiwan in preparation for war against China; and funds “for the Southern U.S. border” generally, to prevent current levels of immigration.
Of course, there is no U.S. House of Representatives Speaker legally qualified to call the House into order to consider legislation for this request.
The dramatic contrast between Xi’s and Biden’s actions call to mind the decade following the 2007-2008 global financial crisis, when both the People’s Bank of China (PBC) and the U.S. Federal Reserve created roughly $14-15 trillion in new currency, potentially new credit. According to PwC’s (PricewaterhouseCoopers) studies of the BRI, the PBC issuances eventually created about $10 trillion in new, real economic assets within and outside China, which was responsible for half the world’s total economic growth for a decade. The Federal Reserve issuances created dramatic inflation in financial assets followed by general inflation, and little or no real growth.
