China's silver economy, Gulf Coast LNG terminals in question, sci-fi chip manufacturing & the forlorn hope.
Great links, images and reading from Chartbook newsletter by Adam Tooze
Thank you for reading Chartbook newsletter.
Giulia Andreani, Untitled.
Andreoni was born in 1985 in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Her remarkable work chronicles the shadow of a monumental century of hope and struggle by asking — as does much feminist criticism — how grand public battles relate to intimate and private worlds. In Andreoni’s case that means pushing at discomforting questions, like what kinds of fathers Hitler’s generals were and how Margaret Thatcher would relate to babies in distress, as well as the ambivalent forms of empowerment in women taking over men’s jobs in wartime capitalist countries. As such, she treats art as a realm of imaginative construction against both patriarchy and capitalism, summoning images that pose political questions. Art Basel has this discussion:
…she has made the struggles of the 20th century into the raw materials of her work. Payne’s grey, a color invented by the 18th-century British landscape artist William Payne, has become her signature. ‘It is a bluish gray with a bit of red and earth – the color of shadow and fog,’ she explains. ‘It is my way of staying connected to the images I use as source material, which are all in black and white. Color would be too loud in my work.’ The battles of the First World War, the resistance against fascism of all kinds, the Cold War, the ardors of feminism all fascinate her. She unearths images from disparate archives, then recomposes and reinvents them in her paintings…
This is the free version of Top Links. To get the full Top Links feed with lots more material and analysis, please click here:
China’s silver economy
Yet the sheer size of China’s elderly population — a fifth of the country’s population was 60 or older as of 2022 — should mean new growth sectors that should start to attract more funding. Beijing this week seized the initiative with a plan to develop a “silver economy” that caters to senior citizens with tailored products and services, a market estimated to be worth trillions of dollars. Health-related consumption, ranging from medical devices to pharmaceuticals, would account for the biggest share of spending among the older age group.
Source: FT
America’s LNG export boom in question
The US natural gas industry is on high alert as the Biden administration reconsiders the way it licences massive new export terminals for the fuel, under pressure from climate campaigners escalating a fight against fossil energy infrastructure. Construction of liquefied natural gas terminals along the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic coasts have vaulted the US above Qatar as the top global LNG exporter, enabling it to replace critical European supplies after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The US became the world’s largest LNG exporter in 2023. Its seven existing terminals can produce as much as 86mn tonnes a year, according to the Energy Information Administration — enough to satisfy the combined gas needs of Germany and France. Five more projects under development will add another 73mn tonnes a year and the energy department is reviewing proposals for at least another 16.
“If the industry builds out everything it wants, there will be more greenhouse gases from US-exported LNG than from everything that happens in the continent of Europe,” said Bill McKibben, head of climate campaign group 350.org. “That’s why we’re asking the Department of Energy to halt new permits while they refigure their formula for deciding what’s in the public interest.”
Source: FT
Ghana’s reprieve
Subscribers only.
America’s debt time-bomb
Subscribers only.
Dear Reader,
Glad you are enjoying this Top Links. Chartbook Newsletter is fun to write. And I’m delighted it goes out for free to readers around the world. But it takes a lot of work! What sustains that effort are voluntary subscriptions from paying supporters. As a thank you, several times per week, paying supporters of Chartbook Newsletter receive an email like this, jam-packed with fascinating images, links and reading, as well as longer analytical essays. This free email is just some of that content. If you would like to receive the full Top Links in future, click here to join the supporters’ club:
Giulia Andreani, Le Cours de Dessin, 2015
The Miracle of ASML
Subscribers only.
Forlorn hope
To sit with Andreani’s reconstructions of twentieth century images and their legacies, this entry from Wikipedia on a military term tells how a simple act of mistranslation, of hearing wrong across languages, turned the stuff of risk, bravery and potential loss into sadness — which is how risk looks later, after its defeat, and so perhaps stands in for our twenty first century orientation to twentieth century struggles:
A forlorn hope is a band of soldiers or other combatants chosen to take the vanguard in a military operation, such as a suicidal assault, or the first men to climb a scaling ladder against a defended fortification, or a rearguard, to be expended to save a retreating army, where the risk of casualties is high… The term comes from the Dutch verloren hoop, literally "lost heap". The term was used in military contexts to denote a troop formation. In the 16th century, when English-speakers first encountered the phrase, it was misheard as "forlorn hope", giving an added meaning to the term. While verloren is correctly identified with the English "forlorn" (both words stemming from the Proto-Germanic ferliusan), the Dutch word hoop (in its sense of "heap" in English) is not cognate with English "hope": this is an example of folk etymology. This folk etymology has been strengthened by the fact that in Dutch, the word hoop is a homograph meaning "hope" as well as "heap",… In German, the term was Verlorene Haufen, which has the same meaning as the Dutch term (i.e., lost heap), the word Haufen itself being a general term for a company of Landsknecht. In French such a band was known as les enfants perdus— "the lost children". In the New Model Army of the English Civil war, the "forlorn hopes" could lead a storming attack …. In the German mercenary army of the Landsknechte these troops were called the verlorene Haufen, and carried long doubled-handed swords, with which they had to hew their way through the massive pike formations opposing them. Members of the verlorene Haufen earned double pay, thus giving them the name of Doppelsöldner ('Double-wagers'). As a field sign, the verlorene Haufen carried a red Blutfahne ('Blood Banner').
Giulia Andreani, L’improduttiva, 2023