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According to a 2017 study by the Brookings Institution, 88 percent of the next 1 billion people to enter the middle class globally will be Asians. The size of the Asian middle class is expected to reach nearly 3.5 billion people, or 65 percent of the world’s total, by 2030, a dramatic increase from 1.4 billion in 2015…Brookings figures that in 2015, newly wealthy consumers in China and India already outspent their American counterparts, accounting for a combined 17 percent of consumption by the global middle class compared to 13 percent for the U.S. That gap will continue to widen. By 2030, the middle class in China and India will spend 39 percent of the global total; the U.S. will account for just 7 percent. ~ Michael Schuman, US News & World Report, January 2018

By Catherine Austin Fitts

The rise of the Asian consumer will have a powerful impact on your life, work, investments, and community for years to come.

Asian growth is driving many current trends, from the rise of megacities, to the heated competition to produce self-driving cars, to wild swings and mergers and acquisitions in pork, wine, and other agricultural markets, and to scores of Western schools adding Mandarin to their curriculum. It is also inspiring fierce competition in currency and financial markets, leadership in technology and space, and growing trade wars.

The goal of our 2nd Quarter 2018 Wrap Up is to help you understand what is happening and to inspire you to anticipate what it can and will mean to you. I will look at the impact on economics, financial markets, geopolitics, and consumer products as well as local communities– as scores of successful Asians and their children study, invest, work, and immigrate globally.

I knew how important this trend was before I started to write the 2nd Quarter 2018 Wrap Up. Having spent the last few months studying it in depth, I appreciate what a complex, fascinating topic it is – and how valuable it will be for you to navigate the changes underway.

Make sure to check out the 2nd Quarter 2018 Wrap Up web presentation. We have an excellent list of movies and documentaries. My bibliography will publish on July 27th with the audio presentation. The written presentation will follow next week.

In Let’s Go to the Movies, I will review Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware.

The most innovative computer hardware is being developed, traded, and used in the city of Shenzhen, a special economic zone in Southern China that forms part of the Pearl River Delta megalopolis immediately north of Hong Kong. Computer makers and software developers from all over the world come to Shenzhen to take an advantage of the fast turnaround of their ideas, and the unlimited pool of tech know-how and electronic components. An open-source philosophy prevalent in the Shenzhen IT world directly opposes the US companies’ policy of protection of intellectual property.

There will be no Money & Markets this coming week as this week is the last of the month. Post your questions and stories for the following week here – I will be speaking with you from Zurich, Switzerland.

Talk to you Thursday!

73 Comments

  1. My husband was a PUD commissioner, on the board of WPPS and the BPA in the 1980’s. His Grandfather was the Chelan County PUD at it’s inceptionin the late 19th century.

    In 1984 the Chelan County PUD hosted a delegation of Chinese, which included the Minister of Energy. The local Chelan County PUD officials were ordered to give the Chinese our Hydroelectric technology. The delegation was in the area for several weeks.

    Everyone on the Commission was somewhat mystified by the Federal government giving away our technology.
    To be honest , I was unreasonably upset about this. In retrospect I understand why.

    As a female I was required not to look the Chinese males in the eye. In fact, I was instructed to not to look at them at all I was told to look down demurly. I took no small amount of grief for refusing.

    I’m fairly certain watching the “miracle” of China’s rise, we in Chelan County were not the only ones ordered to give technology to the Chinese.

  2. Moore’s law noun, often capitalized L
    \ ˈmȯrz- ,
    ˈmu̇rz- \
    Definition of Moore’s law

    : an axiom of microprocessor development usually holding that processing power doubles about every 18 months especially relative to cost or size

  3. Moore’s law noun, often capitalized L
    ˈmȯrz- ,
    ˈmu̇rz-
    Definition of Moore’s law

    : an axiom of microprocessor development usually holding that processing power doubles about every 18 months especially relative to cost or size

  4. Catherine……Masterful commentary throughout the whole Wrap-up! a few comments on Macron of France…the people could not wait to bring him in, and I am wondering who really voted for him. The women? Seeing a good looking, John F. Kennedy type with a fantasy older woman-younger man story? My own sex is sometimes it’s own worse enemy. Certainly not those who own businesses and property. His comments about his country prove his inability to lead it anywhere. I am of French descent on my father’s side; and it is a shame to go and see what is happening with the ‘takeover’.

  5. Catherine……Masterful commentary throughout the whole Wrap-up! a few comments on Macron of France…the people could not wait to bring him in, and I am wondering who really voted for him. The women? Seeing a good looking, John F. Kennedy type with a fantasy older woman-younger man story? My own sex is sometimes it’s own worse enemy. Certainly not those who own businesses and property. His comments about his country prove his inability to lead it anywhere. I am of French descent on my father’s side; and it is a shame to go and see what is happening with the ‘takeover’.

      1. Interesting, so Jim Rogers was right all along to move to Singapore and teach his daughters Mandarin?

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