Well, this is a very interesting article. Up to the part "The Crash Changes
Everything" it is all exceedingly familiar. But the observations about the
City are fascinating and require inside knowledge. The key point is here:

In 2013, the City began marketing itself as the offshore centre for China.
> Again, this was driven in part by commercial logic, but also by political
> choice. The UK authorities, under David Cameron’s government,
> selfconsciously repeated the eurodollar strategy of their forebears. The
> City of London would provide China and its banks with a platform to
> globalise the yuan.
>

The creation of the eurodollar market in the 1950s unleashed both global
industrial investment and contemporary financial capitalism. The ecological
damage this caused, is alas, calculable (it is the cultural damage which is
not). The suggestion this could happen again, in a different form, is
momentous.

Another way of saying the same thing is that this article provides the
beginnings of an answer to the puzzling question, Which capital interests,
and which political figures representing those interests, could possibly
have seen an advantage in Brexit? Now one can reply, Of course, it's clear:
those who sought to play an intermediary role between the declining West
and the rising power of Asia. For indeed, the Eurodollar market,
unconstrained by any regulatory apparatus, was able to play that mediating
role between a declining Europe and the rising US. Were the financiers of
the City, unleashed from EU regulation, able to replay the same strategy
today, the consequences could be staggering. However the final point of the
article is ominous:


> The eurodollar world that took shape in the 1960s mapped neatly on to the
> outlines of Nato. It had Washington’s assent. It was, as we say nowadays, a
> geo-economic bloc. The same cannot be said for Britain’s China venture.
>

A full connection to the global financial markets would be the equivalent
of throwing gasoline on China's economic bonfire. At the very least,
geopolitical embers will fly. The fire could well get out of control. We
need to know much more about the dynamic that is being described in this
article.

thoughtfully, BH
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