THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO SHOW UP: China’s Shrinking Population Is Deeper Problem Than Slow Growth for Its Economy.

A rapidly aging population, slowing growth in productivity, high debt levels and rising social inequality will weigh on the country’s economic ascent for decades to come, economists said.

On Tuesday, the same day that China posted 3% growth, the second-worst growth rate since 1976, it also said that for the first time since 1961, its population shrank.

China’s population dropped by 850,000 to 1.412 billion. The shift toward a shrinking population, which came faster than Beijing had projected, marks a watershed moment in China’s history with profound implications for its economy and its status as the world’s factory floor.

The demographic milestone comes when, despite its enormous size, China’s economy is still that of a middle-income, developing country, as measured by average worker incomes when compared with the U.S. and other rich-country peers. China’s leaders have long held the ambition of leapfrogging the U.S. to become the world’s biggest economy, a task made harder by this strengthening demographic headwind, economists say.

“The likelihood of China someday overtaking the U.S. as No. 1 economy has just gone down a notch,” said Roland Rajah, lead economist at the Lowy Institute, a Sydney think tank.

Previously: The Coming Demographic Collapse of China. “Today, the country has a population more than four times larger than America’s. By 2100, the U.S. will probably have more people than China.”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Shockingly, the Trans Cult Keeps Finding Ways to Get Weirder. “Here’s the thing though: the more that the Democrats try to convince us that this is all normal and well, the more outlandish the trans crowd becomes.”

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? Mortgage Buydowns: A New Trend for 2023?

The National Association of Mortgage Brokers (NAMB) describes a mortgage buydown as a type of financing that provides lower interest rates for at least a few years of the mortgage. They’re typically offered by the home seller or builder who contributes to an escrow account that subsidizes the loan during the first few years.

In a 2-1 buydown, homebuyers can save on interest rates for the first two years of the loan but will pay the full interest rate at the time of signing for the third year. A 3-2-1 buydown operates under the same principle: lower payments for the first three years and full interest for the fourth year of the mortgage.

“I’ve seen this a lot in the past, and it’s a way for the consumer to be able to purchase the home they want when increased interest rates would make their mortgage payments too high,” Ernest Jones Jr, NAMB board president, told The Epoch Times. “If the buyer is willing to offer the seller more for their home, the seller will sometimes make concessions in the form of a buydown. However, the home still has to appraise for the higher amount.”

2007-08 was a painful example of what happens when lenders and borrowers use gimmicks to get borrowers into homes they can’t really afford, but the gimmicks never seem to end.

THIS WAS CNN: CNN Is Closing Its Iconic CNN Center in Atlanta. “Originally, the appeal of CNN locating itself in Atlanta was that it remained at a safe enough distance from the coastal elites to maintain an unbiased view of events, at least in theory. But the network gradually moved its operations to the places it initially sought to distance itself from. Only some of the behind-the-scenes operations remain in Atlanta.”

DECLINE IS A CHOICE:

ROBERT SPENCER: Joe Biden Just Torpedoed the Left’s Entire Jan. 6 ‘Insurrection’ Narrative.

WELL DONE, HARRY — IT WASN’T EASY TO TOP THE TRIUMPH TR7: Prince Harry branded ‘worst British export to the US in 200 years’ in strong outburst.

HE ISN’T PARANOID; THE WHITE HOUSE CABAL JUST UNDERSTANDS THAT THEIR PREFERRED POLICIES REQUIRE A DISARMED POPULACE: Paranoid Biden Worries That 2A Supporters Only Want to Overthrow the Government.

KATHERINE BOYLE: It’s Time to Get Serious. “Prevailing wisdom insists that your twenties are for extreme exploration—collecting memories, friends, partners, identities. It’s BS.”

Just months before Sam Bankman-Fried’s unraveling, Fortune Magazine referred to the billionaire as a “trading wunderkind” a latter-day Warren Buffett only with a “goofy facade” and a penchant for fidget spinners. Even after his downfall and subsequent arrest in the Bahamas, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and Axios all referred to Bankman-Fried, or SBF, as a disgraced “crypto wunderkind.”

Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times illustrated his boyishness best when interviewing him at the Times’ DealBook Summit last November. “When you read the stories,” Sorkin said, “it sounds like a bunch of kids who were all on Adderall having a sleepover party.”

SBF’s fate will now be decided by the Southern District of New York, but his media charade of aw-shucks interviews and congressional testimony laced with brogrammer idioms built a public persona that we’ve largely come to accept: SBF is just a kid. Indeed, he’s so young that his law school professor parents were involved in his business and political dealings. (In this, they embody the helicopter style of child-rearing favored by nearly the entire Boomer elite.)

The reality, of course, is that SBF is a grown-ass, 30-year-old man.
…
Perhaps you’ve given little thought to SBF or FTX beyond: WTF!? In which case I applaud your rich social life and sense of restraint.

But the reason this iteration of the time-tested financial fraud plotline matters so much is not because SBF is an exception to the rule of how our culture infantilizes millennials. It’s that he is the rule.

Infantilizing young adults is a convenient way for the aged to hold onto power longer than their sell-by date.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE: Joe Biden Quietly Removed Tax Returns From His Website, and We Have Questions.

THE HEADLINE DOESN’T REFER TO THE PRESS: Prostitutes Join the World Elites at Davos.

HMM: Artists launch copyright lawsuit against AI art generators Stable Diffusion and Midjourney. “Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are trained on billions of images. In the case of the latter, it uses selected datasets from the LAION-5B project, a collection of 5 billion images and associated descriptive captions created by a German-based research non-profit. The scraping is usually done without the artists’ consent and can be used to imitate their art style. Now, three artists—Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan and Karla Ortiz—say this is a violation of several copyright laws.”

REMEMBER WHEN: That Time in 2010 When VP Biden Left Classified Documents Lying Around the West Wing.

LAUGHINGWOLF’S FOLLOWUP on the Texas diner shooter. “What happens now? I think there is a growing probability (not possibility) that we are going to see ‘justice’ dispensed at the street level. When people are scared, do not feel safe anywhere, and have no faith in the system, they tend to take things into their own hands when they can. After all, if they know the person who just threatened them is going to be out in an hour or two after the prosecutor cuts a sweetheart deal with them, why take the risk?”

Read the whole thing.

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP: The Billionaires at Davos Want to Bore You to Death, Literally. “At Davos, the WEF is building a Boring New World where everybody will just want to curl up and die.”

Plus:

• The Revolution is being led by doughy twentysomethings with blue hair.
• Another dog, another hero.
• Remember when San Diego was the sane part of southern California? Me neither.

So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Which Democratic Party Kingmaker(s) Want Biden Out? “With midterms safely past, news about the classified documents (which was known in advance of the midterms) was allowed to leak out, indicating that whoever arranged Slow Joe’s greased-skid path to the White House has lost confidence in his ability not to screw things up so badly that Democrats get slaughtered in 2024. And this despite the decided unpopularity both of VP Kamala Harris and backup catspaw Pete Buttigieg. My working theory is that the same people who installed Biden will try to install Gavin Newsom in 2024.”

LINCOLN BROWN: No More Fun of Any Kind! Don’t Send Your Kids to Syracuse.

FASTER, PLEASE: Game-changing surgery can cure prostate cancer in one hour. “It uses a technique called irreversible electroporation to administer electrical pulses into the tumour, cutting open the membrane of the cells in a far less invasive manner than standard treatments, meaning there are fewer risks to surrounding organs and tissues.”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Democrat First Amendment Haters Never Let Up. “We’ve seen from the Twitter files the lengths that Democrats will go do in order to quash dissent. It’s a mission for them. They hate freedom; therefore, they hate free speech. Can’t have people like me running around out here pointing out that they’re oppressive fascists, after all.”

WTF, WEF? $60 Million From U.S. Taxpayers so WEF Can Fund ‘Playground’ for World’s Billionaires? “Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found that under the Trump Administration, the WEF received $33 million, which outpaced the $26 million in second-term Obama-era funding.”

UM…: New Covid Variant May Target the Vaccinated.

DESPITE? Iranian oil exports end 2022 at a high, despite no nuclear deal.

Tehran’s oil exports have been limited since former U.S. President Donald Trump in 2018 exited a 2015 nuclear accord and reimposed sanctions aimed at curbing oil exports and the associated revenue to Iran’s government.

Exports have risen during the term of his successor President Joe Biden, who had sought to revive the nuclear deal, and hit the highest since 2019 on some estimates.

Ya think Biden should have waited to lift sanctions until after he gets his crappy deal?

THIS IS FINE: President Brain Fog Strike Again! Sings Happy Birthday to…Whom?

Related: Biden Mangles Name of His Own Supreme Court Nominee.

RED STATE’S KIRA DAVIS: Tiffani and Makai Cook Support Fund. “On January 14th, our beloved Tiffani passed away with her mother by her side. She battled lupus fiercely and bravely, and fought to the end, when the Lord saw fit to take her home. At 31 years of age, she leaves behind all of us who loved her so deeply, her mother, two sisters and most importantly, her son Makai – age 7. As we try to navigate Makai’s future as a family, we want to give everyone the opportunity to help provide for the rough days ahead. Tiffani was Makai’s only parent. He will need a lot of care, love and support moving forward. He is surrounded by love, and as his grandmother works to ensure a solid future for him, we’d like to welcome you to support them. Your donations will go to keep things running as “Nana” takes a leave from work to lay her daughter to rest. They will also go to Makai’s education, both current and future, and help provide any other needs that may pop up in these trying times.”

I chipped in.

RUT-ROH [VIP]: Is HBO’s ‘Velma’ Scooby-Doo Cartoon a Right-Wing Psyop? “It’s so bad that lefties who ought to love the show’s woke themes are now claiming the entire thing is an enemy psyop to make them look bad.”