This week, as advertised on Twitter dot com, the lads are answering your questions.

Among other topics, they cover:

• Rent-seeking behaviour in the West.
• Airbus.
• The German elite.
• The Mexican-American standoff
• Book recommendations.
• The life-changing magic of JM Keynes
• And memes.

Of course, this is also a premium week.

So to get the full two hour show, you’ll have to be signed up on Patreon.

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Go to https://www.Patreon.com/multipolarity.

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Like Germany hiding in the Euro, China have long played the game of keeping their currency soft, to juice their exports.

But now, with the accelerator still jammed to the floor on US inflation, it seems that the powers in Beijing might be looking to devalue the Rimimbi even further.

Everyone plays currency games - the trick is not to get caught. And the problem for China might be that they’re on the brink of embarrassing their adversaries.

Meanwhile, what happens when a miracle becomes a conjuring trick?

After forty years of weaving economic magic, the South Koreans now have the world’s lowest birth rate — and GDP slumping back towards developed economy norms. Are they about to become an early Eastern front runner of the social problems of the west? And can they afford that - given their tough geopolitical neighbourhood?

Exorbitant privilege is what they call the US ability to print the global reserve currency.

So what if the privilege was revoked?

Plenty of apocalyptic fiction has been written about that moment. But this week we’ve done the modelling to put a number on the dent in US living standards.

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Be excellent to each other, and -

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A diplomatic incident in Latin America has somehow become the focal point for an ever-expanding range of stories - from the Venezuelan elections, to US energy policy to Ecuadorian banana exports to Russia.

Leading even coolheaded observers to ponder the question: are we approaching the Latin American embassy incident singularity?

Meanwhile, there are always good tariffs and bad tariffs - and in announcing his new shipbuilding policies, this week Joe Biden’s giving us both a plate of cheese and a plate of chalk.

Finally, Arch-Eurocrat Mario Draghi has made a big speech about European competitiveness. Its 20 years of failure - and its hope for the future.

Is this the first sign of a continent about to flex its soon to be enviable muscles? Or is it the first twitchings of an arthritic bodybuilder about to pop a hernia?