Author Archives: Nick Corbishley

“Money is the oil fueling the economy’s engine. If the amount of oil needed is not supplied, it breaks down.”

In 2009, Ecuadorians voted in a referendum to remove all US military presence from the country. Now, thanks to an agreement signed in the dying days of Guillermo Lasso’s scandal-tarnished government, US troops are coming back. 

“The reason this battle is so hard fought is that it pits two big spending constituencies against each other: banks versus retailers.”

The report calls into question key aspects of India’s digital ID program, including its heavily centralised nature, the reliability of its biometric identification systems and its vulnerability to data breaches.

From Peru to Uruguay, to Ecuador and Guyana, the US is seeking to rebuild its strategic influence in Latin America, one gun at a time.

This will probably not have gone down well with the World Economic Forum, which prides itself on being “the international organization for public private cooperation.”

Other countries that took part include China, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Brazil. Conspicuously absent was any country from NATO, including Mexico’s USMCA trade partners, the US and Canada.

The long-term decline in cash use in the UK appears to have reached its limit, at least for now. 

“Everybody should have a digital ID; everybody should have a bank account; everybody should have a smartphone. Then, anything can be done. Everything else is built on that.”

The US tech firm could not have found a better partner with whom to get back into the facial recognition market than the current UK government.

At the time of its construction, the Panama Canal was (and still is) a marvel of modern engineering. But it is also a single point of failure in a global mesh of tightly coupled supply chains.

“When Russia insults the high representative of the European Union, it is insulting all Europeans.”

How did Brazil, a country that until recently was heavily dependent on cash, reach a point where its politicians are now considering eliminating it altogether? One of the answers is a three-letter word that is now ubiquitous across the country: Pix. 

The country is once again in deep crisis mode, with decades high inflation, a crumbling currency and no foreign currency reserves. It is shackled to the IMF but now faces the possibility of being able to tap alternative sources of finance.

This may be an important battle for Big Ag lobbies and biotech companies but it is an existential one for Mexico, for whom corn is the cornerstone not only of its cuisine and diet but also its culture.