Hardly a week goes by without some Democrat Party hack putting finger to iPad and swiping out a screed about the Republican Party's problem with women or minorities. This time it was Debbie Wasserman Schultz with "The GOP's Woman Problem." Schultz claims that the Republican Party was "rejected again by a bloc of voters that make up more than half of the electorate." That claim is as real as Schultz's hair color. The Republican Party doesn't have a "woman problem." Romney in 2012 won the votes of white women in every age group; including young women. And Obama lost white women as he did all white voters. He lost white voters by 59% to 39%. He lost white voters of every age and gender. His loss among white voters was completely unprecedented for any winner of a presidential election. The GOP doesn't have a "woman problem," but the Democrats have a "white woman problem" and a "white man problem." The articles about the GOP's problem with minority voters blame the Republican Party for alienating minority voters. But shouldn't the Democrat Party be held accountable for alienating white voters? This is about more than just numbers.

China’s leaders have brushed aside warnings of an incipient credit crunch in the Chinese economy, determined to purge excesses from the financial system despite falling house prices and the deepest industrial slowdown since the Lehman crisis.

Industrial production dropped 0.4% in August from a month earlier, a rare event that highlights how quickly China is coming off the boil. The growth of fixed asset investment fell to record lows.

“It is a shockingly sharp deceleration,” said Wei Yao, from Societe Generale. “What is surprising is the calm response from Beijing. The new leadership’s tolerance for short-term pain seems to have jumped by another big notch.”

Electricity output has dropped 2.2% over the past year as the authorities continue to force dinosaur industries into closure, chipping away at excess capacity.

New credit has fallen 40%, and there has been an outright contraction of trust loans and undiscounted bankers acceptances over the past two months, the result of a clampdown on parts of the shadow banking nexus.

Premier Li Keqiang has so far refused to blink, determined to drive through deep reforms and wean the economy off exorbitant levels of debt before the damage becomes irreversible. “We are restructuring instead of expanding the monetary supply,” he said last week, warning markets not to expect easy money to ignite a fresh boom this time.

But will he and his fellow Communist Party leaders keep not blinking?

Something extraordinary has happened.   On August 31, PLO chief and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told an audience of Fatah members that Egypt had offered to give - give, as in cede sovereignty to - the PA some 1,600 square kilometers (625 square miles) of land in Sinai adjacent to Gaza, thus quintupling the size of the Gaza Strip. Egypt even offered to allow all the so-called "Palestinian refugees" to settle in the expanded Gaza Strip.   Then Abbas told his Fatah followers that he rejected the Egyptian offer. On Monday (9/08), Israeli Army Radio substantiated Abbas's claim.   According to Army Radio, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi proposed that the Palestinians establish their state in the expanded Gaza Strip.   In his speech to Fatah members, Abbas said, "They [the Egyptians] are prepared to receive all the refugees, [and are saying] ‘Let's end the refugee story.'" "But," he insisted, "It's illogical for the problem to be solved at Egypt's expense. We won't have it."   In other words, Sisi offered Abbas a way to end the Palestinians' suffering and grant them political independence. And Abbas said, "No, forget statehood. Let my people suffer."

Powerful investors across the world have woken up to the possibility that Scotland may vote to break up the United Kingdom next week (9/18), with some already preparing defensive action that risks a potentially dangerous flight from sterling and Britain's bond market. Japan's biggest bank, Nomura, has advised clients to slash financial exposure to the UK and brace for a possible collapse of the pound after polls showed the independence campaign running neck and neck, warning that the separation of England and Scotland after more than 300 years would be a "cataclysmic shock." Stephen Jen, head of SLJ Macro Partners and a Chinese-speaker from Taiwan, said Asian investors are flabbergasted by the sight of an ancient and successful union tearing itself apart for no obvious reason. "It is totally bizarre. They simply don't understand it, and nor do I. Until a week and half ago everybody thought there was a zero probability of Scotland voting Yes," he said. "We have always assumed the United Kingdom would stay united, but now everything we thought about the UK has suddenly been tested, and will have to be repriced." Simon Derrick, from Bank of New York Mellon, said the UK is leveraged to global financial cycle and has become a magnet for the "carry trade", sucking in funds from Japan, the Middle East and other regions searching for yield. Mr. Derrick said a 15% plunge in sterling is "quite conservative" given the dangers of a messy divorce. "We think the high $1.40s against the dollar is entirely feasible. People always underestimate how far sterling can fall when the tide turns," he said.

Oil prices have fallen to a nine-month low, with surging supply from OPEC - the Saudis have opened the taps - the US flooding the market, and fresh demand wilts, leading to an "oil glut" in the Atlantic region despite the twin crises in Iraq and Russia. The Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), the leading oil think tank, said yesterday (8/12) that the world will consume less crude than experts had thought this year. Saudi Arabia's supplies are running at the highest level since last September and crude from Libya is back on the market. The IEA cut its forecast for the rise in global consumption to just 1m barrels a day (b/d) this year due to near recession conditions in Europe and as pervasive weakness in the world economy disappoints. This comes as supply rises by a further 300,000 b/d beyond what was already planned. The warning sent Brent crude prices tumbling to $104 a barrel, the lowest this year.  US crude is now at $96. The sudden shift in the balance of the market has allowed the OECD club of rich states to build up their oil stocks at the fastest rate in eight years, creating an extra layer of protection against any possible supply shock from Russia and Iraq.  This good news is disastrous for the Kremlin.

China will redouble its efforts to nationalize Christianity, a senior Chinese official announced on last Thursday (8/07). "The construction of Chinese Christian theology should adapt to China's national condition and integrate with Chinese culture," Wang Zuoan, director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs, said at a Shanghai forum on the "Sinicization of Christianity," according to Chinese state media. Gu Mengfei, deputy secretary-general of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement - a state-sanctioned umbrella organization for Protestant churches - elaborated on the initiative. "This will encourage more believers to make contributions to the country's harmonious social progress, cultural prosperity and economic development," Gu said. As the name implies, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement - which long predates the establishment of the People's Republic of China - has Chinese nationalism at its core. The Three-Selfs are the three principles of self-support (financial independence from foreigners), self-leadership/governance, and self-propagation (indigenous missionary work). Nonetheless, the officials' comments last week indicate that the Chinese Communist Party intends to further tighten its grip over Christianity. There are a number of possible targets and motivations for the crackdown.

The Kremlin's gamble has gone horribly wrong. The eastern regions of Ukraine have failed to rise in mass support for Putin's front organizations, led by political operatives from Moscow, and patently run by the Russian security apparatus (FSB/GRU) as even Russian newspapers admit. Mr. Putin has failed equally to drive a wedge between America and Europe, or to paralyze the EU by playing off one country against another. Mr. Putin now faces draconian sanctions from the US, EU, Japan, Canada and Australia together. He can strike back by asymmetric means -- perhaps a cyberattack -- but tit-for-tat retaliation can achieve nothing. There is no equivalence. Russia's economy is no bigger than California's. This is an economic showdown between a $40 trillion power structure, and a $2 trillion producer of raw materials that has hollowed out its industrial core. Mr. Putin is counting on acquiescence from the BRICS quintet as it confronts the West, and counting on capital from China to offset the loss of Western money. This is a pipedream. Beijing will reduce Russia to a vassal state of China.  Vladimir Putin is quickly becoming the ruination of Russia.

America's Mr. Obama insists that various forms of "renewable" energy are the wave of the future and worth spending countless billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize.  He is precisely wrong.  An example emerged on my side of the Pond here in Britain the other day.  My train was diverted by engineering works near Doncaster. We trundled past some shiny new freight wagons decorated with a slogan: "Drax - powering tomorrow: carrying sustainable biomass for cost-effective renewable power." Serendipitously, I was at that moment reading a report by Dr. David McKay, chief scientist at the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change on the burning of wood in Yorkshire power stations such as Drax. And I was feeling vindicated. Believe it or not, Drax imports a million kilotons of wood from Canada and the US a year to burn in its power station in place of coal, producing twice-as-expensive electricity requiring government subsidies.  And it plans to increase its imported subsidized wood to seven million kilotons a year by 2016. When I wrote how ludicrous this is in the London Times,  there was a howl of protest on the letters page from Drax's chief executive.  Now, Dr. MacKay's report vindicates me.  The entire rationale for burning wood rather than coal is that it allegedly produces fewer CO2 emissions.  Yet the report shows that, if the wood comes from whole trees, as much of it does, the result is an increase in emissions compared with coal. And that's allowing for the regrowth of forests. Nonetheless, the renewable-energy bandwagon careens onward, costing ever more money and doing real environmental harm, while producing trivial quantities of energy and risking blackouts next winter.  This applies to every form of renewable energy.  Here's the scorecard in Britain.

It is certain that a Russian made anti-aircraft missile fired by Russian armed, trained, and commanded Ukrainian "separatists" shot down Malaysia Air flight MH-17 last week killing all 298 passengers and crew aboard. Yet even if this was a conscious act perpetrated by the Russian government under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, we already know what is going to happen to Putin in particular and Russia in general. Nothing. Despite widespread disgust at Russia's involvement in this act of terrorism the odds are that Putin simply toughs it out and moves on.  The Kremlin's standard strategy will work once again:  1) obfuscate and confuse the truth by spreading several made-up disinformation stories; 2) delay or block any attempt to find out what happened; 3) depend on European (and now American) cowardice in confronting the Kremlin; 4) double down in the face of criticism. Putin realized from the earliest moments that his thugs in eastern Ukraine, if not his army, were behind this operation. The last wreckage from MH-17 had hardly stopped bouncing when Russian media was reporting two different stories. These were for the consumption of its domestic audience and of subscribers to Ron Paul's newsletters.