Jin Liqun, the chairman of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, visited Brookings Institution in Washington on Oct. 21 to explain the importance of the AIIB’s new approach to development financing. Jin tried to put aside any misconceptions about the AIIB viewing itself as a alternative to the World Bank or to the Asian Development Bank. “Both World Bank and the ADB have contributed to Asian poverty reduction over the decades,” Jin said. “But poverty reduction is hard to achieve, not so much because of a lack of funding, but because of the approach. I don’t think poverty reduction in and of itself will go far in affecting the lives of people. In most of the cases, the approach needs to be refined and needs to be improved.” He then went on to describe the situation of a community in a remote area cut off from the outside world. Whatever efforts may be made to relieve their situation will not be of much use, he said, but instead “will make them completely dependent on alms and charity from the government and from international doaners, even though the areas may be very rich in their natural resources,” Jin said. “But the locals have no way of tapping the resources for their own benefit. The only solution in my opinion is connectivity. This will bridge the gap between the local community and the outside world.” And this he explained was what the AIIB wished to accomplish, creating that connectivity.

He praised the ADB and the World Bank, saying that they had contributed greatly to the development of China through the years with its investment in infrastructure, but now that China was becoming a major economic power, it felt it also had a responsibility to begin offering the same assistance to other countries.  He said that the AIIB was formulated as a bank for Asia, an alternative to non-regional financial institutions which also imposed certain conditionalities. But when all these other non-Asian countries wanted to be a part of it, they felt they couldn’t restrict membership to Asian countries alone. The Asian countries will retain the majority holdings in the bank regardless of how many countries end up joining.

While the World Bank originally began with the title International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, with the task of helping in the reconstruction of Europe after the Second World War and then assisting in the development of the Third World countries, by the 1970s, under the combined influence of the growing financial crisis and the paradigm shift towards the zero-growth perspective, the World Bank shifted toward what was euphemistically called “poverty reduction,” income distribution and, under the guidance of Robert McNamara, population control. The “new approach” indicated by Jin Liqun is the type of paradigm shift the world needs to move forward on the road to development.

When someone asked if AIIB would finance China’s One Belt, One Road project, Jin responded that the Belt and Road project were being supported by domestic Chinese funds, including the Chinese Ex-Im Bank, with far greater resources than the AIIB. But if there were to be projects which are a part of the Belt and Road strategy, which were in line with the AIIB’s lending guideline, the AIIB would, of course, be willing to participate.

“You wouldn’t know it from the happy spin emanating from the Oval Office, but a Third World revolt in Bonn, Germany, this week almost derailed the Paris climate change negotiations in November. Although peace has been restored for now, it only happened by papering over this fundamental conundrum: The world can either avert climate catastrophe or seek ‘climate justice,’ not both.”

That is the opening to an article by Reason Foundation’s Shikha Dalmia, titled “Why ‘Climate Justice’ Has India and the West at Each Other’s Throats,” published by The Week. Dalmia does not question the scientific fraud of the whole deal, but is angry at the implications:

“There are no low-carbon energy technologies available today that can sustain the economic growth rates these countries need to lift their people out of abject poverty, let alone offer Western living standards at anything resembling an affordable cost. Over 300 million Indians still live below the poverty line, earning less than $1 per day. India’s per-capita energy consumption is 15 times less than the United States’. India has to keep boosting its energy use, and therefore carbon emissions for at least another two decades to eliminate dire poverty, which is why its reduction plan only commits to slashing ’emission intensity’— its emission rate as a percentage of its GDP— not emissions themselves.”

Focusing on the monetary cost of implementing the demanded emission cuts, Dalmia notes the challenge this would represent “for a country that has yet to offer basic sanitation, transportation, and clean-water infrastructure to all its citizens.”

Even wilder, Dalmia reports that climate hoax fanatics were debating in Bonn whether trade sanctions should be imposed on countries that refuse to kill their populations in the name of fighting carbon dioxide. She warns: “It is also conceivable that a really determined West could use the aegis of some UN-like global agency to create a standing military strike force to bomb or drone countries into compliance? Humanity’s very existence would be at stake, after all. (President Al Gore, anyone?).”

The Federal Reserve’s zero interest rate policy continues to build in a debt crash. The ZIRP policy has fostered massive lending to inefficient industries (shale), overleveraged people (auto buyers), and overindebted companies (buybacks, mergers, etc.). The bubble in U.S. corporate debt, used overwhelmingly to feed the stock market, is growing at a record rate. Just under $1 trillion in investment grade bonds have been issued through September, a 13% jump from 2014 which was a record year. High-yield, or junk bond issuance has been an additional $224.3 billion for the first three quarters, continuing the record pace of 2014, according to SIFMA, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. The junk bond bubble has reached $1.8 trillion, and now $400 billion of it is in the oil sector, plus $350 billion in high-yield, so-called “leveraged loans” to overindebted oil-related companies.

But the earnings of U.S. companies, at the same time, are down about 5% so far this year, compared to 2014; led, again, by energy, where earnings are down by two-thirds. The Wall Street Journal reported Oct. 25: “Quarterly profits and revenue at big American companies are poised to decline for the first time since the recession, as industrial firms warn of a pullback…. From railroads to manufacturers to energy producers, businesses say they are facing a protracted slowdown in production, sales and employment that will spill into next year.” The Journal estimated the S&P 500’s sales revenues would drop 4% in 2015, along with the 5% in earnings.

Manufacturing industry has been going into collapse. In addition to the drumbeat of Federal Reserve district bank reports of shrinking industrial activity and wages (the Dallas Fed just issued its 10th straight such monthly report), large manufacturers with very large numbers of business customers are reporting “recession is underway.” Caterpillar’s three years of continuous and increasing revenue losses have become infamous. Fastenal Co. — literally nuts and bolts, the largest industrial fastener distributor in North America, lost sales this year for the first time since 2009. On an investor call reported in the Wall Street Journal, Fastenal CFO Dan Florness said,  “The industrial environment’s in a recession—I don’t care what anybody says, because nobody knows that market better than we do. You know, we touch 250,000 active customers a month.”

3M Co. said it will lay off 1,500 employees, or 1.7% of its total, as sales growth sagged for a wide range of wares.

ZeroHedge.com cites Fredrik Eliasson, chief sales and marketing officer at railroad operator CSX Corp.: “If you look at …. the broad industrial-production index, you see industrial production sequentially coming down.” It reports that truckload carriers are not seeing any holiday uptick in retailer demand, because business inventories are already so large. Alex Vecchio, a transportation analyst at Morgan Stanley, is quoted: “Transportation companies are typically a leading indicator, and our data is not good.”