June 14 – Reuters : “Some Hong Kong tycoons have started moving personal wealth offshore as concern deepens over a local government plan to allow extraditions of suspects to face trial in China for the first time, according to financial advisers, bankers and lawyers familiar with such transactions… ‘It’s started. We’re hearing others are doing it, too, but no-one is going to go on parade that they are leaving,’ the adviser said. ‘The fear is that the bar is coming right down on Beijing’s ability to get your assets in Hong Kong. Singapore is the favored destination.’”

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June 11 – Associated Press : “President Donald Trump complained… that President Xi Jinping enjoys a major advantage in the U.S.-China trade war in that he controls China’s central bank while Trump must deal with a Federal Reserve that is ‘very destructive to us.’ Trump made clear in an interview with CNBC his frustration with a system that provides political independence for America’s central bank — something most economists see as vital to its credibility. Trump noted that China’s president, by contrast, is essentially also head of the Chinese central bank. ‘He can do whatever he wants,’ Trump said… Trump also complained that even though he selected four of the Fed’s five board members, including elevating Jerome Powell to chairman, ‘We have people on the Fed that really weren’t, you know, they’re not my people.’”

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