Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, although it is probably not real explanatory to those who are unfamiliar with both the situation as well as the terminology, we are talking about the collapse and I don't think that is being hyperbolic to use that terminology as it is my understanding that FDIC basically took control of the Silicon Valley Bank at the end of last week, Friday; this is here in March of 2023. A lot of folks out there on YouTube across the internet, just all over the place talking about the Silicon Valley Bank essentially shutting down so this is not something that is particularly big news in the sense of this channel, nor is it something we would normally be talking about except for the minute it happened, a little bell went off on the inside of my head and I started thinking about things people have been talking about with respect to the movement of both capital and expertise into Asia over the course of the past few decades. When I saw that Silicon Valley Bank and this thing is not a Bank in the sense that, it is my understanding it is the second largest bank collapse in US history, second only to what occurred in 2008ish, the so called Great Recession back in the United States, I remember that very well, I was in transition to being over here in Asia, specifically to Thailand so this is pretty big news I think in a general sense.

But something I have been thinking about, I remember reading an article some time ago, it's a long time ago but it has been in the back of my head where they talked about how not only did Financial Centres tend to move and the tendency tended to be West if you are looking at it from sort of a European perspective, it was in London, then it moved to New York; there are arguments that financially it may have moved back to London but as far as innovation, that is what I am talking about when I'm talking about the Yuasa phenomenon. I apologize if I'm mispronouncing this, if it's Yuasa or whatever. I am taking this from Wikipedia so again consider the source but for general information Wikipedia is a pretty good source on the internet.

“Yuasa Phenomenon, named after Japanese physicist and science historian Mitsutomo Yuasa (sometimes referred to as Mintomo Yuasa), suggests that in the modern era, the world centre of scientific activity (defined as producing more than 25% of the world's scientific achievements) moves from one country to another about every 80 to 100 years. Analyzed data suggests the "modern world science centre has shifted from Italy (1504 - 1610) to the United Kingdom (1660 - 1750) to France (1617 - 1840), to Germany (1875 - 1920), and to the United States (1920 to the present)." Quoting further: "The phenomenon and its study methodology are an emerging Scientometrics (whatever that means) Scientometrics study area, indicators are pointing to China rise (I think they meant China's rise) as a world centre of scientific activity. This phenomenon is also described by other names including the Bernal - Yuasa phenomenon."

So again I was kind of seeing it this in the context of Financial Centres but Financial Centres tend to kind of tether to although not be totally completely tied to where the centre is sort of scientific innovation is. I think it is pretty well undisputed that roughly the last at least 20 years but I think you could argue 25 to 30 maybe years that Silicon Valley has been the undisputed epicentre of scientific discovery especially "scientific discovery" occurring in a financially windfall kind of environment. What do I mean? Sort of the Wild West of tech basically. Like where you are basically in a situation where tech is not only being innovated but it is being innovated for a profit very quickly and it is my understanding that SVB or Silicon Valley Bank was a real facilitator of this phenomenon. Now I have also kind of been reading things, and this is just me the layman talking here, reading things about tech and sort of the way things are going, hardware, software, there are some arguments to be made I guess based on things I have read from others that maybe Silicon Valley is not the centre of innovation that it once was, that there are other places.

Meanwhile finance, that is another big issue. To say New York is the centre of Finance now, the financial world, I think that is pretty hard to make that claim these days in light of a lot of other developments most notably the fact that a lot of the Financial Centres in New York move to Florida mostly because they didn't want to deal with all the nonsense that came about as a result of everything that happened between 2020 and 2022 or even 2023 resulting from all the restrictions and things that were imposed on them with regard to doing business for example in the State of New York.

Leaving all that aside, at the end of the day in sort of a broad historical context, these Financial Centres and the centres of innovation move, they move over time. The tendency tends to be sort of west from Europe as we have seen but it may be shifting in an even bigger way I think in the sense that it may have jumped over the Pacific now or maybe in the process of jumping the Pacific and I am going to be really interested, I am not saying there is a causal relationship between the Silicon Valley Bank thing. What I think this is, it is a watershed moment or maybe better to put it as it is a marker, a canary in the coal mine if you will where we can look back and say “oh that was kind of the moment that the tipping point was hit and yeah Asia was the epicentre from that point forward of Technological and Innovation and thereby also was a major epicentre in terms of financial Innovation and financial clout as well.” Now exactly how this plays out remains to be seen. I'm not convinced it goes to any one place by the way. There is a lot of "oh, it is going to move to China." Well China is very good at certain things and they are not very good at certain other things. I mean there has been kind of comparative advantage out there where different countries have gotten very good at different things: Japan for example has its own specialties, Korea has its own specialties, China is what it is and then you even look at other jurisdictions which I don't even think most Westerners are really looking at most particularly down here in Southeast Asia, Vietnam, Thailand; a lot of business has moved out of China in the last roughly three or four years. I think even more will do so as we have seen and discussed in other videos. Amazon is putting in a major infrastructural project into Thailand and in the Eastern Economic Corridor we are also seeing a lot of innovation going on down there. That's to say nothing of other jurisdictions. Vietnam as I already mentioned, but Malaysia, Philippines even Indonesia could get into the mix as it were with respect to this major, possibly major shift. I think we are going through especially here in the 2020s, we are going through just a demographic shift. Not only there is the whole Strauss and Howe Fourth Turning thing you can get into; I don't really get into that stuff on this channel but I love reading about it. I think it's even more profound than that. I think what we are seeing is essentially a return to the mean if you look at the broader historical context that yeah for a brief moment the "West",  what I would even call often times I think this is a good label “the colonial powers", yeah they got really far ahead economically because they essentially developed guns quicker than anybody and artillery capabilities which allowed them to basically conquer places at a much more rapid pace and yes there was capital that came from that, and yes there was development associated with that. I am not saying it was all bad; I am not saying it was all good either by any stretch. The point I am trying to make is if you go back along a longer time line of history, Asia especially East Asia was always the epicentre of major economic development, it was always viewed as the "rich part of the world", the riches of Asia etc, etc. I remember recently reading an article about Marc Anthony and how Marc Anthony desiring to go over the Eastern Roman empire and becoming kind of ensconced in the east. It was just kind of an example of how Western men primarily but Westerners in general have always kind of viewed the East and how they have sort of acclimated into it when they get into the East which is it's in some ways more Spartan in the West compared to the East in certain ways.

Again not to go to deep into that but I just thought this was really interesting. The minute I saw the news specifically about this specific bank, I started thinking of this phenomenon and I am not saying this is happening but I definitely think it is worth looking at because I think it is pertinent for the times and the situation we are currently in.