Asia Channel: Latest Posts
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RGE Analysts
The Likelihood of BoJ Easing Next Week
The Fed’s Thursday easing announcement paves the way for the BoJ to announce its own asset purchase program expansion at next week’s policy meeting, in line with our previous view. There are certainly risks to this call: Just today the government released machine orders data showing a far more resilient July than expected, and earlier [...]
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Asia
Time for a Reset? Huawei’s Challenges in the United States
Today, the Chinese company Huawei is a global private-sector trendsetter. In the United States, the government perceives it as a threat. Why? Starting in a one-room workshop in Shenzhen in the early 1980s, Huawei is today a global giant generating over $32 billion in annual revenues, with offices in more than 140 countries. Like many [...]
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Asia
Steve Keen: Should We Be Worried About Australia’s Private Debt Level?
In a presentation Australian economist Steve Keen delivered recently in New Zealand, he describes how, prior to the GFC, he was compiling data for his role as an expert witness in a predatory loan case for NSW Legal Aid. Looking to parse the accuracy of a claim that private debt to GDP had been rising [...]
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Asia
China’s Trade Surplus
The August numbers are in. From MarketWatch: China posted a wider-than-expected trade surplus in August as imports unexpectedly contracted from the year-ago period, suggesting anemic domestic demand, according to data released Monday. Exports exceeded imports by $26.7 billion during the month, beating expectations for a $17.2 billion surplus in a Dow Jones Newswires survey of economists. [...]
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Asia
Arresting Regulatory Failure in the Financial System
This is not the best of times for global finance. The world economy has been under severe stress following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. The fall of the mighty investment bank was a big blow to the global financial system leading to arguably the worst economic crisis since the great depression of [...]
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Asia
China Neocons Are Back: The U.S. Election
As the national conventions loom ahead, Americans prepare to choose the next president on the basis of economic issues. But it is the return of the neoconservatives that will overshadow the discourse on foreign policy – and China. When President Barack Obama arrived in the White House, nine of ten Americans disapproved the direction of [...]
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Asia
How Fast Is the Boat to China?
In our previous article we examined the Intra EU-27 trade during last decade and came to the conclusion that the most significant trend with respect to it has been the new EU member states gaining a significant share of the Intra-EU export pie as a result of their accession to the common market and gradual [...]
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Asia
How Do We Measure Debt?
In the last issue of my newsletter much of the first half was dedicated to a discussion of recent events in Spain and Italy and why they reinforce the argument that several countries will be forced to leave the euro and restructure their debt. The most worrying, but expected, fact was the amount of capital [...]
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Asia
Aging Workforce Threatens China’s Low-Value Production Status
Labor-intensive industries will be forced to move upscale or automate facilities to sustain operations. With first-generation migrant laborers nearing retirement age, what propelled China to its status as the primary hub for low-cost production is now pushing the country out of this very position. Labor-intensive industries such as toys, footwear, caps and textile products are [...]
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Asia
Has the Great Rebalancing Already Started?
The following was written a month ago for my newsletter but because of the virus problem I had on my site I wasn’t able to post it until today. China’s official GDP growth rate has fallen sharply – on Friday Beijing announced that GDP growth for the second quarter of 2012 was a lower-than-expected 7.6% [...]
