Since this is another long posting, it might make sense to summarize briefly its two parts. In the first part, expanding on an OpEd piece of mine published by the Wall Street Journal on Monday, I argue that China’s “nuclear option”, which has generated a great deal of nervousness among investors and policy-making circles in [...]
Oct 26th, 2009
This weeks’ entry is fairly miscellaneous, a consequence both of the amount and variety of news coming out of China and my own hectic schedule, which prevents me from dealing with all of these issues in a more unified way. Between lots of investor meetings and finishing up a number of writing commitments, I am [...]
By coincidence I had two OpEd pieces that came out last week, one in the WSJ and the other in the Financial Times. The latter came about because about a month ago Martin Wolf asked me to write a piece based on my June 20 entry. The former came about on the previous Friday when [...]
Aug 3rd, 2009
Some of the blog readers have noticed some weird goings-on with recent entries. From time to time an entry will pop up that seems totally inappropriate to current events. Sorry. This is because the old host of my blog, when it was on a different site, is closing down, and I have been going through [...]
My blog has been blocked in China. Given all the internet blocking that has happened in the past few months I guess this is not much of a surprise, and I was sort of waiting for it to happen, even while I was hoping that it wouldn’t. I think after a few months – probably [...]
Jun 20th, 2009
I am, still trying to work out the implications for China of a rise in US household savings, but here is how I see it. I welcome comments that may help me refine or refute this argument. For the sake of simplicity I am going to assume that there are only two countries, the US, [...]
I am still working on my piece on the global savings adjustment and will probably post it in the next week or so. The main point is to discuss what the implications are for China if we see simultaneously over the next few years an increase in US savings and a reduction in global investment. [...]
Mar 5th, 2009
Strangely enough I think I am among the least disappointed people about Premier Wen’s speech this morning during the opening of the National People’s Congress. Like most people I think there was very little of substance in the speech except the usual statements about boosting consumption, maintaining growth, and promoting social welfare – all easier [...]
Mar 3rd, 2009
With the tense start of China’s parliamentary season this afternoon – and with the National People’s Congress meeting Thursday – there isn’t much incentive to try to figure anything new out in China since we are likely to be given a lot more information and proposals over the next few days. What are the major [...]
Sep 4th, 2008
Earlier this week I was talking to my grad student Shang Ning about the awful markets around the world, and he suggested that maybe it was a good thing that Chinese stock markets were closed this week for National Day since this would act as an extended circuit breaker that might protect them from collapsing [...]