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 [...]
Oct 16th, 2009
The release of September trade data earlier this week was pretty interesting, although because of two or three extra working days last month, plus the very big holiday at the beginning of October which might have pushed activity into September, some of the comparisons are misleading. Exports were down 15.2% year-on-year, better than the expected [...]
Sep 11th, 2009
Regular readers of my blog will have noted all sorts of unfortunate goings on here in recent days. It has become impossible to get into the comments section, or indeed into any other section of my blog except the front page, and so to my great dismay the excellent discussions that have been so useful [...]
Sep 3rd, 2009
The Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets are still hogging the spotlight. Although down 18.0% from its recent peak exactly one month ago, the past three days have been good for Chinese stock market investors. After rising 0.60% on Tuesday and 1.17% on Wednesday, the SSE composite was up a very smart 4.79% today. So what [...]
Aug 31st, 2009
According to a recent article on Reuters, on Saturday Lou Jiwei, the chairman of the CIC, China’s sovereign wealth fund, said at a conference on Saturday in response to a question about his expected performance: “It will not be too bad this year. Both China and America are addressing bubbles by creating more bubbles and [...]
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 [...]
Jul 29th, 2009
I am working on a fairly long entry that I will post this weekend about why a trade rebalancing and a consumption/savings rebalancing will take place in both China and the US whether or not we want it. This week has been crazy, among other reasons because a festival in Taiwan has invited one of [...]
Jul 24th, 2009
Although I am often surprised by how eagerly foreign commentators have embraced the Chinese fiscal stimulus story and see it as a great, shining success, I am happy to say, mercifully, that in China there is a lot more skepticism. There seems to be a serious debate among Chinese policymakers over the stimulus package. The [...]
Jun 8th, 2009
Today is the second day of the dreaded gaokao, the national college entrance exam that more than half of all Chinese kids in their age cohort will sit to determine whether or not they will go to university (just over 60% of the test takers will start college next September) and, much more importantly, which [...]
May 20th, 2009
Last week I spent in Brazil, where I was honored to meet someone I admire very much, former Brazilian President FH Cardoso, along with a large group of Brazilian investors, politicians, and academics, including several old friends. At some point I will write about some of the things I learned there, but I am still [...]