Apr 13th, 2009
Exports in March dropped a less-than-expected 17.1% from the same time last year – below expectations of 20% and the 21.1% drop for the first two months of 2009. Most of the articles I read in the Chinese and foreign press including, not surprisingly, comments from the customs bureau, hailed this as a sign that [...]
Mar 17th, 2009
The market (or at least that part of the market that obsesses over balance of payment flows) has been swept with rumors today that foreign exchange reserves were down in January by $30 billion. My experience with these sorts of rumors is that they tend to be fairly accurate, and I suspect they will soon [...]
Jan 21st, 2009
I have been on the road for the past few (and next ten) days, in part because of Spring Festival, so I haven’t been able to post as much as I normally do, but I was asked to write an article for a Chinese magazine, which I recently finished, on comparisons between today and the [...]
Jan 15th, 2009
I think if I were an economic policymaker in China I would be spending most of my time thinking about the money supply and how it works. There is a small but growing possibility that Chinese monetary conditions are going to go wrong at exactly the wrong time, and policymakers will need to have a [...]
The US loses the most jobs since 1945, the Financial Times headline blared out yesterday. According to the article: The US economy lost more than half a million jobs in December for the second month running, figures showed on Friday, making 2008 the worst year for job losses since 1945 and intensifying pressure on Congress [...]
Between the holiday slowdown and the number of writing commitments I have it has been a little too easy to neglect my blog. What free time I have has been spent reading, and I am reading for the third time what I think is one of the best books ever written on financial history – [...]
Dec 3rd, 2008
The government was actively buying stocks today and as a result, not surprisingly, the market surged on hopes that they are serious about putting an end to the bear market. After declining yesterday by 0.3%, the SSE Composite jumped 76 points today to close the day at its high of 1965, up 4.0%. Central Huijin, [...]
Nov 8th, 2008
I always seem to be traveling when exciting things are happening. I just got back this morning from four days in Paris, where I had to go for our annual Board of Directors meeting (and took the opportunity in addition to meet a number of investors and government officials), and so I was in a [...]
Oct 15th, 2008
After the globally coordinated rescue package was announced Monday the Chinese stock markets boomed in sympathy with the rest of the world, with the SSE Composite closing up 3.6% for the day. Tuesday the SSE Composite shot up 3.5% within minutes of opening, but the party was already over in China. Over the rest of [...]
Sep 29th, 2008
We’re starting the holiday week – October 1 is the anniversary of the 1949 revolution – so markets were closed today and will be closed for the rest of the week, and there’s a pretty good chance not a whole lot will happen on the policy front until the end of the holiday schedule. Much [...]