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 [...]
May 3rd, 2009
Things have been so busy this past week with various writing commitments and with the celebration of the third anniversary of my music club (four amazing shows with some of Beijing’s greatest artists and a lot of support and coverage from local music scene participants an the press) that I have been neglecting my blog. [...]
Apr 8th, 2009
I have recently finished reading Martin Wolf’s latest book, Fixing Global Finance, and I strongly recommend it for its very clear laying out of the global balance of payments issues behind the global crisis. I should warn my readers that Wolf and I have come to very similar conclusions about the underlying root causes of [...]
Feb 5th, 2009
Note: In response to many complaints by people who were confused by the headline — I was being sarcastic. Puerile humor, perhaps, but the point is that over the last year it seems that we hit absolute bottom roughly every fifth week. Have we reached a bottom? A lot of analysts are pointing to the [...]
Jul 11th, 2008
The Shanghai stock market capped yesterday’s 1.5% decline with a further decline today of 0.7%. It’s still been a great week, up nearly 8%, but the party, at least for a while, seems to have ended. At least one government official is, alarmingly enough, wondering if there are ways to manage the process better. [...]
Jul 10th, 2008
After I posted yesterday’s entry, one reader (RebelEconomist) asked the following question: You often say China’s money supply is growing fast because of its currency policy. Surely, if this was the case, base money growth would be strong. In fact, it appears to be very weak (growing about the same rate – 11%ish – [...]
After I posted yesterday’s entry, one reader (RebelEconomist) asked the following question: You often say China’s money supply is growing fast because of its currency policy. Surely, if this was the case, base money growth would be strong. In fact, it appears to be very weak (growing about the same rate – 11%ish – [...]
Jun 25th, 2008
I just got back from my one-week trip having taken a very early morning flight, so I am a little too tired to write much for today’s entry, but I couldn’t let pass a media report earlier this afternoon that claims that China’s foreign currency reserves at the end of May reached $1.797 trillion.. Although [...]
Jun 15th, 2008
The CPI numbers released Thursday have created a wide variety of responses among analysts and economists, both inside and outside China. Some are hailing the reduction in CPI as an indication that China may have turned the corner on inflation, whereas others see this as a temporary reduction that will soon reverse as inflation spreads [...]
Jun 4th, 2008
I was just sent a very interesting paper by German economist Jorg Bibow of the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College (The International Monetary (Non-)Order and the “Global Capital Flows Paradox”). In it the author considers the “paradox” of high and rising capital flows from developing to developed countries during the past decade. This is [...]