Mar 26th, 2010
Correction: Two days after I posted the entry below I received a rather testy email from John Frisbie. In the USCBC statement to which I was referring he claimed that the EPI report was “built on the faulty assumption that every product imported from China would have been made in the US otherwise.” I foolishly [...]
The Chinese new year has only just started, and already trade tensions are ratcheting up. This is perhaps appropriate — astrologers tell us that the year of the Tiger is often a year of instability and conflict — and I suspect things will almost certainly get worse. The timing of various domestic political events in [...]
Jan 21st, 2010
I can only submit a very short entry this time to discuss the raft of numbers that came out this morning. Regular readers will suspect that once again I am going to suggest that the numbers gave grist for everyone’s mill – optimists will see their hopes confirmed and pessimists will see their worries confirmed. [...]
Jan 1st, 2010
I just got back to Beijing three days ago and am still seriously jet-lagged, but I wanted to post a piece today anyway. Last night I celebrated the new year at D22, where a group of very cool musicians (including the amazing Snapline, for one of their very few shows this year and perhaps one [...]
Nov 18th, 2009
I finally got back to Beijing Friday, and have spent the past five days getting over jet lag and struggling to climb up the seemingly bottomless pit of unanswered emails. For those many people who have asked me about the East coast tour of the Beijing musicians, I have to say it was really good [...]
Oct 29th, 2009
There were two interesting and related articles Wednesday, both suggesting that the CBRC continues to be worried about the lending boom and is making what attempt it can to slow the growth of future problems. The first article, from Bloomberg, was about the CBRC’s plan to tighten rules for personal loans: China’s banking regulator said [...]
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 [...]
While the G20 leaders make reassuring noises about international trade, I think the risk of rising trade tensions have not abated at all. As I see it, everything depends on whether or not domestic Chinese polices had any role in creating the global imbalances, and if they did, then we are still in the early [...]
Jun 23rd, 2009
William Cline and John Williamson published on Vox an interesting piece earlier this month June 18), titled “Equilibrium Exchange Rates,” in which they try to “estimate a set of medium-run fundamental equilibrium exchange rates compatible with moderating external imbalances” for the 30 largest economies. They assume that a sustainable equilibrium trade balance for the US [...]