Apr 28th, 2010
One nice things about writing a blog is that I don’t need to be topical. Not only can I write worriedly about rising contingent debt levels three or four years before they become obvious, but I can also revisit a controversy that took place March involving Paul Krugman and Stephen Roach. I revisit this old controversy [...]
There seems to be a thaw in the currency war. President Obama and President Hu had a long telephone conversation today and my guess is that the Treasury will hold off on naming China a currency manipulator in two weeks. I hate to be a pessimist, but this might be very temporary. Unless the US [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Dec 11th, 2008
“The most striking real economic fact of the past several months is not continued U.S. economic weakness, but that China’s economy has slowed much more quickly than anyone had forecast,” Australia’s central bank Governor Glenn Stevens said this week. Not quite “anyone”. Quite a few people who read this blog, some of them quite prominent, [...]