China Financial Markets

Yesterday in a meeting I was asked by an investor why, even while I have been writing maniacally about the crucial importance of global cooperation, I was so consistently pessimistic about the possibility of the major economies arriving at a “grand bargain” that will minimize over the long term the cost of the current crisis. [...]

As I reported in last Thursday’s blog entry, last week the research institute associated with China’s Ministry of Finance published a report on its website arguing that China’s central bank should “actively guide” the yuan’s exchange rate and devalue the currency to about 6.93 against the US dollar. The purpose of depreciating, the report said, [...]

Yesterday while I was preparing for my presentation in Hong Kong on the impact of slowing trade on the Chinese economy, one of the participants in the conference passed on to me the January trade numbers, which had just been released. Although they were “surprisingly” bad, and fit perfectly within my very gloomy presentation, they [...]