Monthly Archive for December 2009

The pace of change

Since it is the Christmas holiday, and I am spending the week in southern Spain with my family, I have not been focusing too heavily on economic data and have instead been reading lots of different stuff, including Frederic Wakeman´s excellent The Fall of Imperial China, about the transition from the Qing, especially the late [...]

The Christmas season, upcoming exams, student job hunting, and lots of visitors have made this a tough time to keep track of things but, before I go on to discuss the reason for the title of this entry, I wanted to make a quick comment on the economic numbers that came out last week.  As [...]

How fast does consumption need to grow in China in order for a meaningful rebalancing to take place?  Probably a lot more than you think.  This is arithmetically the case because China is starting from such a low base. At roughly $1.2 trillion in 2008, total Chinese private consumption is only a little more than [...]