China Financial Markets

Exports in March dropped a less-than-expected 17.1% from the same time last year – below expectations of 20% and the 21.1% drop for the first two months of 2009. Most of the articles I read in the Chinese and foreign press including, not surprisingly, comments from the customs bureau, hailed this as a sign that [...]

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 [...]

On my flight back to Beijing last night I noticed an article in the Financial Times in which Miguel Sebastián, Spain’s industry minister and someone hotly tipped for finance minister, called on Spanish households to stop buying foreign goods and to buy more Spanish goods.   “Right now,” he said, “there is something that our [...]

I suspect most of my readers outside China are more interested in enjoying the holiday season than in spending much time following my blog, while most of my readers inside China are focusing on upcoming exams, but anyway my recent writing commitments are so intense that I haven’t been able to post much recently. For [...]