Tag Archives: China

Bursting China’s Property Bubble

China’s growth has been "unbalanced, uncoordinated, and unsustainable," its outgoing premier Wen Jiabao admits. And popular resentment is rising. So recent actions by China’s new leadership beg the question whether it will try to satisfy the rising expectations of its huge population, and prevent the growing polarisation of wealth from leading to open revolt, by swapping breakneck growth for greater social equity.
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Fossil Fuels and Nuclear are the Only Ways to Satisfy Global Electricity Demand

The good news is that emerging economies in Asia, Latin America, and Africa are set to boom in the coming decades. The bad news though – if you’re a deluded environmental activist - is that their growing energy needs cannot possibly be met by renewable energy, as their large and growing populations invest in infrastructure and housing. The world’s “insatiable demand” for energy will instead have to be met by an increased use of coal, the International Energy Agency admits. Coal’s share of the global energy mix will continue rising, with coal closing in on oil as world’s top energy source by 2017.
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Insourcing is All the Rage

Rising wages and poorer productivity growth is shifting the global terms of trade, to the advantage of the West, as I pointed out in Bursting the Bubble of Chinese Competitiveness last year. But there are some interesting manufacturing synergies as well, which lie behind General Electric’s decision to move much of its far-flung appliance manufacturing operations back home and Apple' decision to start manufacturing in the US, as this article on the“in-sourcing” boom in the Atlantic explains.
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Is a Global Aviation Trade War About to Break Out?

The EU’s emissions trading scheme could trigger a full scale global aviation trade war within weeks. A total of 30 countries which signed the Moscow Joint Declaration in February – including Russia, India, and the US - have threatened to retaliate. But China has upped the stakes by warning that it is prepared to impound European aircraft, if the EU punishes Chinese airlines for non-compliance, according to Reuters.
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Pushing on a String in China Will Not Save its Stock Market

It’s all going to end in tears for China bulls who are putting way too much faith on China’s ability to stimulate the economy. Chinese premiere Wen Jiabao's may be pushing for growth through monetary policies and fiscal incentives, now that the regime has acknowledged the severity of China’s slowdown. Unfortunately, fine tuning measures will neither save the Chinese economy nor its stockmarket, which has yet to truly reflect reality.
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Brazil’s Consumer Boom is About to Blow Up in Investors’ Faces

Timing is everything when it comes to investing, which is why “playing the growth of the middle class consumer in Brazil” is likely to prove a major conceptual blunder by fund managers selling the idea of emerging market ‘decoupling’ to unsuspecting retail investors - even as the tide turns on the emerging markets growth story. No county has benefitted more from China’s economic growth, and unparalleled demand for resources than Brazil. But it is also because of its American-style consumer debt bubble that it is likely to prove one of the most leveraged bets on emerging market growth.
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A Glut of Metal Stocks in China Spells Doom for Mining Companies and Australia

Chinese construction has sowed the seeds of its own destruction, and that of the commodity producers who have supplied it. The unprecedented build up of metal stocks in China suggests the global economy is in real trouble, Reuters reported yesterday.
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The Game is Up for the Commodity Super-Cycle as the Yo-Yo Years Begin

If a blizzard of awful Chinese economic data isn’t enough to convince you that China is heading into a deflationary slump and the commodity “super-cycle” is coming to an end, then the deepening crisis in the euro-zone should be. That’s because not only will a massive reduction in foreign lending by European banks hurt investment in emerging markets, but supplier economies will be hit disproportionately, as they were post-Lehman.
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Looming Electricity Shortages are Killing Jobs in Britain

Disadvantaged by carbon emissions regulations, the developed world is losing jobs to the developing world at an alarming rate. But nowhere is investment more threatened by energy policy than in Britain, the only country in the world which is committed to closing down virtually all of its economy, so that it can cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by 80% of 1990 levels by 2050.
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Germany’s Approaching Götterdämmerung

Germany has been viewed as a safe haven by investors, until now. After all, its export sector has been booming. But investors are beginning to bet against Germany and its manufacturing firms, as a break-up of the euro-zone creeps ever closer. This is because the cost of failure for Germany is growing fast, and the Bundesbank may be trying to force the government’s hand before it digs itself a deeper hole.
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