Business Monitor International (BMI)’s Politburo Standing Committee sat down yesterday to discuss our thoughts on China in 2012. Below is a brief summary of what we talked about. These notes were prepared for internal circulation, but given the importance of China, and the fact that our regular readers are probably already familiar with our views,… [Read more]
As politicians in the US and Europe fiddle, so global markets burn. With no sign of concerted action on the part of Western institutions to bail out beleaguered peripheral eurozone states or to stimulate economic activity on both sides of the Atlantic, equity markets continue to re-price lower. Looking at the monthly charts of a… [Read more]
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan has described Friday’s devastating earthquake and its aftermath as the country’s worst disaster since World War II. Indeed, it is quite possible that the latest quake will surpass the Great Hanshin Earthquake of January 1995 in terms of lives lost and damages incurred. Japan is better placed than many other… [Read more]
Recent developments in global markets have largely reaffirmed BMI’s pre-existing key views on the eurozone (it looks bad), deflation and inflation (it’s deflation), and the outlook for growth in the second half of 2010 (our expectation for a slowdown is looking better and better). Mark Schaltuper is joined by Tim Cooper, BMI’s Chief Economist, to… [Read more]
Thursday marks the 60th anniversary of the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, and is an opportune time to reflect on where China is going. There is a widespread belief that China is on course for global domination, and this is best captured in the title of a recent book, When China Rules The… [Read more]
In its continuing search to make sense of financial market meltdowns, the Watchdog has detected a pattern in the ongoing crisis: islands are getting hit the hardest. New Zealand (actually two big islands), the home of the kiwi and of the carry trade, is officially in recession. Japan (an archipelago) has been in trouble for… [Read more]
