In Business Monitor Online today, we discuss two important weekend events. It was an unlucky Friday the 13th for France, which lost its AAA credit rating from Standard and Poor’s. Among other things, the downgrade is likely to be prompt a reassessment by investors and the electorate of the Franco-German relationship in ongoing eurozone rescue… [Read more]
Few people would dispute that the relationship between the US and China is the most important in the world, so much so that the term ‘Chimerica’ is used often nowadays to refer to the two countries as a single economy. Both sides generally benefit, if you overlook the huge US trade deficit with China, and… [Read more]
The long-heralded ‘Asian growth story’ is rapidly becoming an ‘Asian collapse story’ in 2009. Perhaps ‘collapse’ is too strong a word, but Business Monitor International (BMI) has recently revised or is currently in the process of revising down its GDP growth forecasts for several Asian economies, including South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, and Hong Kong…. [Read more]