As part of its special report on ageing populations, Economist has a section on China’s dramatic rise in dependency ratio. The chart says it all. Check it out here.
Perhaps, if you are on the subject of ageing, you should treat yourself to Lucy Kellaway’s always-a-pleasure to read piece on ageing and the comparisons that ageing [...]
My weekend reading in the typical Swiss summer day (that is, minimum temperature in single digits and maximum temperature in mid-teens) was the 100-page US Administration proposals for financial sector reforms. It is clearly an improvement over status quo. Some key loopholes are plugged. Many are not. More importantly, these are only proposals. Real legislative action is yet to [...]
In his piece in ‘Project Syndicate’, Prof. Eichengreen writes as follows:
What China lacked was not demand for consumption goods, but a supply of high-quality financial assets.[More here]
Prof. BE makes a mistake, in my view, of course. China’s lack of high-quality financial assets and lack of demand for consumption goods (low and falling household consumption share [...]
It is a proposal. The Congress has to approve it. It will be mangled by the time it emerges at the other end. The Financial Services Forum – a lobbying group – has expressed satisfaction. That is not a good sign.
Without going into details – which we will later – what are the key principles?
Capital [...]
The emerging markets are a very heterogenous bunch. Their recent economic performance and prospects range from quite good (India, Turkey, Brazil since the end of the destocking implosion), to prima facie quite good (China) to pretty mediocre or bad (Central and Eastern Europe), to dismal (Russia).
Those emerging markets that (1) did not have their domestic [...]
Morgan Stanley not to be outdone by peers now recommends that Indonesia should make BRIC BRIIC. They are correct to make that call. I am glad that good minds think alike.
Bibek Debroy writes a wonderful blog post on the Government Savings Bank Act of 1873. I would not spoil the surprise for you. Go read the short and hard-hitting stuff here.
The Indian Express editorial on the Naxalite actions near Bokaro is a reminder of the challenges faced by India that stock market bulls do not [...]
Lord Skidelsky writes that Keynes felt that we needed different economic models for different times. That is as it should be, in social sciences.
That is what John Hussman alluded to last week when he said financial asset prices too have a context that went into the judgement of whether they were too high or too [...]
‘Outmanoeuvred’ by Jamil Anderlini and Sundeep Tucker in FT is a good article on the failed deal between Chinalco of China and Rio Tinto of Australia. It has many parallels to what happened in the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) bid for Unocal in the US.
I am almost done with James Kynge’s ‘China [...]
Prof. Barry Eichengreen and his co-author do a wonderful job of tracking this economic slowdown compared to the Great Depression of the 1930s. So far, it is tracking worse than that but the policy stimulus has been rather more substantial and massive, this time around. See their wonderful charts here.
That is all well and good but [...]
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