The Gold Standard  

Wall Street Journal carries an interview with Jim O’ Neill of Goldman Sachs on the BRIC resilience. The four BRIC countries collectivley contribute to 15% of global GDP, 5% more than what Goldman  Sachs first predicted in 2002, for the end of the decade. More here.
Iin the PEW Annual Global Attitudes Survey, American President gets [...]

Caijing magazine has two interesting pieces – one is its editorial on China’s monetary policy and the other is on the amount of road construction that is taking place in China.
It is hard to be ambiguous with a sub-title like this:
A policy that encourages loose lending and investment is driving China’s economic engine down an [...]

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has released its half-yearly report on India’s foreign exchange reserves. It has been around since February 2004. So, this is the 12th report. It is not too long and provides useful information. It is interesting to know that the RBI uses external asset managers to manage a small fraction of [...]

‘Business Standard’ newspaper carried an excerpt from the speech of Mr. Bimal Jalan on July 15th. I happened to see it today. The difference between outsiders and insiders turned outsiders giving policy suggestions is evident in the precision and the specific nature of the suggestions made. The former runs a higher risk of being arm-chair. [...]

I like his nonchalant scepticism in this interview. Stephen Roach on CNBC Worldwide Exchange. (ht: zerohedge). Just in case you missed it, this post by Michael Pettis on China Real Estate is a must-read.

The UK Central Bank – Bank of England – has a publication called Agents’ summary of business conditions – similar to the US Federal Reserve’s Beige Book. Somehow , I feel that it is better to read, view and the charts are nice and colourful. The July issue of the Agents’ summary of Business Conditions [...]

If any one who follows more closely than Brad Setser, US trade deficits, its financing, global central banks’ reserves accumulation and sovereign wealth funds, then I am yet to find that person. This post by Brad Setser on the open announcement by China of its decision to put its reserves to use to fund overseas [...]

(1) IMF Executive Board Concludes 2009 Article IV Consultation with Japan
Public Information Notice (PIN) No. 09/82
July 15, 2009
They expected a sustained recovery to take hold next year, in line with a pick up in global growth, with inflation in mildly negative territory during the slowdown. However, Directors emphasized that the outlook is exceptionally uncertain. [...]

Come to think of it, the entire edition of 16th July of WSJ could be labelled a China special. Check out the following: 
‘China growth brings risks’ (here); Sinopec’s ex-chief convicted of graft (here), U.S. urges China to improve business climate (here), Quarterly foreign exchange reserves surge (here), Follow China on copper (here) and Chinese upstart [...]

After spending a month in Zurich (I had to be based there for two months from mid-May to mid-July), while walking towards the gate to board the flight back to Singapore, my 10-year old daughter summarised years and tomes of research on Euroscelorosis, deteriorating competitiveness with this one sentence: things were not only expensive in [...]