The oil-rich countries of the Middle East have some advantages in pursuing the “green” energy market. First, they have pools of investment capital they can turn to this purpose. Possibly more important than access to money is that the funding sources may be willing to take a longer term horizon and lower returns than US […]
Read more...The Wall Street Journal issued a story that appeared to rely on a single source “a person familiar with the data said” and Bloomberg, apparently unable to corroborate the leak, repeated key bits of the Journal article, with attribution. The highlights: Chinese exports fell an additional 2.8% in December versus the prior December, while imports […]
Read more...While it would be easy to dismiss this move by the People’s Bank of China to inch away from dollar based invoicing, the fact is that the use of other currencies for denominating trade transactions has been on the rise. We cited this Globe and Mail story back in February: The chief executive of jewellery […]
Read more...We expected economic conditions in China to deteriorate faster (at least for the next few months) than most had forecast, and that seems to be coming to pass. From Reuters: Chinese factories slashed output and workers at a record pace in December and manufacturing activity overall fell for a fifth month as the global financial […]
Read more...We have worried out loud that the policy remedies being pursued by the US amount to trying to restore the status quo ante to as great a degree as possible, particularly in trying to resturn US overconsumption to something approaching its former levels. Although it may be difficult to work two agendas, crisis response and […]
Read more...Since I am endeavoring to spend some time with my family, forgive me for dispatching this New York Times story, “Dollar Shift: Chinese Pockets Filled as Americans’ Emptied.” The article buys, hook, line and sinker, then- Fed-governor Ben Bernanke’s depiction of so-called global imbalances (the US borrowing from abroad to fund overconsumption; Japan, China, Taiwan, […]
Read more...I am now wondering if Google censors posts (I use Blogger), I put this post up at 1:33 AM, and even had a reader e-mail me that the post had disappeared (with no listing in “Recent Posts” which happens if I put up a post and then remove it). I have a record that it […]
Read more...Liquefied natural gas doesn’t get much attention in the US because in aggregate, it is not a significant energy source here, and imports were at a five-year low in 2008. But supply/demand conditions has shifted dramatically overseas. The combination of depressed LNG prices and cheap shipping means that excess LNG may show up in the […]
Read more...One of the ugly features of the Great Depression that in many (but not all) cases worsened the severity of the contraction was that countries adopted “me first” policies with little regard to their broader ramifications. The poster child of this pattern is Smoot Hawley. Although there is some dispute among economists as to whether […]
Read more...We’ve taken an interest in shipping as an indicator of international trade. The problem, however, is that the most readily tracked measure, transport costs, is more volatile than the underlying volume of goods shipped. Nevertheless, the Baltic Dry Index, which measures the cost of bulk shipments of dry goods, has tanked since May, and a […]
Read more...Although commodities prices have rallied from recent lows based on hopes that trade and manufacturing will recover thanks to various government stimulus plans, reports still show continuing deterioration or at best stagnation in shipment volumes. The latest sighting, on container traffic, comes from the Financial Times. Note that containers carry higher value added goods than […]
Read more...Although talk of deep OPEC production cuts and hopes for an auto industry rescue have given oil prices a boost, the fundamentals are far from out of the woods. Indeed, as OPEC bravely claimed demand and supply really weren’t so far out of whack (was that at effort to set the stage for a less-than-hoped […]
Read more...A comment in the Financial Times, “Prudent Asia is unlikely to bail out the west,” by David Piling, provides a badly needed reminder: societies watch out for themselves first. And the way they define their best interest may not correspond with what we think is good for them. Forgive us for repeating ourselves, but we […]
Read more...This blog, over the last couple of months, has intermittently pointed to the difficulties of obtaining trade finance (particularly letters of credit) as playing a role in the fall in international trade. Because L/Cs are a profitable backwater at most banks, serving smaller/midsized customers (big ones are more likely to deal with existing supply chains […]
Read more...Further signs that the Chinese economy is in the throes of a serious downturn. From Bloomberg: China’s exports shrank last month and industrial-production growth cooled, Fan Gang, an adviser to the People’s Bank of China, said today. “Things are not so good,” Fan said at a forum in Beijing. “November figures will come out soon, […]
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