Forget scripted television. If you want Game of Thrones-style palace intrigue, you can do no better than Beijing in 2020. There are all sorts of rumors floating around, few of which can ever get confirmed. It’s not that there are rumors but rather how many of them, and how they don’t seem to be stamped out with the usual regularity [...]
Imagine you are locked in your home and can only go outside of it to purchase the bare necessities (this would’ve sounded ridiculous in every year before 2019). For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume that you normally spend $100 every month, half of that on the basics. Thus, for the month preceding this lockdown you’d have laid out the full hundred [...]
In sharp contrast to the sentimental deference towards central bank stimulus exhibited by Germany’s ZEW, for example, similar Japanese surveys are starting to describe potential trouble developing. Like Germany, Japan is a bellwether country and a pretty reliable indicator of global economy performance. Both of these places had solidly indicated the globally synchronized downturn long before it was recognized in [...]
At the monthly press conference China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) now regularly gives whenever the Big Three economic accounts are updated (this time along with quarterly GDP), spokesman Liu Aihua was asked by a reporter from Reuters to comment on how the global economic recession might impact the Communist government’s long range goal of reaching its assigned GDP target. [...]
Sporting goods and hobby stores, easily understandable. That category includes all kinds of leisure activities. In addition to basketballs and crafts, there’s musical instruments and books. Not long ago, the bookstore was practically extinct yet here it is making book on this trend. According to the Census Bureau, retail sales recorded at all the various types of retail outlets included [...]
After the Diamond Princess cruise ship docked in Tokyo with tales seemingly spun from some sci-fi disaster movie, all eyes turned to Japan. Cruisers had boarded the vacation vessel in Yokohama on January 20 already knowing that there was something bad going on in China’s Wuhan. The big ship would head out anyway for a fourteen-day tour of Vietnam, Taiwan, [...]
These numbers do seem epic, don’t they? It’s hard to ignore when you have the greatest percentage increase in the history of a major economic account. Just writing that sentence it’s difficult to deny the power of those words. Which is precisely the point: we already know ahead of time how the biggest economic holes in history are going to [...]
Here they are again, seemingly at odds over how to proceed. Reminiscent of prior battles over whether to revive the economy or just let it go where it will, it appears as if China is in for Xi vs. Li Round 2. Or is it all just clever politics?Li Keqiang may be nominally the Chinese Premier but he’s a very [...]
The Chinese are well past their trough, so there may be some meaningful interpretations for us to take from their data. Then again, we already know there’s not much there from China’s trade figures. Exercise caution, in other words.One key reason why is that China’s going to get hit with a second wave. Virus outbreak maybe, economic disruption definitely. The [...]
Technically, by showing one decimal place maybe this doesn’t exactly qualify. Then again, I was only half serious. When Mexico’s government reported earlier this week that auto production fell by almost 100% in April, I wrote it was suggestive of the great possibly lingering difficulties being forecast for the other side of this economic dislocation. Automakers, basically, aren’t buying the [...]
Stay In Touch