Barron’s (January 12)
“President Xi Jinping’s men thought they’d escaped 2015’s woes, only to see the floor fall out from under them in the first 10 days of this year. The root causes of instability that’s panicking global markets can be traced back to Jan. 1, 2015, when Xi opted for a muddle-through policy akin to Tokyo’s in the late 1990s.” Xi and crew can still conceivably avoid Japan’s fate by “acting assertively to restructure the economy and repair the bad-debt-heavy national balance sheet. Increasingly, though, Xi’s government is acting like Tokyo’s, circa 1998.”
Tags: Bad debt, Economy, Global markets, Instability, Japan, Panic, Restructure, Tokyo, Xi Jinping
Washington Post (September 16)
Acknowledging he was tainted, Lawrence Summers withdrew from consideration for appointment as Federal Reserve chairman. Global markets surged as the dovish Janet Yellen now looks better positioned to win the influential post. “Shed no tears” for Larry. “Though brilliant, the Harvard economist has nonetheless ticked off too many people in his long and brash career, not only on policy grounds but also because of his famously caustic personality. Note to future careerists: Niceness counts.”
Tags: Career, Chairman, Economist, Federal Reserve, Global markets, Harvard, Janet Yellen, Lawrence Summers, Niceness, Personality, Policy
Euromoney (July 9)
“The new Chinese government’s policy drive to deleverage the banking sector has become more apparent, and that deleveraging will continue to unfold in the next six to 12 months. In what Morgan Stanley calls its ‘super-bear scenario’, it estimates that aggressive policy tightening will reduce Chinese GDP growth to an annual rate of 5.5% in the second half of this year.” If the scenario plays out (a one in ten chance according to Morgan Stanley), it “would have major implications for global markets.”
Tags: Banking sector, China, Deleveraging, GDP, Global markets, Government, Growth, Morgan Stanley, Policy, Scenario, Super-bear
