As international attention focuses on resolving issues on the Korean peninsula, trouble is brewing in a different Asian arena. The South China Sea is one of the world’s busiest shipping routes, an extremely productive fishing area, and is reported to contain vast deposits of oil and natural gas. The Sea is bordered by Brunei, China, […]
An excellent New York Times article yesterday discussed how democratic politics and bureaucracy in India prevent the elimination of infrastructure bottlenecks, especially in transportation. The article focused on India’s railway system, where freight rates are expensive, travel times excessive, and traffic volumes inadequate to the task of fostering strong economic growth…of the pace we see in China. […]
An excellent issue brief from the Arms Control Association points out that a ban on major weapon deliveries, hardly mentioned if at all in most press coverage, is one of the most significant provisions of the sanctions the UN Security Council imposed on Iran last week. Resolution 1929 directs all states to “prevent the direct […]
I have long said in my China posts that China does not have a lot of options right now besides buying US treasuries. The AP article below describes how China has increased its purchases of US debt in recent months. If you are going to hold your currency undervalued in order to run massive current account […]
As noted in an earlier post, inflation is a sensitive issue in India. In addition to worrying about over-heating, today a preoccupation in many Emerging Market Economies (e.g. China and Brazil), Indian politicians are concerned that when food prices rise, millions may starve. JPMorgan below analyzes the latest inflation report, including double-digit price hikes in the food category. Moreover, with only modest capital expansion going on […]
In an earlier post, I discussed a theory I developed that democratic countries with divided, often coalition, governments generally produce weaker public finances than countries where two dominant parties alternate in power. India is the posterchild for the former, with government debt at about 80% of GDP, very high for an emerging market economy. In order to […]
Rai al-Shaab (Opinion of the People), a Sudanese newspaper run by opposition leader Hassan al-Turabi, published an article earlier this month describing a secret weapons factory run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on Sudanese soil. Sudanese officials have since arrested and tortured al-Turabi and several of his staff members and shut down the […]
My PC suffered a massive failure last week keeping me from the blogging scene. Currently traveling but wanted to pass on some thoughts on President Obama’s nomination of retired Air Force General James Clapper as the new Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the latest round on UN sanctions against Iran. I first became aware […]
Henrique Meirelles, Brazil’s central bank president, helped save President Lula’s hide back in 2003 when the bond markets priced Brazilian sovereign bonds at default levels. He was a key pillar of Lula’s credible economic team, which convinced markets that the firebrand leftist was not going to spoil Lula’s predecessor’s hard work crushing pernicious hyperinflation. Lula had the […]
On June 7, the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, D.C., sponsored a discussion of the Polakow-Suransky book in which Shimon Peres is said to have offered apartheid South Africa nuclear weapons–the subject of an earlier blog. The discussion involved several experts on Israel and international affairs, notably Avner Cohen, author of The Worst Kept Secret: Israel’s […]
Turkish President Gul pictured with the world’s most notorious extremist, who is quoted in the article below as saying that the Zionists are “holding up the flag of the devil itself…” and are “the backbone of the dictatorial world order,” taking a page again from Julius Streicher’s Der Stuermer. In its drive to be a regional power, […]
Interesting Economist article (below) discussing whether other Asian currencies — the Korean won, Thai Baht, Singapore dollar, Malaysian Ringgit, New Taiwan dollar, Vietnamese dong, Indian rupee, Indonesian rupiah — track the Chinese yuan in order to maintain competitiveness in US markets relative to China as well as access to the Chinese market. There have been […]
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