Fri 2010-04-02 19:12 EDT

Shopaholic China: China's Global Shopping Spree: Is the World's Future Resource Map Tilting East?

Michael Klare, TomDispatch

...anticipating the kind of voracious resource consumption that goes with anticipated future growth, and worried about the availability of adequate supplies, giant Chinese energy and manufacturing firms -- many of them state-owned -- have been on a veritable spending binge when it comes to locking down resource supplies for the twenty-first century. They have acquired oil fields, natural gas reserves, mines, pipelines, refineries, and other resource assets in a global buying spree of almost unprecedented proportions...

China's Global Shopping Spree; Shopaholic China; world's future resource map tilting east.

Tue 2010-03-09 17:33 EST

The Golden Truth: Is a Big Oil Producer in the Middle East Hoovering Gold?

Yesterday, The Gartman Letter contained a comment from a Canadian "friend" who stated that according to his sources: ...an oil producer in [the Middle East] is converting about 200,000 BPD of oil sales into gold bullion - this offtake would equal about 6% of annual gold production...the quiet flight from dollars is accelerating ...Europeans have become extremely fearful of a global systemic collapse and many wealthy people there are buying as much gold/silver as they can and taking direct possession in order to avoid depository fraud...

big oil producers; Golden Truth; Middle East Hoovering Gold.

Mon 2010-03-08 09:41 EST

Truthdig - Calling All Rebels

Chris Hedges

There are no constraints left to halt America's slide into a totalitarian capitalism. Electoral politics are a sham. The media have been debased and defanged by corporate owners. The working class has been impoverished and is now being plunged into profound despair. The legal system has been corrupted to serve corporate interests. Popular institutions, from labor unions to political parties, have been destroyed or emasculated by corporate power. And any form of protest, no matter how tepid, is blocked by an internal security apparatus that is starting to rival that of the East German secret police. The mounting anger and hatred, coursing through the bloodstream of the body politic, make violence and counter-violence inevitable. Brace yourself. The American empire is over. And the descent is going to be horrifying...

called; rebel; Truthdig.

Thu 2010-01-07 19:04 EST

Andy Xie: Why China and Japan Need an East Asia Bloc

By promoting ideas that lean toward Asia, DPJ's leadership is signaling that Japan wants less dependence on the United States. This position offers a hope for the future to Japanese people, whose economy has been comatose for two decades. Closer integration with Asian neighbors could restore growth in Japan...The best approach would be for China and Japan to negotiate a comprehensive FTA that encompasses free-flowing goods, services and capital. This task may appear too difficult, but recent changes have made it possible. The two countries should give it a try.

Andy Xie; China; East Asia Bloc; Japan needs.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Finance and business comments Thu 2010-01-07 19:00 EST

Global bear rally of 2009 will end as Japan's hyperinflation rips economy to pieces

The contraction of M3 money in the US and Europe over the last six months will slowly puncture economic recovery as 2010 unfolds, with the time-honoured lag of a year or so. Ben Bernanke will be caught off guard, just as he was in mid-2008 when the Fed drove straight through a red warning light with talk of imminent rate rises -- the final error that triggered the implosion of Lehman, AIG, and the Western banking system. As the great bear rally of 2009 runs into the greater Chinese Wall of excess global capacity, it will become clear that we are in the grip of a 21st Century Depression -- more akin to Japan's Lost Decade than the 1840s or 1930s, but nothing like the normal cycles of the post-War era. The surplus regions (China, Japan, Germania, Gulf ) have not increased demand enough to compensate for belt-tightening in the deficit bloc (Anglo-sphere, Club Med, East Europe), and fiscal adrenalin is already fading in Europe. The vast East-West imbalances that caused the credit crisis are no better a year later, and perhaps worse. Household debt as a share of GDP sits near record levels in two-fifths of the world economy. Our long purge has barely begun.

2009; Ambrose Evans Pritchard; Business Comment; ending; finance; Global Bear Rally; Japan's hyperinflation rips economy; pieces.

Mon 2009-12-21 19:22 EST

china study group >> Blog Archive >> America's Head Servant? The PRC's Dilemma in the Global Crisis

New Left Review has just published an article by Ho-fung Hung that: * sketches a history of the trade dependence of China on the US; * compares China to other industrializing East Asian countries and finds China an outlier, largely based on what Hung calls the urban bias of the Chinese state... Discuss!

America's Head Servant; blogs Archive; china study group; Global Crisis; PRC's Dilemma.

Mon 2009-12-21 19:18 EST

America's Head Servant? The PRC's Dilemma in the Global Crisis

Ho-fung Hung

...Despite all the talk of China's capacity to destroy the dollar's reserve-currency status and construct a new global financial order, the prc and its neighbours have few choices in the short term other than to sustain American economic dominance by extending more credit...the historical and social origins of the deepening dependence of China and East Asia on the consumer markets of the global North as the source of their growth, and on us financial vehicles as the store of value for their savings. I then assess the longer-term possibilities for ending this dependence, arguing that, to create a more autonomous economic order in Asia, China would have to transform an export-oriented growth model--which has mostly benefited, and been perpetuated by, vested interests in the coastal export sectors--into one driven by domestic consumption, through a large-scale redistribution of income to the rural-agricultural sector. This will not be possible, however, without breaking the coastal urban elite's grip on power.

America's Head Servant; Global Crisis; PRC's Dilemma.

Mon 2009-12-21 18:29 EST

China's Economy: Decoupling from what? - Drorism*

One of the most popular memes repeated by mainstream media since the collapse of Lehman Brothers last year is the idea that China will manage to avoid the consequences economic downturn by shifting from an export-based economy to one based on local consumption...the "decoupling" theory proved to be false: The downturn in the developed world had a significant impact on China's economic well-being, causing a dramatic rise in unemployment and a sharp slowdown in economic growth...A new study published by Professor Hung Ho-fung...compares China's development path to that of other Asian economies, including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong. It provides a concise summary of political and economic events in East-Asia since World War II as well as some colorful predictions and recommendations...

China s Economy; decoupled; Drorism.

Willem Buiter's Maverecon Thu 2009-10-15 16:51 EDT

Kornai on Soft Budget Constraints, Bail-Outs and the Financial Crisis

Nobel Prize winning economist J��nos Kornai

...Spreading of the SBC syndrome is at once a cause and an effect of the crisis. I will not say it is the only cause: the situation that led to the crisis was brought about by a complex of factors. But I will say firmly that softening of the budget constraint is one of the main causes of the crisis. The general softening tendency has been reinforced in the United States and several other countries by successive bailouts over the last ten or twenty years. Some economists, such as Professor Chenggang Xu, have been pointing for years at a close link between the crisis in East Asia and earlier bailouts. [moral hazard generalized]

bail-outs; Financial Crisis; Kornai; Soft Budget Constraints; Willem Buiter's Maverecon.

Sat 2009-10-10 14:19 EDT

A financial revolution with profound political implications

Robert Fisk

The plan to de-dollarise the oil market, discussed both in public and in secret for at least two years and widely denied yesterday by the usual suspects -- Saudi Arabia being, as expected, the first among them -- reflects a growing resentment in the Middle East, Europe and in China at America's decades-long political as well as economic world dominance. [dollar losing reserve status]

financial revolution; profound political implications.

Willem Buiter's Maverecon Sat 2009-10-10 13:13 EDT

I know I know nothing; but at least I know that

Willem Buiter

...Except for the important qualifier that the US dollar is a global reserve currency, and that the US government (and private sector) has most of its domestic and external liabilities denominated in US dollars, the pathologies of financial boom, bubble and bust in the US, the UK, Iceland, Ireland and Spain (and many of the Central and East European emerging market economies) track those of classical emerging market crises in South America, Asia and CEE in the 1990s, rather well. The emerging market analogy makes one less optimistic about a robust recovery, as typically, emerging markets whose financial sector was destroyed by a serious financial crisis took many years to recover their pre-crisis growth rates and often never recovered their pre-crisis GDP paths.

know; least; Willem Buiter's Maverecon.

Tue 2009-10-06 21:12 EDT

The demise of the dollar

Robert Fisk

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning -- along with China, Russia, Japan and France -- to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar...Sun Bigan, China's former special envoy to the Middle East, has warned there is a risk of deepening divisions between China and the US over influence and oil in the Middle East. "Bilateral quarrels and clashes are unavoidable," he told the Asia and Africa Review. "We cannot lower vigilance against hostility in the Middle East over energy interests and security."...

demise; Dollar.

Sun 2009-09-20 12:17 EDT

Michael Hudson - financial economist and historian

Publications by financial economist and historian Michael Hudson, on finance and accounting, real estate and history of ancient Near East (reform, taxation, monetary, investment, instability, poverty, development, globalisation, real estate, statistics, property, land, value, reform, taxation, rent, Henry George, international, finance, IMF, World Bank, critique, euro, policy, Sumer, economic, history, Babylonia, usury, interest, rates, ancient, U.S., imperialism, privatization, urbanization, national, income, accounts, wealth, distribution, money, credit, monetarism, criticism, creditary, financial)

Financial economist; historians; Michael Hudson.

Satyajit Das's Blog - Fear & Loathing in Financial Products Sun 2009-08-30 12:20 EDT

El-dollardo Economics

In the 1980s, the Japanese were taking over the world. In the 1990s, it was going to be an ?Asian? century. These days the pundits are betting on the ?Chinese Age?. Like all such glib predictions, despite their superficial appeal, they mask complex undercurrents and issues that require careful study. Business journalist Michael Schuman's The Miracle: The Epic Story of Asia's Quest for Wealth. Paul Midler's Poorly Made in China; quality fade. Underlying both `The Miracle' and `Poorly Made in China' is a view of the emerging world best captured by the term `Orientalism', associated with Edward Said...the West's view of the East was shaped by political power and unequal commercial exchange. Said's work built on George Orwell's criticism of colonialism. Former Chinese premier Zhao Ziyang's secret journal `Prisoner of the State' provides antidote to a Western view of East Asia.

El-dollardo Economics; fears; financial products; loath; Satyajit Das's Blog.

Mon 2008-03-31 00:00 EDT

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iraqi cleric calls off militias

raqi Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr has ordered his fighters off the streets of Basra and other cities; Mehdi Army will remain intact

BBC News; Iraqi cleric calls; Middle East; militia.