Will China Break?
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on December 19th, 2011 5:31 am by HL
Will China Break?
Paul Krugman, New York Times
Consider the following picture: Recent growth has relied on a huge construction boom fueled by surging real estate prices, and exhibiting all the classic signs of a bubble. There was rapid growth in credit "” with much of that growth taking place not through traditional banking but rather through unregulated "shadow banking" neither subject to government supervision nor backed by government guarantees. Now the bubble is bursting "” and there are real reasons to fear financial and economic crisis.
America Goes Back to the Factory
Walter Russell Mead, American Interest
Is American manufacturing making a come-back? According to Joel Kotkin, that’s what the numbers indicate. Thanks largely to the rising cost of wages in China and the discovery of cheap natural gas everywhere from Texas to New York “the U.S. industrial base has been on a powerful upswing, with employment climbing steadily since 2009…In 2011 American manufacturing continued to expand, while Germany, Japan and Brazil all weakened in this vital sector.”This growth isn’t limited to areas which have been traditionally known for manufacturing. The…
Inside the Collapse of MF Global
Matt Koppenheffer, The Motley Fool
“You can't just look at what is good in the moment, what feels good, what works for today may not be the answer that actually helps … two years down the road or five years down the road. You have to make decisions with a longer-term perspective.”– Jon CorzinePrior to stepping into the role as MF Global (OTC: MFGLQ) CEO, Jon Corzine had a penchant for saying all of the right things when it came to how a financial company should be run.
Gingrich’s Iowa Fate
Jennifer Jacobs, Des Moines Register
The novelty of a Newt Gingrich presidency has leveled off as the front-runner’s rivals expose his warts.Will the negativity drag him into the quicksand, or has he become the inevitable winner of the Iowa caucuses, now just 16 days away?“Will (the attacks) hurt him? Of course. They always do,” Mike Huckabee, winner of the contest four years ago, told The Des Moines Register in an interview last week. “But whether it’s enough to knock him out of front-runner status, we’ll find out Jan. 3.”