Jeremy Stevens via Caixin | When the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) was established in 2000 to strengthen China-African economic cooperation and trade, the rest of the world was perhaps bemused. Bilateral trade and investment was minimal and African economic prospects unpromising. Now, just 18 years later, China is Africa’s largest trade partner and bilateral trade and investment ties are growing rapidly.
Justin Irving | The word “boom” evokes some temporary period of above-average economic growth. The Roaring 20s, the plentiful 50s and 60s and the Dot Com era. Because booms are characterized by unexpected levels of economic growth, asset prices, which had not priced in the growth, rise sharply. Is this what is going on US economy today? Not quite.
The message unanimously churned out by politicians, central bankers, and ‘mainstream’ economists is that central banks are there for the ‘greater good’. However, accoding to a market report from Degussa, “unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.”
Caixabank Research | Spanish imports could be growing because of the composition effect, through which the components of demand of greater import intensity increase their weight in total demand, or because the import intensity of each component is increasing, which would be more worrying.
Damir Kurtagic via Fair Observer | With nothing to require companies to invest in line with the development agenda, corporate ventures in Africa might come to resemble Chinese neocolonial corporate models that do not actually alleviate poverty but rather enable it.
Link Securities | The Spanish construction and infrastructure company Ferrovial has won the contract to install two electrical substations in support of the construction of what will be the UK´s first high speed rail line linking London and Birmingham.
Caixabank Research | Since the beginning of 2012 Spain has accumulated a trade surplus in goods and services which is helping reducing the large deficit in net international investment. But it has not always been like this.
I. de la Torre and L. Torralba (Arcano Partners) | The economist Dornbusch says that “crises take long to arrive than you can possibly imagine, but when they do come, they happen faster than you can possibly imagine”. The events that have affected the emerging countries this summer have proven Dornbusch was right.
Yiannis Mouzakis via Macropolis | The tone of the day is celebratory for some. After eight years, myriad Eurogroup meetings that lasted until the early morning hours and hundreds of billion euros in loans, the eurozone is probably happy that it doesn’t have to spend any more time, energy and money on this small country at the corner of Europe that represents 2 percent of the total eurozone economy.
Víctor Yepes Piqueras (Polytechnic University de Valencia) via The Conversation | Maintaining infrastructure in an adequate state of conservation and maintenance is a first order necessity in any society. However, those responsable for this task are not devoting to it the necessary attention and resources.