On the tenth anniversary of the fall of Lehman Brothers, multiple analyses and opinions can be read on the origins of the crisis. Two have caught my attention: that of Ben Bernanke, who headed the team which avoided the crisis turning into a new 1929, and the opposing view of Paul Krugman, who says that he does not see the connection, and believes that it was a crisis provoked by the collapse of the housing market.
Currently no one is really satisfied on the way the great recession of 2008 has been solved. As Philippe Waechter, chief economist at Ostrum AM, points, “banks profitability is back to a higher level but, even with a stronger regulation, no one is totally convinced that it would resist to a new major crisis.”
L.B. Chong via Caixin | The cat is out of the bag: Google LLC is reportedly working on a trial version of a filtered search app for China after a hiatus of eight years. Although Google subsequently reiterated that it was not close to launching a search service in China, this is still big and deeply divisive news.
Globalisation is a phenomenon with very old roots and which still has a lot of life left in it. According to a report by CaixaBank Research, we could be in the aftermath of the so-called second wave of globalisation and that, in the event of a new drive towards greater globalisation, we could shortly enter into the third wave
Investors and the authorities have learnt the lessons from the collapse of the investment bank, but we could be looking in the wrong direction when looking for the next turbulence, according to Paras Anand, Director General of Asset Management for the Asia Pacific in Fidelity.
Global equities have held up fairly well in light of the generally negative news flow, entirely driven by the United States, where stocks are up 9.6% year to date, while the euro area, Japan and emerging markets have underperformed. In this context, the Research team from AXA IM points that earnings momentum remains “robust” with the second quarter earnings season posting “positive growth” and “surprising” on the upside across most major regions.
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.”
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.