BEIJING |By Jeffrey Towson via Caixin | The valuation of China’s largest e-commerce company is tied to its market share, margins and return on capital, factors its rival can easily impact. Far the low-end of predictions have put Alibaba at US$ 80 billion to US$ 100 billion. The majority of estimates are in the US$150 billion range. And a few analysts are making headlines with predictions of US$ 250 billion and above.
WASHINGTON | By Pablo Pardo | Europe’s obsession with national champions is bad for shareholders, taxpayers, and workers. Does anybody know Dailymotion? It is a video hosting service like Google’s YouTube. The two differences between both sites are: 1) Dailymotion accepts porn; 2) YouTube is, according to Alexa, the third most visited website in the world, whereas Dailymotion is number 94.
WASHINGTON | By Pablo Pardo | The last time I interviewed Gary Becker in his office I told him: “I hope to visit you here in ten years.” It had been almost ten years—December 1996—since I had visited him in his office. He smiled and said: “Well, I hope to be around in ten years.” Unfortunately, his wish was not fulfilled. The interview was on June 7, 2006, so he had just around 7 years and 10 months left to live. Becker, however, had exactly the same appearance the first time I had met him in 1996. He was still playing tennis and swimming.
KANSAS CITY | Via Truman Factor | Marx’s Das Kapital focused on depreciation. It was Marx who coined the term “primitive accumulation” meaning privatisation and fraud. Piketty’s analysis is completely different from Marx, despite the fact that his parents were Trotskyists.
MADRID | By Julia Pastor | If one wants to feel dizzy she may walk over the Grand Canyon’s suspension brigde, climb to the top of the Three Gorges Dam hydroelectric power station in China or just picture the Mecca’s high speed rail crossing the desert. Perhaps one only may need to feel dizzy having a look to the breach of global spending on basic infrastructures: $2.7 trillion a year when it should be $3.7 trillion as reported by the World Economic Forum.
KANSAS CITY | By Truman Factor| Karl Fitzgerald of Renegade Economists and Michael Hudson review French economist Thomas Piketty’s new book, Capital in the 21st Century, which is barnstorming the world at the moment. One of his important discoveries is the disparity in wealth is much greater than the disparity of income because of tax avoidance by the rich. They don’t earn an income.
WASHINGTON | By Pablo Pardo | Freight trains and flipped houses are not ‘cool’ indicators. But they tell much more about the US than the unemployment rate or the GDP figures. The last figures show how the U.S. keeps on gaining strength.
BEIJING | By W. Jiapeng, H. Haoyi, Z.Shiyun and G. McCubbing via Caixin | The second time around to China has offered much more promise than the first some two years ago, Elon Musk, founder and CEO of Tesla Motors Inc, said in an interview with Caixin. In three or four years, Musk plans to have cars produced in China, which will mean setting up a joint venture with a local partner, influencing the car industry to move faster in the direction of electric cars.
LONDON | By Aroop Chatterjee at Barclays | Implied volatilities in a number of asset markets have been recently trading close to their lowest levels since 2007. This has happened despite prevailing uncertainties about the durability of US economic growth or the path of Fed policy.
LONDON | By Tal Shapsa at Barclays | Our export performance analysis points to a positive outlook for the fragile five of the emerging countries. A simple model we developed – which attempts to gauge future changes in the current accounts based on the export performance indices – suggests that the recent improvement will likely be sustained, providing additional tailwind for EM trades and carry in particular.