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World economy 9th June 2014

NSA: Online surveillance is easy and it is cheap

WASHINGTON | By Pablo Pardo | It has been one year since, out of the blue, Edward Snowden came out to tell everybody that the Internet is ‘supervised’ by the NSA. And it has been only four days since British giant Vodafone announced that at least six different governments tap its calls. We have lost our online virginity, in case there were still some who had it (apparently, there were). Now we know that the wandering around Internet is almost as private as yelling in the middle of the street.

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World economy 8th June 2014

China: Investing in the future

BEIJING | By Andy Xie via Caixin | Stimulus proposals won’t transform the economy in China, but spending on industrial research, building megacities and globalizing the white collar labor force will.

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World economy 7th June 2014

Monetary policy- the way we were (without revisionist history)

SAO PAULO | By Benjamin Cole via Historinhas | Sadly for Americans, the Fed of 2008 would pull out the 50-year-old playbook and repeat the mistakes of the Fed of the 1950s. Rattled by minor increases in prices, the 2008 Fed stomped on the brakes, bringing on the Great Recession from which the nation has yet to fully recover.

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World economy 4th June 2014

Do China’s big banks enjoy a monopoly?

BEIJING | By Yang Kaisheng via Caixin | A monopoly on either the buyer’s or seller’s side often means one or several enterprises relying on their strengths keep squeezing out or forcing the merger of small and medium-sized enterprises to gain unfair pricing power. It is often caused by a monopoly over resources or entry barriers that result from government intervention. In light of this, is it reasonable to say that China’s banking industry is monopolized?

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World economy 3rd June 2014

Anemic FLS lending, but consumer confidence surges

LONDON | By Barclays analysts | Q1 data suggest that the refocusing of the FLS scheme toward SMEs’ funding has yet to deliver. Credit remains subdued for SMEs, despite an improvement in overall availability of and demand for credit for private non-financial corporations. Higher consumer confidence, coupled with improvements in the economic outlook, bodes well for household consumption in Q2.

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World economy 2nd June 2014

Money is not long-run neutral or is the CFS’s “divisia” right?

SAO PAULO | By Benjamin Cole via Marcus Nunes’ Historinhas | One of the bromides of modern macroeconomics is that “long-term, money is neutral.” The above maxim makes sense on some levels. A nation is made rich or poor by its investment in infrastructure, education, farmland, factories, work ethics and the like. Running printing presses, per se, is meaningless.

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World economy 1st June 2014

Spanish companies take Modinomics pace

MADRID | By Julia Pastor | What can small countries’ firms do in the world biggest democracy, built on 28 nations more than regions? Some Spanish companies in India have been able to manage big four toll roads (Isolux), control 80% of its airspace safety (Indra), excel in the olive oil market (Borges), or even list in the Bombay’s stock exchange (CIE Automotive). After the historical victory of Narendra Modi their prospects are even better, considering that India’s middle-upper class ranges between 50 and 300 million people.

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World economy 28th May 2014

Power and energy: the Egyptian presidential election

If Sisi does not stabilize the energy and power sector, the Egyptian street’s patience will not last forever. The Egyptian presidential election takes place between May 26-28, having been extended by one day due to low voter turnout. Former Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is poised to win by a landslide against left-wing candidate Hamdeen Sabahi. Langendorf and Dargin talk about the Egyptian presidential election, the country’s energy crisis and its potential consequences.

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World economy 26th May 2014

China: The birth pains of a new economy

BEIJING | By Andy Xie via Caixin | The quality of China’s GDP growth is rising with falling property prices. The economy is diverting resources away from wasteful bubble activities to productive ones. While growth is slowing, it reflects shrinking of the bad GDP. Two-thirds of the economy is still expanding steadily. More importantly, China is experiencing a labor shortage due to a shrinking of working-age population and steady economic expansion. The economy is in a strong position to absorb the fallout of a deflating property bubble.

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World economy 23rd May 2014

Banks likely to outperform as Capex drives loan growth

LONDON | By Barclays analysts | We believe that one of the reasons why loan growth has been so anaemic thus far in the recovery is because the recovery in capital spending has been very poor. However, an improving outlook for Capex could see loan demand pick-up and be supportive of future earnings growth for the domestic banking sector.