With a fortune largely tied to his 78.9 million shares of Amazon, the net worth of Jeff Bezos continues to be on the rise. Just days ago, Amazon shares reached all-time highs after the company’s ambitious acquisition of Whole Foods. This puts Bezos just $4 billion away from displacing Bill Gates as the world’s number one billionaire – and if the stock continues upwards, he could take the title any day.
Reform is always easier when a crisis leaves policy makers no other options. But without further change, Asia will continue to rely too much on debt instead of productivity gains for growth. In poorer nations, improvements in household welfare will lag. As in the years before 1997, economic irregularities could build up to the point where the region faces another crisis. Will the next Kim Dae-jungs be there when you need them?
As the global economy picks back up, it is difficult to imagine populism maintaining momentum. A new Pew study finds, “Nearly a decade after the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, economic spirits are reviving. … A median of 51% in the 17 advanced economies surveyed believes that their current economic situation is good, 45% think it’s bad,” and there is “strong upbeat sentiment in northern Europe.”
Nepalese citizens hold an estimated $500 million in the banned notes, most of them sent back as savings by the more than one million Nepalese nationals working in India, says Chiranjibi Nepal, governor of the country’s central bank, the Nepal Rashtra Bank. Yet seven months after the ban, India has yet to exchange those notes with valid ones. Talks are on with India’s central bank, he says. As for Bhutan, its nationals hold $16 million in defunct Indian notes, says Dasho Penjore, governor of the country’s central bank, the Royal Monetary Authority.
What did not exist in 2007? Instagram, Uber and 30 of the top 100 digital multinationals. According to the World Investment Report 2017: Investment and the Digital Economy, digital is growing and it is growing fast.
Central bankers and investors are grappling with a $100 trillion question: why consumer price inflation remains so low in most parts of the world even as economic growth quickens. Compounding the riddle, question marks are now emerging over the one part of the global inflation picture that had been moving higher — producer prices.
…Analysis of the respective stock markets and incumbent political parties of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom finds a result opposite that identified in the US, indicating that investors should interpret historical statistical relationships with a healthy skepticism.
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It’s an issue when emerging markets are expected to contribute about 60 per cent to global GDP growth up to 2021, according to an International Monetary Fund forecast. China alone currently contributes to more than 30 per cent of global growth, trumping the US. Not surprisingly opportunities for human-driven insights are increasing in these markets.
In the US, China’s pan-Eurasian infrastructure initiative is more or less invisible outside of news reports from domestic media that mostly frame it as Beijing’s grand plan for geopolitical domination
