Several recent developments reveal how political and institutional fragmentation in the United States has produced self-inflicted wounds for the U.S. abroad. In all of these instances, America’s ability to exercise economic power in the world has been deliberately curtailed through decisions made unilaterally in Washington by American political leaders. Read Here – The Atlantic
That Apple should buy Greece with all the useless cash it has on hand is just a joke that won’t go away. Yet it’s true that, if big American corporations and European politicians had any imagination, they could probably engineer a bailout for the nearly bankrupt country on terms that would benefit everyone. Read Here – Bloomberg
China may need more time to reverse the current economic downturn than previously expected, and further measures are necessary to prevent an accelerated cooling, a leading government think tank says. Read Here – People’s Daily
China’s economy grew at its slowest pace in 24 years in 2014 as a cooling property market weighed on demand and is expected to lose more momentum this year, keeping pressure on policymakers to head off a sharper downturn. Read Here – Reuters
The global economy is like a jetliner that needs all of its engines operational to take off and steer clear of clouds and storms. Unfortunately, only one of its four engines is functioning properly: the Anglosphere (the United States and its close cousin, the United Kingdom). Read Here – Project Syndicate
There’s good news and bad in China’s loss of traction. The good: It will compel President Xi Jinping to end China’s addiction to easy credit and local-government debt, a recipe that’s now causing more bubbles than growth. The bad: Global markets may not be ready for the ugly data about to emanate from an economy […]
Leaders of the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — all emerging market nations — launch a $100 billion development bank and a currency reserve pool in their first concrete step toward reshaping the Western-dominated international financial system. The bank, aimed at funding infrastructure projects in developing nations will be based in Shanghai and […]
The amount of debt globally has soared more than 40 percent to $100 trillion since the first signs of the financial crisis as governments borrowed to pull their economies out of recession and companies took advantage of record low interest rates. Read Here – Bloomberg
China’s $3.8 trillion of currency reserves are the largest stockpile ever amassed. Economists have long seen that money as a strength — the ultimate rainy-day fund should China’s shadow-banking system blow up. Trouble is, the value of those holdings depends on China’s $1.3 trillion of U.S. Treasuries. If they plunge in value, all hell breaks loose […]
For Grant Felgenhauer, a money manager whose hedge fund owns $110 million of Iraqi equities, the 15 explosions that rocked the country on a single day in mid-January weren’t a reason to stop buying. Read Here – Businessweek
looking beyond borders 