It seldom gets any media attention over here, but China has been suffering from one of its worst droughts in history. This article in the International Herald Tribune explains how dire the food situation is becoming.
Water supplies have been drying up for decades, the result of pervasive overuse and waste. Underground aquifers have been so [...]
From the monthly archives:
February 2009
This doesn’t have anything directly to do with Asia — except that Americans will have less credit to buy cars, electronics, toys, clothes, TVs, and shoes — but I thought it was a very important data point about the U.S. economy.
American Express (AXP: 40.93 -0.21 -0.51%) is offering $300 cash to its cardholders that pay [...]
Japan is a very export dependent country. That is why my jaw dropped when I read that its exports fell by 46% in January on a year-over-year basis.
The biggest drop was in autos, which plunged by 69%. Don’t expect any good profit news from Honda (HMC: 30.57 +0.11 +0.36%) and Toyota (TM: 76.97 -0.54 -0.70%) [...]
The Chinese residential real estate market has been tough but the commercial real estate market is even worse. Here is a quote from a Los Angeles Times article about Beijing.
500 million square feet of commercial real estate has been developed in Beijing since 2006, more than all the office space in Manhattan. And that doesn’t [...]
We just got the existing home sales figures for January. This is what they showed:
* Existing home sales fell 5.3% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.49 million from 4.74 million in December. That was much worse than the forecast for a reading of 4.79 million and the lowest level on record. Single-family sales [...]
yesterday, my subscribers got a report on a Canadian-based company exploring for silver in Mexico — Mag Silver. The company has a new resource estimate out today. Read it here: http://tinyurl.com/dcte8g
We know that the relationship between gold and the dollar has changed. It used to be that gold moved opposite (inverse) to the U.S. dollar; now they tend to track each other. What changed?
A recent report in Bloomberg says that the dollar’s inverse relationship with gold reversed as the global recession deepened, increasing the appeal [...]
The bank nationalization chatter continues to increase in volume. Meanwhile, the government’s bank bailout plans continue to morph in form and scope. The latest development? The government is moving toward converting preferred share stakes in banks into common shares. More about the process comes from the Washington Post below …
“The change paves a road toward [...]
I just finished reading this story on CNN about a foreclosure court in Fort Myers, Florida.
The story explains that this foreclosure court is the place where people officially lose their homes. And as you’d expect, it is largely written from a “woe are all these people” angle.
Make no mistake, I do have sympathy for anyone who is losing a home [...]
You might say he’s only adding to my freak out. Check out the latest …
Renowned investor George Soros said on Friday the world financial system has effectively disintegrated, adding that there is yet no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis.
Soros said the turbulence is actually more severe than during the Great [...]
