Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, one of the world’s largest architectural firrm and a big beneficiary of the China building boom, is laying off people because of the lack of work in China. “Six months ago we were turning down work,” says Silas Chiow, SOM’s China director, and “the next six months are going to be [...]
From the monthly archives:
March 2009
Japan just won the World Baseball Classic yesterday but its exporting companies are conquering anything.
The Japanese Finance Ministry reported that exports shrunk by 49.4% in in February from the previous year. That is, by the way, the biggest drop in two decades.
That puts Japan on course for its worst depression since WWII.
By the way, the [...]
You can have capitalism without democracy. People tend to forget that about China.
According to Amnesty International, China lead the world in executions in 2008 with 2,390. That’s about seven people a day!
For perspective, Iran executed 376 people last year.
Don’t get into trouble in China.
If you’ve never enjoyed a Chinese ‘hot pot’ dinner, you’re missing out on one of the greatest meals in all of China. You do need a cast iron stomach and an affinity for HOT food. But I absolutely love them.
Yum Brands (YUM: 35.73 +0.08 +0.22%)is pay $63 million for a 20% stake in Little Sheep [...]
The Bank of China reported a 59% drop in its Q4 profits.
The Bank of China owns more U.S. subprime securities of any Asian institutions with $2.59 billion of toxic junk. How toxic? The Bank of China has aleady written off $2.25 billion of it.
You’ve probably never heard of him but Zhou Xiaochuan is the Governor of the People’s Bank of China, which makes him the Chinese equivalent of Ben Bernanke and Alan Granspreen. Except even more powerful.
Zhou is recommending a new “super-sovereign reserve currency” to replace the dollar as a the main global currency and “create an international [...]
In the wake of the failed U.K. auction of 40-year gilts, the bond market is paying close attention to this week’s U.S. Treasury auctions. We’re in the process of selling $98 billion of 2-year, 5-year, and 7-year notes, the biggest weekly sales of longer-term debt in U.S. history. And while I wouldn’t call the 5-year [...]
The latest Mortgage Bankers Association figures show that lower interest rates continue to light a fire under the refinance market. Thanks to a drop in the average 30-year mortgage rate to 4.63% from 4.89%, the group’s refinance application index jumped 41.5.% to 6,363.2 in the week of March 20 from 4,497.6 a week earlier. That [...]
There’s some interesting action (if you’ll pardon the pun) over in the U.K. bond market this morning. The government tried to auction off 1.75 billion pounds of 40-year gilts this morning. But demand was extremely weak, with investors only bidding for 1.63 billion pounds.
The failed auction comes as the U.K. government is selling massive amounts [...]
There are all kinds of views, both positive and negative, on the Geithner toxic asset plan today. You can read the kudos from columnists like Steven Pearlstein at the Washington Post and John Berry at Bloomberg. Or you can read critiques from Paul Krugman at the New York Times and the folks at various blogs, [...]
