China recently announced strict controls to stop big cities expanding on to neighbouring farmland. The Minister for Land and Resources Jiang Daming justified these controls by claiming that good farmland has been ‘eaten by steel and cement’. To safeguard food security, land on the outskirts of cities will be ‘permanent basic farmland’ that can be used only for cultivation.
Over the last week, Egypt (+6.4%), UAE (+3.4%), and Hong Kong (+3.2%) have outperformed in the EM equity space as measured by MSCI, while Peru (-6.3%), Russia (-4.8%), and Colombia (-4.4%) have underperformed. To put this in better context, MSCI EM rose 0.5% over the past week while MSCI DM fell -1.3%.
Malaysia’s government-linked companies (GLCs) are, relatively speaking, among the most extensive and powerful in the world in terms of capitalisation, market presence and socio-political mandate.
It is not hard to list the domestic and international challenges for South Korea for 2015. There are many.
At the end of 2014, South Korea faces economic slowdown, an ageing population, worsening socio-economic inequality, rising youth unemployment, mounting household debt and a real-estate market slump. The list of diplomatic tasks includes sluggish or worsening relations with Kim Jong-un’s North Korea, soured relationships with Abe’s Japan and coping with the dilemmas of China–US dynamics.
Oil prices have raised concerns across the globe. But the story of oil glut is not new. In 1980s, world price of oil rose at US$35 per barrel but fell to below US$10 per barrel by 1986. At that time the oil price collapse benefitted USA, Europe, Japan and the third world nations since they were oil- consuming countries. But on the flip side, the fall in prices also damaged domestic exploration and resulted in collapse of many economies like Mexico, Nigeria, Venezuela and USSR. In US, number of active drilling rigs was halved in 1982.
A fall in consumer-held debt and a rise in job openings are prompting greater enthusiasm in a strengthening U.S. economy, emboldening small business owners and workers.
The most important development today was the preliminary indications by the European Court of Justice that the ECB’s Outright Monetary Transaction initiative was “in principle” consistent with the ECB mandate. Even though the opinion by the Advocate General Villalon is non-binding, the signal is important.
Greece is again making headlines, and markets are concerned the euro crisis is back.
Actually, the crisis never left. It is just that for a little while both the authorities and the markets chose to cherish the delusion that policies and institutions were set in place that would shore up Europe’s troubled currency union. How wrong they were.
Stuck in gloom and stagnation, the euro area is dancing on the edge of the abyss of debt deflation, in which falling prices and incomes make paying off obligations increasingly difficult.
The household registration (‘hukou’) system in China, originally adopted in 1958, was finally put on the national reform agenda in July 2014. But how significant are the reforms?
A quiet but increasingly deadly struggle is taking place in Thailand’s deep south.
But why has the security crisis in the three southernmost insurgency-affected provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat proved so intractable and drawn out? And why have the Thai authorities struggled to find a viable solution to the problem? What is it that makes the situation there so hard to understand and so long lasting? The answer is a confluence of factors.
