A sea change is occurring in Sri Lanka’s strategic orientation. Recent developments suggest that Sri Lanka is becoming China’s new best friend and security partner in the eastern Indian Ocean. This would represent a major change in Sri Lanka’s foreign policy and could have significant consequences for regional security.
Japan’s economy and its lost decades are no more news to us. When Japan was hit by its first real estate collapse, little did it know that its revival would take forever. Many criticized the reforms that were taken and many critics suggested ways to fix the problem of deflation that faced the country. But the 2008 global collapse changed many rules. The US subprime crisis, the Eurozone collapse combined with the much-debated Abenomics gradually dozed off the economy of Japan. Worse, Japan entered its triple-dip recession this year.
The South Korean President, Mr. Park Geun-Hye, warned that his country’s economy could be at risk of falling into serious long-term stagnation. As a result, he has urged that parliament act quickly when it comes to dealing with economic bills.
The economy is actually worse considering they are able to defray some of their self-defense costs to America as the U.S. spends billions of dollars every year protecting South Korea. Many people in the U.S. wonder how long that will continue.
Despite a strong rise in GDP growth, above expectations, U.S. stocks saw mixed performance on Tuesday as investors mulled the chances of an interest rate hike amidst broader economic growth.
EC President Juncker is set to unveil a new investment program. It sounds good: a fiscal complement to the monetary policy stance of the ECB. Expectations are running high that the ECB will move to more aggressively expand its balance sheet, record low bond yields in many euro area countries, and negative 2-year yields in at least five countries and below 5 bp in another three countries.
The U.S. dollar remains within recent ranges against the euro, yen and sterling. The antipodean currencies fell, and that is where the movement is today. The main impetus is from a downgrade in the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s inflation expectations, and momentum players selling the Aussie on the break of $0.8600. Players were encouraged by the help of a sharp 3% drop in iron ore prices and more jawboning by officials. The Australian dollar has recorded new four-year lows today. For its part, the New Zealand dollar has slipped through $0.7800.
Economic growth moderated in the U.S. in October even as confidence in growth reached a post-crisis high, new data from the Federal Reserve shows.
The Chicago Fed National Activity Index fell 15 basis points to 0.14 in October. Productivity fell as the CFNAI production indicator fell to -0.01 from +0.18 in September, indicating that total economic production was slowing. Manufacturing remained strong despite the fall in production elsewhere in the economy, seeing a 0.2% rise in productivity for the second month in a row.
Australia and India have not always been the best of friends.
Much energy has been expended on projecting the impact of the rise of Chinese economic power on its political and military might and the strategic contest with the United States. In a conflation of geo-economic and geo-strategic analysis, two camps have emerged: one warns about the consequences of the United States not conceding strategic space as Chinese economic and strategic power continue to grow; the other asserts the continuing dominance of US military-strategic and economic power as Chinese power peaks, in some scenario or another.
The 2014 APEC leaders’ summit witnessed a string of successes in Chinese trade diplomacy. Key among these successes was the endorsement of China’s signature trade initiative as APEC host: the realisation sooner rather than later of a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP).
China also reached a substantive agreement with South Korea on their bilateral FTA and a breakthrough on negotiations with the Americans to expand the coverage of the Information Technology Agreement that promises to re-energise a US$1 trillion market in technology goods trade.
