China’s home prices have galloped to all-time highs in recent months in tandem with developers’ debt loads. The higher prices helped subsidize builders’ debt payments. However, over the summer, Beijing tightened rules around lending to property developers, saying that the industry was overleveraged, a fact underscored by the ongoing debt crisis among building companies, which...
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CHINA’S REAL ESTATE TROUBLES RIPPLE ACROSS EMERGING MARKETS
Through recent years, China’s insatiable construction industry has drawn a steady flow of imported materials from emerging nations. Now, however, giant property developers such as Evergrande and Fantasia are on the brink of collapse, as we documented in “Spotlight China: Crash Coming? Recovery Ahead?” (19 Oct 2021). As a result, exports of raw materials—a crucial...
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CHINA TAKES MORE ECONOMIC CONTROL
After buying 51 percent of Greece’s Piraeus Port Authority in August 2016, China’s state-controlled Cosco shipping company has taken another 16 percent, the Financial Times reported. The deal has fanned anxieties about China’s deepening involvement in Europe’s infrastructure and drew outrage over environmental, financial, and social concerns surrounding China’s ownership. Cosco pledged to make investments...
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SERVICE SECTOR STRENGTH BUOYS WEAK MANUFACTURING ECONOMY
As worldwide factory output shrank amid supply shortages and transport kinks, service economies grew as vaccination campaigns progressed and more people returned to gyms, hotels, restaurants, and stores, The Wall Street Journal reported. Service-sector strength powered net economic growth in Australia, Japan, and the U.S. However, Europe’s overall GDP has shrunk in recent weeks, due...
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WORLD’S LONG-TERM FISCAL OUTLOOK BLEAK
This is old news to Trends Journal subscribers, but new news in the mainstream state of mind. Public debt shouldered during the COVID Wars is only a portion of the financial perils facing the world in coming decades, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), whose members are the world’s 38 richest...
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NEW YORK SECURITIES INDUSTRY LOST WORKERS IN 2020
Manhattan securities firms lost a net 3,600 workers last year, trimming payrolls by about 2 percent down to 179,000, according to data from the New York State Comptroller’s office. The city is set to lose another 4,900 of those employees this year, even though companies have bannered higher pay and better working conditions for new...
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FEDERAL RESERVE’S CHAIRMAN COMES UNDER SCRUTINY
Trends Journal has written about the scandals involving the ethical breaches at the Federal Reserve; see: “MORE PANDEMIC SHADY TRADES AT THE FEDERAL RESERVE?” (5 Oct 2021) “BANKSTER BANDITS GET RICHER PLAYING THE INSIDE TRACK” (14 Sep 2021) “FED ETHICS? FU!” (21 Sep 2021) “FED’S KAPLAN SIGNALED CONFLICTS IN DISCLOSURE FORM” (21 Sep 2021) Those...
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FED TIGHTENS TRADING RULES AFTER SCANDAL FORCES RESIGNATIONS
The U.S. Federal Reserve will no longer allow officials to trade stocks and bonds and will limit all trading activity under new rules announced last week. “These tough new rules raise the bar high in order to assure the public we serve that all of our senior officials maintain a single-minded focus on the public...
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MORE LOWER-INCOME AMERICANS WILL SKIP HOLIDAY SHOPPING THIS YEAR
This year, 11.5 percent of Americans plan not to buy gifts, according to a survey by accounting and business services firm Deloitte. The number is the highest in 10 years, and more than doubles the 4.9 percent who said they would not shop during 2020’s holiday season, Bloomberg reported. In 2019, 2.9 percent said they...
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2020 BUDGET DEFICIT SECOND-LARGEST IN HISTORY
In fiscal year 2021, which ended 30 September, the U.S. budget deficit climbed to $2.8 trillion, second only to fiscal 2020’s $3.1 trillion when the federal government and U.S. Federal Reserve flooded the economy with gifts, grants, and loans to keep it from crashing. The previous record deficit was 2009’s $1.4 billion during the Great...