Tough times call for desperate measures. Here in sunny (ok, it’s been raining this week and the a/c in my car chose to die on me so I’ve been driving in a stuffy car) Singapore, the finance budget’s been announced earlier than usual and been debated to death. However, being a small open economy, how the world goes, we go.
Turning to recent news, the markets have been excited about China-led recovery. (read about it here from Michael Pettis, a Professor of Peking University,GuangHua School of Management) However, as pointed out in the same article there is a need for cautious optimism as:
There was also a report (no link) on how some Chinese workers came back from their lunar new year celebrations only to find that the Italian furniture factory they worked in had closed down and their boss had run off, leaving them jobless.
Oh, and if that’s not the worst thing that can happen, Roubini, who has gained prominence because of his uncanny predictions on the unfolding of the whole crisis, has something on Chinese data massaging. And if the man-made troubles weren’t enough, China’s facing a terrible drought.
I don’t even want to get to how bad things seem to be going in the US , Europe or Japan. Naked Capitalism, RGE, and Credit Writedowns has plenty on that.