Helping you navigate the new normal
I have been warning about the Covid-19 risk since early February, and in April suggested here that: “None of us have ever seen a health crisis on the scale of Covid-19 . Nor have we seen an economic crisis on this scale before. The best guide to what may happen is therefore likely to be
A branch of Centaline Property Agency in Hong Kong © Bloomberg Indebted Chinese property developers threaten a domino effect on western credit markets , as I describe in my latest post for the Financial Times, published on the BeyondBrics blog Second-order impacts are starting to appear as a result of China’s lockdowns. These are having
Beijing has a population of 21.5 million, but you wouldn’t know it from this BBC video from last Thursday. Normally busy streets and transport systems are eerily empty, with food deliveries often the main traffic on the roads. It’s the same picture in industry, with the Baidu Migration Index reporting only 26% of migrant workers
Each year, there has been only one possible candidate for Chart of the Year. Last year it was the collapse of China’s shadow banking bubble; 2017 was Bitcoin’s stratospheric rise; 2016 the near-doubling in US 10-year interest rates; and 2015 the oil price fall. This year, the ‘Chart of the Decade’ is in a league
MY ANNUAL BUDGET OUTLOOK WILL BE PUBLISHED NEXT WEEK Next week, I will publish my annual Budget Outlook, covering the 2020-2022 period. The aim, as always, will be to challenge conventional wisdom when this seems to be heading in the wrong direction. Before publishing the new Outlook each year, I always like to review my
Uber’s IPO next month is set to effectively “ring the bell” at the top of the post-2008 equity bull market on Wall Street. True, it is now expecting to be valued at a “bargain” $91bn, rather than the $120bn originally forecast. But as the Financial Times has noted: “Founded in 2009, it has never made
How can companies and investors avoid losing money as the global economy goes into a China-led recession? That’s the key question as we enter 2019. We have reached a fork in the road: Since 2008, Western central bankers have focused on supporting stock markets But the bursting of China’s shadow banking bubble means this cannot continue for