Word: booms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...rollers never visit, that sounds plaintive rather than prosperous. Take a taxi from the dancing fountains in front of the Wynn Macau hotel to the working-class neighborhood of Hac Sa Wan, where you can meet Ng Iat-keong, one of the many poor Macanese for whom the casino boom has been a bust. Ng, 45, is a construction worker who helped build some of Macau's hotel-casinos, including the biggest of them all, Las Vegas Sands' giant Venetian. Yet the money sloshing around in their plush suites hasn't found its way into his pockets...
...rapid growth has also placed unprecedented strains on Macau's society, in the form of soaring property prices, labor unrest, overburdened infrastructure and discontent among residents like Ng who feel their lives have been made worse, not better, by Macau's renaissance. Foreigners have flooded in with the boom and are competing with natives for plum jobs. Transportation systems have been taxed to breaking point by the 27 million tourists who visited last year. Calls for change have forced the government to scramble to appease a disgruntled public. "The gaming industry has been infiltrating into the community and creating...
...rose to one in four. Although many of the choicest positions are reserved by regulation for locals - all card dealers in casinos, for example, must be Macanese - the surge of imported staff has led to complaints that outsiders are reaping a disproportionate amount of the benefits of Macau's boom. "We locals are losing our jobs and the government couldn't care less," gripes Chan Chi-wan, a 50-year-old construction worker. In many cases, moreover, wage increases are being offset by soaring inflation, currently running at an annual average rate of about 9%. Frustrated Macanese have taken...
...Seat The man who has to cure the ill-effects of the casino boom is the man who started it: Edmund Ho, a 53-year-old former accountant who became Chief Executive of the Macau Special Administrative Region when it was returned to China by Portugal in 1999. When Ho took over, Macau was economically dormant. The gaming industry was a moribund monopoly controlled by tycoon Stanley Ho (who is unrelated to Edmund). Many residents of nearby Hong Kong stayed away from the city's seedy casinos because they feared they might be caught up in the occasional burst...
...Indian economy is slowing this year, but even if it grows at only 7% or 8%, it will be doing far better than the U.S. and most of Europe. The Indian multinationals that have grown out of the 10-year boom look as strong as ever, with outsourcing giants like Infosys and Tata Consulting Services growing very robustly. Their success has created a huge middle class for which 12% inflation is more of a nuisance than a worry. The long-term future of the Indian middle class is secure. The factors that have driven its success - a sure grasp...