Word: centralism
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...Chinese government has quickly awakened to the threat of a sharp slowdown. Until a few months ago, Beijing's top priority had been fighting inflation. Now policymakers are easing off the brakes and hitting the gas again in an effort to stimulate growth. The central bank lowered its benchmark interest rate twice in the past 45 days, the first cuts since 2002. In mid-October, the State Council announced plans to increase infrastructure spending, to offer tax rebates for exporters and to boost government-controlled prices for agricultural products. Beijing is also widely expected to introduce measures to resuscitate...
...exception, though, is Uncle Sam. Even before the financial crisis forced the government's hand, the U.S. had again become addicted to deficit spending - relying on the kindness of strangers (in this case, mainly Chinese and Japanese central bankers) to finance its spendthrift ways. In September the Congressional Budget Office's baseline deficit forecast for 2008 was $407 billion. Now, with the Treasury's massive intervention in support of banks and financial markets ($700 billion at a minimum) and with a second economic-stimulus package a political certainty, the government deficit could soar next year to $1 trillion...
...seen this movie before, and it's not a happy one. Japan's financial sector imploded in the 1990s as bubbles in real estate and stock prices (sound familiar?) burst. Eventually, Japan's central bank drove interest rates to near zero to stimulate the economy. But it was, as the economists say, "pushing on a string." Banks were reluctant to lend because they needed to hoard capital to repair their balance sheets - just as they need to do now in the U.S. Economic growth slowed, and demand for the credit that was available diminished. The result was Japan's infamous...
...would be all too easy to have missed the communiqué released Oct. 19 by the Central Committee of China's ruling Communist Party. After all, the world's newspapers are dominated by the homestretch of the U.S. presidential election, the ongoing global financial crisis and other momentous events. But the blandly titled "Decision on Major Issues Concerning the Advancement of Rural Reform and Development" will be studied by historians when the markets' latest gyrations and Sarah Palin's appearance on Saturday Night Live are long forgotten. Behind the document's clunky sentences constructed from boilerplate Party phraseology are changes...
...London between this year and 2010--although if the credit crunch is protracted, that number could rise to almost 150,000 next year alone. Real estate is already reeling. Plans for two huge new skyscrapers in the City have been shelved, and the price of prime houses in central London has dropped 12% so far in 2008, according to the real estate firm Savills, while sales volume is down 50% in some areas like Clapham and Fulham...