Word: economisters
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...mainland's neighbors have already been warily monitoring Beijing's efforts to cool overheated sectors such as real estate, fearful that clampdowns on credit and investment could crimp their China trade. Now there's a new worry: "China's dependence on oil is very high," says Shuji Shirota, chief economist at investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in Tokyo. "If [oil] prices choked off growth in China, that would have a big effect on Japan...
...That's a familiar nightmare for other manufacturers across the region, from toymakers to electronics companies. Andy Xie, Morgan Stanley's chief economist for Asia, says the region's industrial stalwarts face such competitive markets that they often can't pass along price increases to customers. "They are at the bottom of the global trading system and are the most vulnerable to a price squeeze," he says. Although corporate profits this year have been relatively strong across Asia, Xie expects this to change in coming quarters, with corporate earnings likely to decline next year...
...reach this year's target GDP growth of 5%. In this precarious situation, a spike in oil prices might well tip the country into recession. "Needless to say, if oil prices were to approach $50 per barrel and stay there, all bets would be off," wrote Goldman Sachs economist Sun Bae Kim in a recent report...
Early last century, before opinion polls were invented, the U.S. press tracked the ups and downs of a huge political-betting market centered on Wall Street. According to University of North Carolina economist Paul Rhode, bettors were remarkably prescient: in 12 presidential elections between 1896 and 1940, the underdog won only once. Today Americans can "wager" on elections online through the Iowa Electronic Markets, a small-scale futures exchange that lets people buy contracts on candidates based on their estimated chance of victory. (At press time, George W. Bush led John Kerry 54% to 46%.) Since its 1988 launch...
...should markets be better forecasters than polls? Economist Friedrich von Hayek argued that markets efficiently gather information held by widely dispersed people, summarizing it in the form of prices. In speculative markets, traders and bettors are rewarded only if they correctly predict future prices. That, Wolfers says, motivates them to get the best information they can, ignoring trivia and trends. "The market seems pretty highly attuned to news that affects the election outcome," Wolfers says. "That's not always the same as what the papers report. The market is unlikely to react to things like party conferences and policy speeches...