Word: walker
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...time of nearly universal dismay over the business outlook, there are few experts anywhere who can out-gloom Jim Walker, an economist at an independent Hong Kong research firm called Asianomics. In his thick Scottish accent, Walker predicts the worst global recession since the Great Depression. GDP in the U.S., he says, could contract as much as 5% in 2009, and Europe by 2%. He is no more bullish about the economies in his area of specialty: Asia, a region where most of his colleagues foresee more buoyancy. China won't see GDP rise more than...
...Before writing off Walker as just another member of a growing Greek chorus of dispirited prognosticators, consider that he has a history of detecting worst-case scenarios before they came to pass. Back in 1995, Walker, then an economist at brokerage house CLSA, penned a report entitled It's Life, Jim, but Not as We Know It: Asia Decoupling, in which he and his team of economists warned that Asian currency regimes, if not reformed, could be susceptible to Mexico-style meltdowns in two to three years. Two years later, the region plunged into the 1997 Asian crisis, which...
...this current downturn as well, Walker's dim views, which at first seemed on the fringe, now appear less farfetched. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) in late January revised its forecasts for 2009 sharply downward, predicting the slowest global growth rate since World War II, at only 0.5%. IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard said he expects "the global economy to come to a virtual halt." Even China would record only 6.75% GDP growth in 2009, according...
Shortly after Sunday's gathering, city manager Harry Walker declared a "state of emergency," which he said would allow the city to ask for assistance from the state and might allow Coatesville to impose some regulations in the name of public safety, such as a curfew, although no specific regulations were in the works. He and other officials, however, said they were not yet willing to ask for help from the National Guard, as some residents suggested. Coatesville was once a thriving steel town, before the Lukens Steel Co. was bought by Bethlehem Steel in 1997. Bethlehem went bankrupt...
...these types of export-at-all-costs policies that some economists worry will cause a resurgence of 1930s-style antitrade policies. Jim Walker, an economist at independent research firm Asianomics in Hong Kong, says "the big danger" in Asia is a "round of competitive devaluations" of Asian currencies that sparks protectionism in the West. Walker fears that China, in its efforts to support growth and the millions employed in export factories, will eventually allow the yuan to depreciate, forcing all other Asian countries to do the same to keep their exports competitive. "If conditions do worsen, then every lever...