Love Making Pottery

Stressed Out China

“The CSI indicates that risks in China‟s macro economy have been on a broad uptrend, and more noticeably since the global financial crisis. In Q2 2011, the CSI rose to its highest level since it was first compiled, but in Q3 it eased slightly, mainly because of a decline in the flow of new shadow banking funding (Figure 3). One limitation of the CSI is that it does not give a probability of a hard economic landing. To do so would require a reference variable measuring past episodes of hard economic landings in China, the obvious one being real GDP. Yet in the past 20 years China’s GDP growth has not fallen below 5% and before then the causes of hard landings in GDP were influenced heavily by social and political unrest.”


“A closer look at the components reveals that rapid increases in residential housing starts relative to sales,residential property prices, gross capital formation, property loans and domestic credit have been the main recent drivers. We are under no illusions that the CSI has its limitations and needs to be treated with caution. The results of the CSI, which we will update on a quarterly basis, should always be open to interpretation, and used as a tool among many others for analysis of China macro risks.”


http://pragcap.com/nomura-china-stress-index-is-on-the-rise

European Crisis Gives Her Chills

Watch out China...Brazil is on the Rise

Over the last two decades, thanks largely to government policy, the poverty rate in Brazil has halved. With this, income inequality (measured by the Gini coefficient) has also fallen sharply, declining on average by 1.2% a year. Brazil’s economy is forecast to grow by 3.6% this year, and according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, a sister company of The Economist, will overtake Britain to become the sixth largest economy in the world. GDP per person, at around $11,000 (or 19,000 reais) has been growing at an average annual rate of 1.7% since 1990; closing the gap with high-income countries. And income growth is faster among the poorest (comparable to China’s GDP per person growth rates). Consequently by 2015 Brazil could reach its Millennium Development Goal of poverty reduction, some ten years early. But further action is needed; 8.5% of Brazil’s population still live on less than 70 reais per month, equivalent to $1.50 a day.


http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/11/focus

Good News?

Our Future President? (uhh-ohh, hide the booze)

Charles Darwin was right?

Five adult siblings who can walk only on all fours have been found in Turkey, researchers say. These human quadrupeds may provide clues to how humans evolved to stand on two feet.

The three sisters and two brothers may offer insight into the way our apelike ancestors moved, according to scientists. Human ancestors are believed to have begun walking on two legs more than three million years ago.

Discovered in a remote area of southern Turkey last summer, the family of ethnic Kurds has sparked a scientific debate, which will be covered in a BBC television documentary that is set to air on March 17 in the United Kingdom. The family's exact location and last name have not been disclosed.

Born with a genetic brain abnormality, two of the sisters and one of the brothers are thought to have only walked on all fours their entire lives. The two other siblings can walk upright for short distances. . . .


http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/03/0308_060308_all_fours.html