This week we look at the GDP numbers for Q2 from the US and South Korea. Then we look at the US consumer confidence and Case Shiller housing market data, and finish up with a look at inflation and unemployment in Japan, and New Zealand monetary policy.
1. US GDP The US economy grew 2.4% SAAR in the second quarter (0.6% in normal terms), slightly below consensus 2.5%, and slower than the revised 3.7% in Q1. On an annual basis GDP is up 3.2% vs 2.4% in Q1. The main drivers of growth were residential investment, investment in equipment & software, and inventories; the main detractor was (surprise, surprise) a shrinking of net exports. So overall not a bad result, but probably as good as it gets for.....
Earlier this month, I attended OpenWebAsia – South East Asia (South EAsia/a>) in Kuala Lumpur/Malaysia, a two-day tech and web industry event that attracted over 350 international attendees. The event shined a spotlight on a market that’s still largely overlooked: a whopping 600 million people live in South EastAsia, which boasts a rapidly growing web and mobile population.
What follows is a short summary of just a few presentations, panel discussions, and startup demos I witnessed at OpenWebAsia (those with a focus on Asia only). I will update this article with more material once it becomes available (find the agendas for day one and two here and here.....
China has overtaken Japan to become the world's second-largest economy, the fruit of three decades of rapid growth that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.
Growth:China claims it has just passed Japan as the world's No. 2 economy, and it's beating its chest loudly about the fact. But, as impressive as its new status may be, it still deserves a bit of perspective. We've heard about this being the Chinese Century, with the U.S. soon to be consigned to the ash heap of once-great empires. Now new projections from the World Bank, Goldman Sachs and others, as reported by CNBC, say China will pass the U.S.
Today at our Social Currency CrunchUp in Palo Alto, CA, James Lamberti, VP of Global Research and Marketing for InMobi, sat down with our Michael Arrington to tell us a bit about mobile advertising.
InMobi is the largest independent mobile ad network in the world. Overall, they’re number two behind Google’s AdMob. That earned them an $8 million investment from Kleiner Perkins and Sherpalo Ventures a couple weeks ago. But what’s particularly interesting about InMobi is how well they’re doing outside the U.S.
Out of inMobi’s 16.9 billion mobile ad impressions globally, 2.6 billion are in Africa, more than the US’s 2 billion. 10 billion are in Asia, no surprise considering.....
Investors are understandably scared of the sovereign debt crisis unfolding in Europe. Amid their angst, however, they are ignoring a more likely, and significantly larger, debt catastrophe that is about to hit the nation with the second-largest economy in the world — Japan. Two decades of stimulative, low-interest-rate fiscal policy have made Japan the most indebted nation in the developed world, and as new Prime Minister Naoto Kan recently said, in his first address to Parliament, that situation is not sustainable. Japan has little choice but to raise interest rates substantially, with dire consequences far beyond its shores.
The prelude to the current crisis began in the early 1990s, after Japan’s housing and stock market.....
This week we look at the GDP numbers for Q2 from the US and South Korea. Then we look at the US consumer confidence and Case Shiller housing market data, and finish up with a look at inflation and unemployment in Japan, and New Zealand monetary policy.
1. US GDP The US economy grew 2.4% SAAR in the second quarter (0.6% in normal terms), slightly below consensus 2.5%, and slower than the revised 3.7% in Q1. On an annual basis GDP is up 3.2% vs 2.4% in Q1. The main drivers of growth were residential investment, investment in equipment & software, and inventories; the main detractor was (surprise, surprise) a shrinking of net exports. So overall not a bad result, but probably as good as it gets for now, especially given where much of the US data points are at, there.....
So guess what Microsoft thinks of Yahoo Japan’s decision to swap it out for Google as main search partner?
Yeah, not too happy about it. And it’s going to do all that it can to thwart the deal. “We plan to present evidence to the Japanese FTC explaining why we believe that this deal is substantially more harmful to competition than Google’s deal with Yahoo in 2008 that the DOJ found to be illegal,” the company said in a statement issued Friday afternoon.
Not all that surprising given the situation and Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith’s lambasting of the deal last week. “This agreement is even more anti-competitive than Google’s deal with
China has overtaken Japan to become the worlds second-largest economy, the fruit of three decades of rapid growth that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.
The BEA has finally admitted something anyone with a modicum of common sense already knew: The recession was far deeper and the "recovery" far weaker than previously reported.
Please consider BEA report Gross Domestic Product: Second Quarter 2010 (Advance Estimate) Revised Estimates: 2007 through First Quarter 2010
Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 2.4 percent in the second quarter of 2010, (that is, from the first quarter to the second quarter), according to the "advance" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP increased 3.7 percent.
The real story in the report was not the continuing ratcheting down of GDP forward estimates, but.....
MALAYSIA'S free trade agreement with New Zealand will come into force tomorrow, enabling Malaysians to extend their products and services to the Oceanic region.
International Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Mustapa Mohamed said the bilateral agreement will add value to the Asean-Australia-New Zealand FTA which came into force from January 1 this year.
"Under this agreement, there will be a faster elimination of import duties from 2020 (under the regional FTA) to 2016 (under the bilateral FTA). Malaysian consumers will also gain from the faster elimination," he said at a media briefing yesterday.
It will provide better market access for Malaysia's exporters as import duties on all Malaysia's export products including electrical and electronic products, textiles and apparel and auto.....
HONG KONG: Fears of a slowdown in the US and poor economic data out of Japan pushed Asian markets lower yesterday, with traders cashing in recent gains.
Strong corporate earnings figures failed to relieve Tokyo's downbeat mood as fears that the global recovery may be slowing sent dealers into sell-off mode.
Tokyo's Nikkei gave up 1.64 per cent, or 158.72 points, to close at 9,537.30 after the government released figures showing unemployment was rising and industrial production had unexpectedly dipped.
Adding to his woes were data showing industrial output dropped 1.5 per cent from the previous month, a serious worry as the country is banking on exports to boost its recovery.
The news dented traders' confidence, causing them to brush aside Thursday's earnings reports.
Sydney fell 0.68 per cent, or 30.6 points, to close at 4,493.5, while Shanghai finished down 0.40 per cent,.....
The morning papers contain articles on the newly released paper on monetary policy by James Bullard, the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The basic thrust of the paper is that the Fed’s efforts to keep interest rates so low and for “an extended period” of time may eventually backfire and result in a Japan-like dilemma of stagnation and price deflation.
The “appropriate tool” in the present situation, Bullard contends, is the use of “quantitative easing.” More specifically, he argues that the Federal Reserve needs to be willing to buy longer-term Treasury issues to expand the amount of Federal Reserve Credit outstanding in spite of the fact that there are more than $1.0 trillion in excess reserves currently in the banking system.
Again, the data in this Figure do not mix at all— it’s boxes on the right [US] and circles on the left [Japan]. But the most recent observation for the U.S., the solid box labelled “May 2010,”is about as close as the U.S. has been in recent times to the low nominal interest rate steady state. It is below the rate at which policy turns passive in the diagram. In addition, the FOMC has pledged to keep the policy rate low for an “extended period.”This pledge is meant to push in‡ation back toward target— certainly higher than where it is today— thus moving to the right in the Figure. Still, as the Figure makes clear,.....
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