Asia

Jim Rogers is bullish on Asia. In a twenty-minute interview with the BBC, he explains why? Hat tip Paul Kedrosky. Like Paul, "I find many of his rhetorical tricks maddening" but it is an informative interview nonetheless. Videos below

By Claus Vistesen One of the reasons that I have always had a problem with Goldman Sachs' infamous notion of the BRIC economies was not the fact that it excluded other important economies such as e.g Chile or Indonesia, but rather that…

By Win Thin Malaysia central bank surprised the markets by hiking the statutory reserve requirement 100 bp bp while leaving policy rates unchanged at 2.75%. The bank noted that “While the stance of monetary policy is expected to remain…

Nomura's Bob Janjuah was on Bloomberg Television's "Inside Track" with Erik Schatzker this morning, discussing his outlook as well as the crises in the U.S. and Europe. He opened the session by saying he is tactically bearish over…

By Win Thin It’s all about monetary tightening in EM today. PBOC hiked reserve requirements another 50 bp today, effective January 20, and has hiked a total here of 350 bp since starting in January 2010. This comes after the Christmas…

by Win Thin Bank Indonesia kept rates steady at 6.5%, as expected. However, we disagree with its dovish stance. Inflation pressures are rising, and tightening should have begun in 2010. Headline inflation was 7.0% y/y in December, the…

Here's a run down of the recent woes in Vietnam.  As you may recall, they are one of the few Asian emerging markets to be downgraded by the ratings agencies from Ba3 to B1 by Moody's - both junk ratings. Most of the other ratings in…

The recent sequence of reassurances from various eurozone policymakers suggests we are in the early, not latter, stages of the euro crisis. Only an Anglo-Saxon style QE will prevent dissolution of the euro. Such a radically un-German…

Moody’s put Indonesia’s rating on review for possible upgrade. This is a stronger statement than the June move to positive outlook on the Ba2 rating (equivalent to BB), and we think an upgrade will be seen soon. Indeed, the agencies are…

Stephen Roach argues that the U.S. is not equipped to turn the Fed's liquidity into domestic demand so the liquidity provided by quantitative easing will simply leak out abroad to form asset bubbles somewhere else. He is principally…