Asia

Overnight, the Japanese government released figures for Q4 2008 GDP that pointed to a depression-like fall in the Japanese economy. GDP contracted 3.3% from Q3, or 12.7% using the U.S. convention of annualizing those numbers. This is the…

Morgan Stanley Asia head Stephen Roach believes that Asia will weather the economic storm with a less severe downturn than the West. However, as the economies are predominantly export-led, he also believes that the countries are followers,…

There seems to be a blame game making the rounds in policy circles these days in which Asia is at fault for the credit crisis and economic downturn. The meme goes like this: Everything was fine until the Asians started manipulating their…

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has picked up on the decline in trade flows that many have highlighted in recent months. This time, he looks at European-Asian trade flows and sees some major problems.

The Chief Economist of Goldman Sachs sat down with the FT's David Oakley and had a go on a number of topics from the financial crisis, investments in Emerging Markets, the future of the Bric (Brazil, Russia, India and China) economies, to…

So, I am back in the saddle after a great weekend in Palm Beach. And three days almost entirely away from Newspapers, Televisions, Telephones, and Computers is a very good thing to clear the head. (Although I did happen to catch Sarah…

Last night, on Bloomberg TV I heard that New Zealand had become the first Asian economy to officially slip into recession. Today, I have seen the stats confirming this. Jim O'Neill, Chief Economist at Goldman Sachs, says the chance of…

Haven't we been told time and again that much of the oil price rise was due to to external event risk like political instability and war? Well we've got this is spades and oil is still falling. Today, Russia has launched a war against its…