MARKET RAP
More depths plumbed
The New Zealand market was as good as it got this week, and that showed a fall of more than 1%. Japan set the pace for declines and is now looking at territory not seen in almost 25 years. (Oct 3, '08)
R M Cutler runs his eye over the ups and downs in the week's markets.

CHAN AKYA
Dismal math
Simple math helps to debunk the mumbo-jumbo carelessly thrown around by central banks and the media with respect to the present financial crisis. The exercise proves among other things that the US Treasury will certainly buy assets above fair value, while European efforts to save their banking systems are doomed. (Oct 3, '08)

Asian markets brush off Senate move
Hyped by its backers as the last thing preventing the entire United States economy from sinking into a black hole of immeasurable depth and torment, the US$810 billion financial rescue bill was passed by the US Senate on Thursday evening - and Asian markets barely blinked. - R M Cutler (Oct 2, '08)

MARKET RAP
A candle in the darkness
A turbulent week saw the Australian share market offer the first small piece of good news in a long time for nearly any exchange. It will take some time to see whether this small candle in the darkness will survive the swirling winds. (Sep 26, '08)
R M Cutler runs his eye over the ups and downs in the week's markets.

The downside fans out
Asia's turbulent markets are establishing a pattern which, once broken, can be followed by a move to the upside from which the charts never look back. Unfortunately, the evidence points to a long wait for that event. - R M Cutler (Sep 23, '08)

MARKET RAP
What a buzz
A momentous week moved towards its conclusion with markets reacting like wasted druggies to the instant buzz of a US$200 billion injection into the global financial system, courtesy central banks. Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index surged nearly 10% on Friday, and even Shanghai came to life with a similar jump as China's government did its bit by scrapping the tax on equity transactions. (Sep 19, '08)
R M Cutler runs his eye over the ups and downs in the week's markets.

Gold: Why Asia was spot on
As the carnage on Wall Street intensified, the flight to safety this week started across the Pacific in the gold markets of Sydney and Hong Kong on Tuesday, before the gold price rocketed in the US market on Wednesday morning. Investors trying to spot a gold trend early would have been well served looking at the spot price in Asia, rather than waiting for guidance from New York. - R M Cutler (Sep 18, '08)

MARKET RAP
A respite, but no reprieve
The ongoing declines in Asian markets showed a small lull, and some reversal, with Seoul making phenomenal gains and New Zealand also performing well. But the region is by no means out of the woods, with Chinese exchanges plunging to their lowest levels in months. (Sep 12, '08)
R M Cutler runs his eye over the ups and downs in the week's markets.

Food trade's fatal price pendulum
Five years on, the "conspiracy of silence" over collapsing commodity prices lamented by French president Jacques Chirac has been replaced by a global concern over soaring prices hitting hard the same group of countries. More than price swings are amiss. (Sep 10,'08)

Asia still fatally coupled
Hopes that the Asian economies have achieved a degree of independence from that of the US are proving unfounded. Rather than being decoupled, they are still all too firmly attached. - Thomas I Palley (Sep 8,'08)

MARKET RAP
Darkest week in a year
Asian markets suffered a week of near non-stop declines and with objective macroeconomic and financial reasons for worsening sentiment, there are few if any points of light. Don't curse the darkness - just stay inside. (Sep 5, '08)
R M Cutler runs his eye over the ups and downs in the week's markets.

MARKET RAP
A deceptive Wall Street bounce
Late-in-the-week US economic data stirred positive movements around Asia, but such Wall Street-inspired bounces are rarely the stuff of sustainable rallies, and certainly not under current conditions. (Aug 29, '08)
Robert M Cutler runs his eye over the ups and downs in the week's markets.

Don't cry for Doha
The recent collapse of the Doha Round of trade talks raised misplaced cries that an opportunity was being lost to lift millions of people out of poverty. The round was based on a myth. Reforms happen because countries find greater openness to be in their best interest. (Aug 21, '08)

CHAN AKYA
Asian economies meet gravity
Asian economies are losing their vibrant growth as they feel the impact of slowdowns in the United States and Europe. Intra-Asian trade will offer little in the way of an alternative stimulus, while further reforms are overdue, and much needed, in India and China. (Aug 21, '08)

China narrows ASEAN trade gap
China, which imports more from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asia Nations than it exports to them, moved closer to a trade surplus with its junior neighbors in the first five months of this year, even as wages at home accelerated, driving up production costs. (Jul 28, '08)

Protectionism goes into reverse
The long trend to remove import barriers to international trade may now be over. Reversing the process, countries that produce raw materials are instituting curbs on exports as they regain long-lost purchasing power. Asia is in the lead. - Joergen Oerstroem Moeller (Jul 24, '08)

ASIA HAND
Asia's inflationary
winners and losers
Rising inflation in Asia threatens the hard-won gains made in the region since its financial crisis of a decade ago. A repeat of that meltdown is unlikely - at least for those countries willing to let their currencies strengthen. - Shawn W Crispin (Jul 21, '08)

COMMENT
West's loss of Gulf funds East's gain
Moves by Western countries, including the United States and Germany, to restrict investments by the Gulf's sovereign wealth funds threaten to rebound to the benefit of Eastern economies. (Jul 3, '08)

CHAN AKYA
Vietnam's hard economic
lesson for China
The unraveling of the Vietnam investment story in the past few weeks shows dangers for other large Asian economies, in particular China, which faces the dual dangers of rapidly rising inflation and heightened risks in its financial sector. The term Middle Kingdom seems destined to mean something altogether less salutary in coming years (Jun 23, '08)

A world still half red
The not-long-ago political atlas that had half the world tinted communist red has reversed - drastically. Today, the capitalist nations that won the Cold War would be filled in red, denoting their crushing public and private debt. Their former adversaries would be green, representing healthy economies and swollen foreign exchange reserves. - Julian Delasantellis (Jun 19, '08)

Gulf eyes oil-for-food pacts
Persian Gulf countries, rich in oil but short of arable territory, are looking to invest in agricultural land abroad, such as in Asia, to secure food resources. That could benefit all parties, though domestic shortages, inflation and politics in the food-exporting countries could change the equation, as could oil-price swings.(Jun 19, '08)

Food summit overlooks price-surge ingredient
A United Nations-sponsored summit on soaring food prices demanded more aid for developing countries, adjustments to trade barriers - and more cash for UN agencies. This bureaucratic soup was unflavored by recognition of a core cause of the problem - the US Federal Reserve's bailout of investment banks and mortgage lenders. - Hossein Askari and Noureddine Krichene (Jun 10, '08)

US preaches what it practices not
The recent flurry of concern in the United States over the growing size and potential role of sovereign wealth funds may be what developing countries have long looked for - a thoroughgoing debate on sovereignty and the role large financial institutions, mostly in US and Western hands, play in the global markets (Jun 5, '08)

WTO's formula for failure
Attempts to reach a comprehensive new global trade agreement continue their lamentable history of non-progress. Nor is success likely unless the industrialized nations take greater account of the growing interests of China, India and other fast-developing nations. -Raja M (May 28, '08)

SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUNDS, Part I
The forgotten issues
Demands by the US and others for rules to limit the policies and operations of sovereign wealth funds highlight the vast amount of money at the funds' disposal. Overlooked are questions such as to whom does this wealth belong and how can it benefit the citizenry of the oil and gas-rich countries holding, or misspending, the cash? - Hossein Askari and Noureddine Krichene (May 21, '08)
This is the first article in a two-part report

More fears rise around Doha deal
The rising cost of food is casting its shadow over World Trade Organization negotiations this week as some developing countries question whether further opening up their economies will merely intensify problems facing their farmers while cutting revenues governments need to buy imported food. (May 20, '08)

The silver lining in high commodity prices
The global commodity price boom has had enormously complex and uncertain effects, helping poor farmers and poor resource-rich countries while severely hurting the urban poor. But high prices send a real message about scarcity in a globalizing world. Those who ignore it, especially by blocking market forces, are making a tragic mistake. (May 19, '08)

Food bill comes in for liberalization
Two decades of liberalization in international agriculture have seen poor countries open up to cheap food imports and their farming infrastructure underdeveloped or turned over to growing products for export. That left them ill-prepared for the present surge in prices. The "experts" now urge more of what got them into this mess. (May 13, '08)

Food crisis gatecrashes ADB
As food prices soar to unprecedented highs, the Asian Development Bank at the weekend outlined its vision for eradicating poverty in the region. Yet after 40 years of being the premier lender of development cash in the Asia-Pacific, the bank had a solitary paragraph about agriculture in the document outlining its goals. (May 5, '08)

What is really causing agflation?
Rising food prices, notably in the past year, have coincided with with increased involvement of speculators seeking to profit from rising demand for agricultural commodities. Specialists in the sector are divided over whether that speculation is itself driving up prices. (Apr 28, '08)

Rising food prices could affect WTO talks
Countries from the Pacific, Africa and the Caribbean have warned Pascal Lamy, the head of the World Trade Organization, that rising food and fuel prices may require a change in course of talks aimed at liberalization of trade in industrial goods and agriculture. That puts them at odds with Lamy, who last week said he wants to wrap up negotiations next month. (Apr 22, '08)

CHAN AKYA
Bankrupt policies, empty stomachs
Inflation in food products has become the new front in the geopolitical battlefield. Asians can start by blaming themselves for the present mess in which their farmers remain poor, their poorest struggle to pay for basics such as rice, and their governments continue to pay economic allegiance to the has-been powers of America and Europe. (Apr 18, '08)

A blow for Asian wealth funds
Germany's decision to introduce controls on investments in the country by sovereign wealth funds, mostly based in Asia and the Middle East, indicates a victory for European protectionists and a stand against the globalization so recently pressed for by advanced economies. (Apr 15, '08)

Capitalism at stake in climate crisis
As recognition grows of the threat posed to humanity by global warming, the goal must be adoption of a low-consumption, low-growth economic model. Yet the elites of the North and the South are likely to agree only to techno-fixes and a market-based cap-and-trade system. Growth will be sacrosanct, as will the system of global capitalism. - Walden Bello (Apr 10, '08)

Rust to fertilize food price surge
The spread to Asia of a wheat-killing fungus after a four-decade lull threatens vital farming areas in Pakistan and further east. The result, allied to reduced grain reserves and biofuel production, will be further upward pressure on the price of basic foods. Makers of genetically modified crops, however, may make a killing. - F William Engdahl (Apr 3, '08)

What's up with Asian currencies?
The strength of the yen and euro has been a dominant recent feature of global markets. Yet Asian currencies, even the Chinese yuan, have yet to show comparable gains against the US dollar. Economic fundamentals argue that these gains should come; local politics can argue otherwise. Therein lie the risks and the opportunities. - Axel Merk (Mar 27, '08)

CHAN AKYA
Why markets love dictators
This week's developments once again highlight the reasons for markets to prefer dictatorships compared with freewheeling democracies. Clarity in decision-making is more important than preserving the rights of individuals, for the benefit of society at large, as seen by the market reactions to recent political changes in India, Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia and China. (Mar 20, '08)

CHAN AKYA
Storm warning for Asia
Asia's economies, already under pressure amid rising regional security risks in the form of an unsettled Pakistan and a belligerent Russia, could see their growth prospects blown away as the impact of the crippled US financial system goes global. The biggest economies may pull through eventually; the smaller ones will have a tougher time finding port. (Jan 3, '08)