Global Crisis Moves East as China Suffers Rapid Downturn

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: China’s industrial output is contracting at the fastest pace since the depths of the global financial crisis, with knock-on effects spreading across the Far East.

“It just keeps getting worse,” said Alistair Thornton and Xianfang Ren from IHS Global Insight. “The government has underestimated the pace of the slowdown and is behind the curve.”

The HSBC/Markit manufacturing index for China fell to 47.6 in August, the lowest since the onset of Great Recession in late 2008. Inventories are rising. The index for new export orders fell to the lowest since March 2009. “Beijing must step up policy easing to stabilise growth,” said Hongbin Qu from HSBC.

China’s official PMI manufacturing index – weighted to big companies – also fell through the contraction line of 50, though services are holding up better.

Evidence of a hard landing over the summer is becoming clearer. Rail volumes fell 8.2pc in July from a year before. The Japanese group Komatsu said its exports of hydraulic excavators to China – a proxy gauge for Chinese construction – fell 48pc in August from a year before.

The twin effect of China’s downturn and Europe’s double-dip recession has turned into a full-blown shock for much of Asia. Hong Kong and Singapore both contracted in the second quarter and are probably in technical recession. Read on and comment » | Ambrose Evans-Pritchard | Monday, September 03, 2012

Capitalism at Fault for Global Crisis

RUSSIA TODAY: Is capitalism to blame for the rise in unrest and the fall of global markets? One scholar argued yes, saying it is merely how capitalism works. Ha-Joon Chang, a senior research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and author of “23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism” argued the assumptions behind the dogma and hype of capitalism and the free market spun by the neoliberal economists since the era of Reagan are completely false. » | Friday, March 25, 2011

Michael Moore Film Calls Capitalism Evil
THE TELEGRAPH: The latest film by Michael Moore, the US documentary maker, says that capitalism is "evil". Capitalism: A Love Story, targets the big banks and speculators who have been blamed for contributing to the global financial crisis.

Capitalism: A Love Story, targets the big banks and speculators who have been blamed for contributing to the global financial crisis.

The film premiered at the Venice film festival on Sunday.

Blending his trademark humour with tragic individual stories, archive footage and publicity stunts, the 55-year-old launches an all-out attack on the capitalist system, arguing that it benefits the rich and condemns millions to poverty.

"Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil," the two-hour movie concludes.

"You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that is good for all people and that something is democracy."

The bad guys in Moore's mind are big banks and hedge funds which "gambled" investors' money in complex derivatives that few, if any, really understood and which belonged in the casino. >>> | Sunday, September 06, 2009

Trailer: Michael Moore’s New Film Capitalism: A Love Story

”There Will Be Blood”
GLOBE AND MAIL: Harvard financial guru Niall Ferguson predicts prolonged financial hardship, even civil war, before the ‘Great Recession' ends

Harvard author and financial crisis guru Niall Ferguson has landed with a thud in Ottawa, spreading messages that could make even the most confident policy makers squirm.

The global crisis is far from over, has only just begun, and Canada is no exception, Mr. Ferguson said in an interview before delivering a presentation to public-policy think tank, Canada 2020.

Policy makers and forecasters who see a recovery next year are probably lying to boost public confidence, he said. And the crisis will eventually provoke political conflict, albeit not on the scale of a world war, but violent all the same.
“There will be blood.”

The Buy America penchant pushed by the U.S. Congress in passing the recent stimulus bill was only the tip of the iceberg.

Abu Dhabi buying Nova Chemicals at bargain-basement prices on Monday is a sign of things to come, with financial power quickly being transferred over to the world's creditors – namely sovereign wealth funds – and away from the world's debtors.

And much of today's mess is the fault of central bankers who targeted consumer-price inflation but purposefully turned a blind eye to asset inflation.

The Laurence A. Tisch professor of history at Harvard University, and author of The Ascent of Money, A Financial History of the World, sat down with The Globe and Mail's economics reporter, Heather Scoffield. >>> Heather Scoffield | Monday, February 23, 2009

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There’s No Place Like Home
YNET NEWS: Global financial crisis prompts thousands of Israelis living abroad to return to Jewish state. Immigrant Absorption Ministry foresees 15,000 homecomings by end of 2009

The silver lining: The global financial crisis hitting world markets seems to have one favorable effect as far as Israel is concerned, as thousands of Israelis who have been living abroad for the past few years head back to their homeland.

According to the Immigrant Absorption Ministry, some 15,000 Israelis are expected to return to the Jewish state by the end of 2009.

The ministry launched a campaign encouraging Israelis living abroad to do just that in August of 2007, as part of the nation's 60th anniversary celebrations, offering a NIS 100 million (about $24 million) incentives package.

"The last few weeks have been crazy," Tali Naveh, who heads New York's Israel House, which tends to New York-based Israelis who wish to return, told Yedioth Ahronoth. "The phone has been ringing off the hook, and not just here, in all of out 10 centers on North America. People here have their American dream shattered."

Some 2,000 Israelis have returned home between August and mid October alone – a 50% rise from the same time last year. >>> Itamar Eichner | October 27, 2008

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Islamic Banking Not Immune from Global Financial Crisis
Economic Woes, Commodity Slump Could Hit Islamic Banks >>>
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Pope Says Financial Crisis Shows Money an Illusion
REUTERS: VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict said on Monday that the global financial crisis showed that faith in God trumped a lifetime spent pursuing material wealth.

"We see it now in the collapse of the great banks that money disappears, it's nothing," the Pontiff said.

The global financial turmoil, the worst since the Great Depression, has wiped away hundreds of billions of euros (dollars) in shareholder wealth and felled banking institutions that just months ago seemed untouchable.

The pontiff, using a biblical metaphor, said people who ignored the word of God to pursue wealth had effectively built their homes on sand instead of on a solid foundation of faith.

It was a possible reference to the collapse of the U.S. housing market, which triggered the financial crisis.

"Whoever builds his life on this reality, on material things, on success ... builds (his house) on sand. Only the word of God is the foundation of all reality," he said. [Source: Reuters] Writing by Phil Stewart; Editing by Sami Aboudi | October 6, 2008

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Pope: Financial Crisis Shows Futility of Money >>> | October 6, 2008

THE ECONOMIC TIMES (INDIA):
Financial Crisis Shows Need for Religion in Politics: Vatican: VATICAN CITY: The financial crisis sweeping the world economy proves the need for religion in politics, Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone said on Tuesday.

"Politics needs religion," Cardinal Bertone said in a speech published by the Vatican mouthpiece L'Osservatore Romano. "When instead God is ignored, the ability to respect rights and recognise the common good begins to disappear."

Bertone, the Vatican's top diplomat and Pope Benedict XVI's right-hand man, told a conference sponsored by the US-based Aspen Institute: "Where people look solely for short-term profit, identifying it with good, they end up erasing the benefit itself."

The prelate said the "current financial crisis" and the "tragic outcomes of all political ideologies" were symptomatic of this lack.

He added: "To manage globalisation, politics not only needs an ethic inspired by religion, but also it needs for this religion to be rational. For that too, politics needs Christianity." >>> IST, Agencies | September 30, 2008

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