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det er bedøvende ligegyldigt, hvordan folk har det rundt omkring verden
vi er inde i et investerings og råvareboom, hvor man investerer på livet løs for at udbygge raffinaderier, etablerer oile, gas og kul udvindingsanlæg, olieboring mm, kraftværker, petrokemiske anlæg, havne, jernbaner, skibe og en masse andet knyttet til resourceboomet
og det skaffer en masse relativt højtlønnede jobs til masser af mennesker, der får det bedre
at der så er mennesker, der ikke har det så godt er lige gyldigt når man tænker i investeringsbaner og aktier
jeg synes da også det er synd for dem, men det kan jeg alligevel ikke gøre noget ved
men hvordan de har det, har intet med konjunktur og finansmarkeder at gøre, tværtimod
og uanset hvad, er bilsaget i de fattige lande steget fra 10 mio i 1998 til ca 45 mio i 2008 sammenlignet med ca 37 mio i de rige lande
så der må være nogle, der har det relativt bedre i de fattige lande, ellers købte de vel ikke en bil
og de bruger selvfølgelig også mere olie til at køre i de biler ligesom de bruger mere energi til deres boliger, som de også bygger mange flere af end i 1998
fransk yacht firma med fremgang og kursen er halveret
http://www.couach.com/pdf/080617_cp-couach_T1_en_hausse.pdf
Smooth sailing for yacht builders despite economy
Saturday July 5, 12:21 am ET
By Alan Sayre, AP Business Writer
No sticker shock here for wealthy buyers: tens of millions for `super yachts'
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Fuel prices are soaring and credit markets tightening, but the super-rich are still lining up to pay tens of millions of dollars for mega yachts.
The well-heeled buyers of the floating mansions are increasingly coming from emerging economies -- in the Middle East, Russia and South America. The source of their wealth runs the gamut -- technology, venture capitalism, new industries. And, yes, oil.
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"There are a lot of people with new wealth looking for relaxation and enjoyment," said John Dane III, president of privately owned Trinity Yachts, the largest U.S. builder.
These days, the biggest problem at Trinity's shipbuilding yards is having enough workers to handle the 24 custom contracts the company currently is working for the luxury vessels.
"Nobody is buying these yachts because they need them," said William S. Smith III, Trinity's vice president. "They're buying them because they want them."
Another builder, YCO Deuxil PLC, has nine yachts under construction -- more than double from last year. Sales for the first five months exceeded the entire amount for 2007, the London-based company said.
YCO Deuxil, which also provides services for super yacht owners, saw its profit more than double to $549,367 in 2007 over 2006.
According to Camper & Nicholsons International, a broker of yacht sales and charter contracts, there are about 3,800 yachts over 80 feet in service around the world now. About 1,800 of those have been built since 2000. The study predicts that that by 2010, there will be 5,000 such yachts on the water.
"There's not enough supply," said Ed Slack, editor of International Boat Industry. "It takes two years to build some of these yachts and the demand hasn't slowed down."
So far, Trinity's largest vessel has been a 192-foot yacht that would carry a replacement price of $60 million to $65 million. The company is working a 242-footer that will have a price tag in excess of $90 million.
In the Netherlands, the First Export Association of Dutch Shipbuilding, or Feadship, can put together a 128-footer for about $40 million. On the upper end of an already high scale, a 300-foot monster yacht typically will run around $150 million.
Francois van Well, chief executive of Feadship America, said about 50 percent of his company's business comes from the United States, but more buyers are coming the rest of the world. And it's not old family money.
"Most of our clients have earned their wealth in one generation," van Well said.
Trinity, which once had an almost exclusive U.S. buyer base, also is seeing more overseas buyers who have recently moved into substantial money, Dane and Smith said.
At the Global Superyacht Forum, a meeting of yacht owners in Amsterdam last November, Steven Rattner, manager of DLJ Merchant Banking Partners, said there are 90,000 families in the world with a net worth of more than $360 million each. That number is expected to increase over the next three years by 10 percent a year.
Because most of the new buyers are still active in business, they only have so much time a year for their yachts. Many also have vacation homes overseas. And they know about investments.
Enter the charter business, especially in the Mediterranean where, according to Dane, a 164-foot yacht can easily bring $350,000 a week. By chartering a boat 10 weeks a year, the owners can pay operating expenses for a full year, he said.
"The charter market has allowed people to buy boats a little larger than they would have wanted to invest in had they not seen it as a source of revenue to help defray their operating costs," Dane said.
And these vessels don't depreciate in price.
Dane said the first owner of every Trinity-built yacht who decided later to sell got more for it than the purchase price. Three were sold by the original buyer even before they were delivered.
"We have one owner and this is his fourth boat and he's never taken delivery," Dane said. "Rich people don't want to wait on a boat and they'll pay a premium. This owner has taken that premium and moved to the back of the line."
Trinity has about 900 employees at its yards in Gulfport, Miss., and in New Orleans, where the company's yard was used to build the Higgins vessels of World War II and D-Day fame. Feadship has three European yards that keep 1,200 workers busy turning out an average of five yachts a year.
Dane said he could use more workers to keep up with the orders. When someone is ready to buy, a long delay could mean "they look for another yard," he said.
Small-cap stock run could herald broader recovery
bemærk teksten - An official recession hasn't been declared because it takes several quarters for economists to analyze all the data. And, in many cases the U.S. was already on its way out of a recession by the time economists got around to calling one.
Saturday July 5, 3:04 am ET
By Joe Bel Bruno, AP Business Writer
Small-caps historically seen leading market out of recession; could signal rebound in starting
NEW YORK (AP) -- Even as Wall Street skids lower almost by the day, and the major indexes have touched the levels of a bear market, some analysts are actually finding some signs in the performance of small-company stocks that might be pointing to the early stages of a much broader recovery.
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Small-cap stocks are now doing better than the overall market -- and that has some analysts hopeful. These stocks typically get knocked lower during tough economic times as investors look to safer investments, but historically are the first to rise when the economy rebounds.
In the year following the end of each of the past 10 recessions, small stocks rose an average of 28 percent compared to 19 percent for large stocks, according to T. Rowe Price. And, the Russell 2000 index of smaller companies has performed significantly better than larger-company indexes so far this year.
While the Dow Jones industrials are down about 15 percent for the first half of the year, the Russell 2000 has fallen 10 percent. And, since the lows of mid-March, the Russell has risen almost 7 percent compared to the less than 1 percent gain by the broader Standard & Poor's 500 index.
"The classic thinking is that if you're going to bet on a recovery, small-caps are going to lead the charge," said John Thornton, co-portfolio manager of Houston-based Stephens Investment Management Group. "And when all you hear about is oil prices, interest rates and credit exposure, in the small-cap world you can find unique companies that can grow despite a bad economy."
An official recession hasn't been declared because it takes several quarters for economists to analyze all the data. And, in many cases the U.S. was already on its way out of a recession by the time economists got around to calling one.
The general feeling on Wall Street is that the U.S. is already in a recession, and one that likely began at the end of last year. So, that means the rise in small-cap stocks might indicate the recovery is already under way.
To be sure, that doesn't mean its entirely safe to rush back into the market and snap up undervalued blue chip stocks. Thornton points out there are still a number of variables -- like the global credit crisis and soaring oil prices -- that makes the current market cycle hard to predict.
The upside right now of small-cap indexes like the Russell 2000 is that they're largely shielded from credit market turmoil. Instead of big global financial brands like Citigroup Inc. or Merrill Lynch & Co., the small-cap indexes contain regional banks with little or no exposure to mortgage-backed securities and other risky investments.
Kim Caughey, equity research analyst for Fort Pitt Capital, said she thinks the rise of small-caps might be more of an anomaly and not some kind of sign of a rebound. Still, she said many investors who aren't buying small-caps, and who gravitate toward the well-known large-cap names, should be more willing to diversify into smaller companies.
"Investors should be less market cap sensitive and more value sensitive," she said. "We love stocks of all sizes, and if I see good value I'm allowed to go out and buy it."
While small-caps are known for being volatile, they are also the asset class that has the best potential for fast growth. The fact that small-caps are often in niche industries helps them to withstand even a bad economy.
There is evidence that rising inflation might even be an advantage for small companies over their larger counterparts. Smaller companies typically have leaner staffs and more cost controls, so that helps them better manage high commodities prices.
In addition, the products they make or services they delivered are often specialized enough where they can defray some of the higher costs to customers.
"We might not know if the rise in small-caps portends a larger rebound," Caughey said. "But, there's no reason not to move into these stocks as a whole, especially if you're looking for growth."
The per capita housing space for urban Chinese was more than tripled in the past two decades, said an official in Beijing on Monday.
og forbruget af energi til opvarmning og airconditioning samt brug af el til diverse varige forbrugsgoder, er proportionalt med arealet plus stigning i kravet/økonomisk evne til at holde en ønsket temperatur - hvis man er fattig varmer man kun op i et rum om vinteren og kun om dagen, medens rige mennesker varmer hele huset op hele døgnet
"Currently the per capita floor space for residents in cities and towns reached 28 square meters, growing at an average rate of one square meter a year since the early 1980s, when the figure was less than eight square meters," said Qi Ji, vice minister of construction.
Commercial houses have become the major housing supply in cities and townships, investment in which accounts for 85 percent of the total, according to Qi.
More than 40 million urban households nationwide improved their living condition by purchasing commercial houses or second-hand houses, Qi noted.
China has an urban population of about 400 million, who found it hard to buy a house due to skyrocketing house prices.
The average property price in China's 70 large and medium-sized cities in last December were up 10.5 percent from the same month of the previous year, while in Beijing it was up 17.5 percent, according to the National Development and Reform Commission in January.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has pledged in his government work report on March 5 to allocate 6.8-billion-yuan (951 million U.S. dollars) in the 2008 budget to build low-rent houses for urban poor.
Boao Forum: China real estate sector likely at crossroads
GOV.cn Sunday, April 13, 2008
Special Report: Boao Forum for Asia 2008
Economists and executives participating in the Boao Forum in Hainan for Asia on Saturday highlighted the uncertainties of China's real estate industry, which they said might experience a rational cooling at best or a painful reshuffle this year.
Many agreed 2008 would not be a quiet year for China's property industry, even though the U.S. subprime crisis would hardly deal serious blows to the domestic real estate market.
Government data had projected a slowdown in the rise of property prices since January, with price declines registered in some cities.
In Shenzhen of the southern Guangdong Province, the cradle of the country's real estate industry, developers who used to buy up land over the past few years had suddenly turned prudent this spring. This was evidenced by the increasing plots of land failing to be auctioned off.
Pan Shiyi, chairman of property developer SOHO China, attributed the caution to a strained cash flow in the Real Estate Dialogue talk on the sidelines of the Boao Forum for Asia 2008 Annual Conference.
Rising interest rates and succinct bank loans under the tight monetary policy imposed late last year, together with the rising costs for raw materials, labor and land, had squeezed the profits of the real estate industry, he said.
China's four largest listed land developers, including Vanke, China Merchants Property Development, Gemdale and Poly, all reported a five-year low in cash flow from operating costs per share in their 2007 financial reports.
"Money has become the top problem plaguing the capital-intensive real estate industry this year," Pan said.
But Ren Zhiqiang, president of the Beijing-based Huayuan Group, told the meeting he would rather take a long-term perspective. "Solong as the fundamentals of the Chinese economy remain un-disrupted, property prices will rise soon or later," he said.
Chen Huai, dean of the policy research office of the ministry of housing and urban-rural construction, also denied the country's real estate sector was in the trough.
"The process of urbanization in China is a long-term strategy that will last 20 to 30 years. It will not easily be affected by individual events such as the U.S. subprime crisis and the Olympic Games."
The adjustment would be more like a rational cooling from the past sizzling growth, he noted.
Chen said the newly-installed ministry of housing and urban-rural construction would strive to secure the need for low-rent houses in counties and cities, build more houses in villages and townships and further regulate the property market.
Though confident with the whole industry, Ren still foresaw a difficult period as cash-strained small players would face mergers and acquisitions in the months to come.
Hu Zuliu, Goldman Sachs Group (Asia) Ltd general manager, warned it was dangerous to think China was immune to the subprime crisis triggered by a property bust in the United states.
He said there were many lessons to be drawn from both the crisis and history as many countries, such as Australia, New Zealand, Spain, France, Thailand and Malaysia, had experienced a boom-and-bust real estate cycle over the past decade. "China should stay on high alert at this point."
China's industrial output up 16.0% in May
GOV.cn Monday, June 16, 2008
The industrial output of China's major enterprises grew 16.0 percent year-on-year in May, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Monday.
The increase was 0.3 percentage points higher than April and 2.1 percentage points lower than May last year, the bureau said.
"The industrial output slowed down despite the fact that the week-long May Day holiday was shortened to three days this year, which gave the country a longer working month," said Zhang Yansheng, head of the Research Institute of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation under the National Development and Reform Commission.
Zhang contributed the slower growth to the government's efforts to prevent the economy from going overheated. The January-May industrial output increased 16.3 percent, 1.8 percentage points lower than the same period of last year.
The output of textile, chemicals, ferrous and non-ferrous metals, electrical equipments all saw slower growth while that of general equipments, transportation equipments and telecommunication equipments, computer and other electronic equipments witnessed higher growth in May.
Analysts said the growth in some sectors was likely driven by the surge in demand following the catastrophic earthquake in mid-May. After the quake which destroyed factories and houses, the country began constructing temporary settlement areas for the survivors and rebuilding infrastructure facilities in the affected regions.
The output of power and coal rose 11.8 percent and 18.5 percent respectively; crude steel was up 10.5 percent; Motor vehicles rose 21.7 percent, among which cars rose 17.6 percent.
Crude oil output reached 16.2 million tonnes, a modest rise of 1.8 percent from a year earlier.
The sales ratio of industrial products was 98.0 percent, an increase of 0.1 percentage points over last May. This figure measured the part of production that were sold rather than those went into inventory.
kina - From January to May, total investment in fixed assets in the whole country stood at 4,026.4 billion yuan, a rise of 25.6 percent, year-on-year. Of which, state-owned and state-holding enterprises invested 1,639.7 billion yuan, surging 18.0 percent; real estate development valued at 951.9 billion yuan, up 31.9 percent.
In terms of jurisdiction of management, central investment stood at 369.9 billion yuan with growth rate of 18.5 percent as compared with previous year; that of local investment totaled 3,656.6 billion yuan, jumping 26.4 percent.
In terms of different industry structures, investments of primary, secondary, and tertiary industry amounted to 50.9, 1,784.6 and 2,190.9 billion yuan, expanding 66.1, 25.6 and 25.0 percent respectively, year-on-year.
In terms of different sectors, investments of mining and washing of coal stood at 52.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year rise of 47.0 percent; that of production and supply of electricity and heat accounting for 247.1 billion yuan, climbing 4.4 percent; that of extraction of petroleum and natural gas grew to 63.2 billion yuan, increasing 17.1 percent; railway transport valued at 63.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 19.7 percent; that of manufacture of non-metallic mineral products arrived at 117.6 billion yuan, rose 45.2 percent; that of smelting and pressing of ferrous metals reached 111.4 billion yuan, growing 24.5 percent; and that of smelting and pressing of non-ferrous metals hit 65.8 billion yuan, a rise of 41.5 percent, year-on-year.
In terms of registration status, investments of domestic funds enterprises stood at 3,566.0 billion yuan, surging 27.1 percent over that in the same period last year; that of enterprises with funds from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan valued at 198.4 billion yuan, rising 14.1 percent; and that of foreign funded enterprises standing at 243.5 billion yuan, up 16.7 percent, year-on-year.
In terms of buildings under and new constructions, by the end of May, the cumulative number of urban construction projects over 500,000 yuan was 168508, a year-on-year increase of 17369; that of total planned sum of investment in project under construction stood at 20,615.0 billion yuan, climbing 17.6 percent; that of number of project started this year valued at 84368, increased 9667; that of total planned investment of newly projects was 2,721.2 billion yuan, a decline of 2.5 percent.
In terms of volume of positioned funds, investment in urban areas hit 4,986.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year rise of 23.7 percent. Of which, domestic loans and self-rising funds rising 17.6 and 29.3 percent respectively, that of foreign investment dropped 3.5 percent, year-on-year.
Sales of residential property in China's major cities dwindled drastically during the first weeks of 2008, the China Securities Journal has reported.
og til hanne, du er så useriøs at du provokerer unødigt, at du er dum har du jo bevist for længe siden, så venligst hold dig væk fra iHUP
man skal regne med at data er fra tidligt på året, hvor der var specielt vanskelige vejrsituationer med sne og frost langt ud over det normale
Cities such as Beijing, Wuhan and Chongqing saw their housing transactions in the first week of the year decrease by more than 20 percent than the previous week, the report said.
Housing transactions in the booming southern city of Shenzhen fell by about 38 percent and sales in Nanjing, capital of the coastal Jiangsu Province, plummeted by more than 52 percent, it said.
In witnessing continuous shrinking housing transactions in most cities, Wang Shi, chairman of the Shenzhen-based Vanke, China's largest real estate developer, recently admitted the "turning point" of China's property market had come.
His remarks sparked furious debate, and some developers blamed him of fanning the wait-and-see attitude among consumers.
Housing prices also fluctuated in various cities with dwindling trading volume. Beijing saw its average housing sales price rise slightly by 1.33 percent in the first week of January, but Shenzhen reported a 3.96 percent slump.
Real estate developers in Beijing were trying to attract more buyers by offering discounts or special "gifts", such as a free parking space or home decorations.
A salesman of Webok International, a new residential development in the bustling Chaoyang District of eastern Beijing, said his company recently cut the sale price from 24,500 yuan (3,297 U.S. dollars) to 22,000 yuan a square meter.
Other developers also joined in on the price-cutting to promote sales in the city. Common residents, however, still couldn't afford a commercial apartment in the capital's downtown areas.
"People who have bought our apartments are usually from the top ranks of the social pyramid, such as company bosses and university professors," said the Webok salesman.
Pan Shiyi, head of SOHO China, another major real estate development company, pointed out housing prices would be further restrained in 2008 and 2009 as the government is to offer more economic flats and low-rent housing to middle- and low-income residents.
China's housing prices have soared over the past few years. The government has taken a series of measures, including more stringent land control and housing mortgage policies, to curb speculation in the property sector.
Homebuyers seek to overturn previous contracts
+ - 08:51, July 02, 2008
Related News
More pricing leeway
Official: China to take measures against price collusion by property developers
Property prices in major Chinese cities up 10.5% in December
Housing transactions dwindle in China's major cities
Restrictions aim to cool heated property market
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Zhi, a 30-year-old lawyer feels on the thorns these days. The apartment he bought at the end of last year, located outside Beijing's east fifth ring road, has shrunk by nearly 200,000 yuan so far, dropping from 12,000 yuan per sq m to 9,800 yuan per sq m.
"Since I've signed the contract and paid the installment, asking for a refund can't hold water on law," Lin said. As a lawyer, he understands this point clearly, but psychologically he can hardly accept the fact that his one-year hard work was in vain because of his new apartment.
"The feasible way now is to argue with the property developer for more favorable terms on other charges," Lin said.
One of his colleagues, Li Xiang, may be a bit luckier, as he only lost 30,000 yuan for his decision to change. "Given such a sluggish market, I would rather take a wait-and-see attitude now."
Lin Zhi and Li Xiang are never alone. The continuous shrinking property transaction and dropping price prompt more people to hesitate and even withdraw their decision to buy properties.
Industry statistics show that the proportion of sold floor area to finished floor area in Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Nanjing has dropped to below 0.7, putting more pressure on the property price.
Some customers' eager to get refunds, however, are mostly in the mid-end apartments range which are in poor locations. For high-end apartments or villas, the price remained comparatively firm.
"The declining supply of large-sized apartments with low plot ration in urban areas largely squeeze the room for price drop," said Zheng Deqiang, marketing manager of Beijing Runfeng Real Estate.
In early June, Beijing municipal commission of urban planning launched a new standard on the urban landing used for construction, limiting the average floor area of each apartment to no more than 100 sq m,
Zheng said enquires about their project jumped by nearly 30 percent after the release of the new standard. The company's project is located near the capital's east fourth ring road and boasts a plot ratio of a mere 2.0 percent, in contrast with 3.0 percent for nearby residential buildings.
"Customers would only like to return apartments with poor price value proposition," said Jason Leow, deputy CEO of CapitaLand (China) Investment Co Ltd.
According to Leow, China's property market is now seeing a big shift from investment-orientated buying to self-use buying, thus requiring real estate firms to pay much more attention to their product's quality and services.
"In such a market with a wait-and-see atmosphere, we would be more critical about the location and quality of our products," Leow added.
CapitaLand planed to launch three residential projects in Beijing this year, but all in the capital's very urban areas such as in Chaonei in the east second ring road and Madian along the north third ring road.
Coastal Real Estate Investment (China) Ltd, on the other hand, is striving to improve its service to customers by introducing the industry's first calling system.
Though calling centers have been widely used in the banking and telecom sector, they are resisted by most property developers as housing is a nonstandard product and complaints could vary.
"The system could largely improve the efficiency of settling customers' complaints, and offer a more value-added service to our customers," said Cheng Shi, vice-president of Coastal Real Estate.
Source:China Daily
China's residential sales dip in first four months
Last Updated(Beijing Time):2008-06-02 09:29
China saw commercial residential sales dip in the first four months this year while real estate investment in central and western regions outpaced that in the eastern part.
The area of residential buildings sold in the January-April period fell 4 percent year on year to 136.6 million square meters, compared with a 16.6-percent growth in the same period last year, said the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) on Friday.
Residential buyers had somewhat taken a wait-and-see attitude in the first quarter as housing price rises generally slowed down and transactions continued shrinking as a result of macro-control policies, according to an NDRC report published in April.
The NDRC, China's top economic planner, said the country completed the construction of 84.5 million square meters of commercial residential houses in the first four months, 20.2 percent up year on year.
Real estate investment soared 44.8 percent in central China and42.6 percent in western China, while the booming eastern areas posted a 26.1-percent growth.
In the period, the nation completed 695.2 billion yuan (99.3 billion U.S. dollars) of real estate investment in total, 32.1 percent up year on year and 4.7 percentage points higher.
det er heller ikke lutter lagkage i kinas bolig bygge sektor
så det er vigtigt at følge diverse indikatorer i hele verden, og især kina
Shenzhen housing market likely to slide further
Last Updated(Beijing Time):2008-06-13 09:15
Housing sales perked up in Shenzhen in May as prices continued to slide, but experts predict prices won't stop falling in the coming months.
The average housing price in Shenzhen's six districts dropped to 11,143 yuan (US$1,610.39) per square meter in May, down 23 percent from a year ago and 7 percent from April, according to a report released by Centaline (China) Shenzhen-Hong Kong Property Research Center on Tuesday. The average price in May was lower than that in February last year.
Of the six districts, Bao'an recorded the biggest fall in May, with the average housing price reaching 10,418 yuan per square meter, down 7.3 percent from a month ago. The average housing price in Longgang District didn't slide as much as it did in April and fell only 2 percent from a month earlier to 8,910 yuan per square meter.
The report showed sales of new apartments rose quickly as more houses become affordable. In May, 4,732 houses were sold with a total floor area of 460,000 square meters, up 51 percent and 56 percent respectively from a month ago.
"Despite the rise in transactions, I'm not optimistic about Shenzhen's housing market in the near future," said Wang Shitai, brand manager of Sunstars Real Estate in Shenzhen.
"Developers will have to slash prices further in order to boost sales to maintain their businesses. Many have offered prices as low as 5,500 yuan per square meter in order to attract enough buyers."
China Overseas Property, a major real estate developer in Shenzhen, launched a new housing estate, Xi'an Huafu, in Bao'an District on May 31, with opening prices of 5,500 yuan per square meter, the lowest in the district this year. The developer launched another project, Kangcheng Guoji, in early June, and set the opening price at 4,988 yuan per square meter.
"Judging from the opening prices of these new housing estates, major real estate companies like China Overseas and China Vanke are pessimistic about the city's housing market," said Zhou Qu, a Centaline manager.
"Many developers now face huge financial pressure and housing prices will drop a bit further in the next two months as they launch a price war."
Zhou said the city's housing market wouldn't show signs of life until September or October when sales were expected to rise markedly.
In the past six months, with a tightening of the property market, Shenzhen's housing prices have dropped 30 percent from a year ago. This has become agony for investors, especially speculators.
Many well-off locals and investors from other cities who have been keen on speculative property trading said they could no longer afford to pay their mortgages as the houses they had bought couldn't be sold at high prices. Many were forced to sell the apartments much lower than the purchase prices in order to cut their losses.
"More investors are expected to stop paying the mortgages later this year and early next year because they simply can't afford it," said Guo Shiping, an economics professor at Shenzhen University. "Housing prices will slide further after the Beijing Olympics and banks will feel the pinch. The number of speculators who can not afford mortgages will peak next year."
Four major State banks in Shenzhen were reported to have broken the rules governing pre-owned house mortgages last month, granting loans at low interest rates. Many allowed homebuyers to pay only 20 percent of the total price as a down payment ---even when they were buying a second house ---instead of the 40 percent required by regulators.
"This is very risky, not only for the banks but also for the developers and investors," Guo said. "When prices drop further and more investors fail to pay the mortgages, all of them will suffer."
Keynes and the Crisis
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Delicious Digg Facebook reddit Technorati Josh Hendrickson | Jul 3, 2008
In Keynes’ General Theory, he explained that an equity market collapse could be blamed on either a weakening of confidence or of the state of credit — in modern parlance, these are referred to as “counter-party risk” and “liquidity risk” respectively. The importance of this observation, however, is given by Keynes subsequent assertion that “recovery requires the revival of both” (Keynes, 1936 [1973]: 158).
The point raised by Keynes is especially prescient given the current market turmoil. The realization that asset-backed securities were not worth what investors thought they were led to a collapse of both confidence and the state of credit. Financials were left wondering what the true size of their balance sheet was and therefore liquidity was in short supply, while simultaneously the increase in counter-party risk led these same institutions to be hesitant to lend. The result was a substantial increase in conventional measures of risk as reflected by the LIBOR-OIS spread and the TED spread as well as others. In an effort to ensure that both the collapse in confidence and of liquidity were reversed the Federal Reserve has taken drastic action. They have expanded the scope of the discount window through the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF) and have created the Term Auction Facility (TAF) to ensure that firms have the liquidity that they need. In addition, the federal funds rate was lowered precipitously to 2%. Thus, the major question is whether this has worked.
The conventional wisdom seems to be that the Federal Reserve has been moderately successful, but that they need to hold their course (i.e. not raise rates) to prevent a further exacerbation of the crisis. On the other hand, I have recently advocated a tightening of the federal funds rate in an attempt to stave off ever-growing inflationary pressures from a world awash in liquidity and therefore would like to submit the current data to closer analysis.
Currently the spread between the 3-month LIBOR (the London Interbank Offer Rate) and the Overnight Indexed Swap remains relatively high. Similarly, although the TED spread has gone down it remains elevated. In a recent paper by John Taylor and John Williams, they argue that these elevated risk spreads in the aftermath of the creation of the TAF suggests that it has not been successful. They may be correct, but I would like to float a different hypothesis. It is my view that the creation of the TAF and the subsequent creation of the PDCF have only satisfied one aspect of the recovery process, namely, an increase in liquidity. Whereas the programs increase the scope of the Federal Reserve’s role as lender of last resort thus ensuring that there is liquidity to be had, the programs have not succeeded in restoring confidence. In other words, the conventional measures of risk are reflecting counter-party risk, rather than liquidity risk. As the allusion to Keynes earlier highlights, it is not enough to start a recovery by merely providing liquidity; confidence must also be restored. Although the Fed had hoped that the creation of such programs would encourage firms to accept the same collateral, they have provided no such increase (or at least very little increase) in the state of confidence (as reflected in the still elevated conventional measures of risk).
If I am correct in my hypothesis, this would suggest that the rate cuts by the Federal Reserve have gone too far and have not contributed substantially to the increase in liquidity nor to the alleviation of the crisis. Under such circumstances, it would therefore prove prudent for the Federal Reserve to begin raising rates to stave off inflationary pressures rather than relying on others to do so. Unfortunately, my hypothesis also suggests that the crisis is here to stay for some time as the financials sort things out and until, ultimately, confidence is restored.
Thanks to the European Central Bank and its counterparts in Mexico and India, the U.S. Federal Reserve may have found a way to delay raising interest rates.
In a perfect world, the Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, would sit back and watch to see how the limping U.S. economy responds to a series of rate cuts that started last September and the nearly $110 billion in tax rebates going out to consumers.
Instead, inflation at home and abroad has forced him to at least talk about raising borrowing costs, and investors widely expect him to back up his words with action before year-end.
But surprise rate increases from Mexico and India, along with an ECB meeting on Thursday that is likely to bring modest tightening, may start to sap the global liquidity glut that has fueled inflation - and do at least some of the Fed's dirty work.
"Given the overall very easy stance of global monetary policy," the Morgan Stanley economist Joachim Fels wrote in a note to clients, "a massive global tightening of monetary policy is thus unlikely, especially if the Fed keeps interest rates low for a considerable period.
Today in Business with Reuters
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"We were flabbergasted to see how many countries around the globe have inflation running in the double digits," he added. "We found around 50 countries. And we probably missed some more where data are hard to come by."
With heavily populated countries such as India on that list, they represent 42 percent of the world's people grappling with soaring prices that threaten to crimp economic growth.
Oil prices hit another record high above $142 per barrel on Friday, while flooding in the U.S. Midwest, where much of America's corn and soybeans grow, sent grain markets to record highs.
That will surely stoke already high food and fuel prices and hit emerging markets particularly hard.
India raised interest rates twice in June and economists think more increases are imminent after inflation hit its highest level in more than 13 years in mid-June.
Mexico's central bank raised its key interest rate on June 20 for the first time in eight months. That surprised many economists, who thought Mexico would keep borrowing costs unchanged because of concerns that weakness in the United States, its top trading partner, would hurt the economy.
Given the widespread price pressures, it is little surprise that the Fed vice chairman, Donald Kohn, stressed that tackling inflation required an international response.
"Policy makers around the world must monitor the situation carefully for signs that the increases in relative prices globally do not generate persistently higher inflation," Kohn said in a speech last week.
In countries where strong demand for commodities outstrips potential supply, "actions to contain inflation by restraining aggregate demand would contribute to global price stability," he said.
China took a step in that direction earlier in June, when it raised subsidized retail gasoline and diesel prices.
The ECB has all but promised a modest one-quarter percentage point rate increase at its meeting on Thursday, although some officials have cautioned against making any assumptions about further increases in August.
"We were speaking about July, just July," José Manuel González-Páramo, who sits on the ECB's executive board, said on Friday. "Let's not make conjectures about August."
Spanish inflation soared to an 11 and a half year high of 5.1 percent in June, above forecasts of a 4.8 percent rise. On Monday, a flash reading on euro zone inflation is expected to show a 3.9 percent jump for June, according to a Reuters poll.
The ECB will probably get more distressing news on prices this week with a final June report on the manufacturing industry due on Tuesday and one on the services sector on Thursday. An early look at that data on June 23 showed that activity in both areas contracted unexpectedly, while a measure of raw material costs hit its highest mark since October 2000.
June reports on the U.S. manufacturing and services sectors also come this week. Economists are looking for a similar pattern, with manufacturing contracting while prices continue to climb, although the services sector likely grew modestly.
While another spike in raw materials prices would certainly not sit well with the Fed, the U.S. employment report for June should quell any concerns that stubbornly high food and fuel prices were leading to wage increases.
The central bank's greatest inflation fear is that workers demand higher wages to compensate for rising prices, leading to a vicious circle of even more inflation and wage gains.
The U.S. payrolls report on Thursday, coming a day earlier than usual because of the Fourth of July Independence Day holiday, is expected to show a sixth consecutive month of job losses. But it is also likely to indicate that wages grew only modestly, and that should keep the Fed comfortably on hold.
hvornår skal man købe denne her?
en short på agriculture
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=AGA
bilsalget i europa i juni er præget af en lille fremgang i tyskland, frankrig og belgien, medens spanien og italien fortsætter de relativt store fald fra måneden før, men alt i alt er europa stadig næsten uændret fra året før i jan-juni, men jeg mangler data for juni udover de nævnte lande
Berlin - Despite surging petrol prices, growing inflation fears and a big slump in May registrations, German car sales rose by 4 per cent in the first half of the year, the nation's auto industry federation VDA said Wednesday. As a result, the VDA said it was keeping its full-year projection for sales in Europe's biggest auto market of about 3.2 million.
The association was maintaining what VDA chief Matthias Wissmanm described as a conservative sales forecast.
After falling by 6.0 per cent month on month in May to 275,300 in May, new registrations had posted a marginal 1 per cent rise in June, to 304,000, the VDA said.
LONDON (Thomson Financial) - Engineering company Tanfield Group Plc. issued a profit warning Tuesday after reporting a "marked slowing" in its markets during the month of June and deteriorating macro economic conditions.
In a trading statement, the company said that it will not meet market expectations for the year and expects growth at a "significantly lower level than previously forecasted" for 2008.
Newcastle-based Tanfield makes road-going commercial electric vehicles and aerial work platforms, otherwise known as "cherry pickers", and has operations in both North America and Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
The group's Powered Access unit, which accounts for up to 80 percent of project revenues, has been hardest hit as distributors and customers in Western Europe and the United States are downbeat in the current economic climate.
Tanfield said that a fall in demand is related to customers finding it harder to access credit, resulting in capital freezes and order cancellations.
In addition, the group's net cash position of 11.1 million pounds at the end of June, down from 26.1 million pounds, is lower on customer payment delays, increased inventory levels and late deliveries.
As a result, the group is putting on hold its expansion plans and will cut its headcount, but it is optimistic that it can turn the business around by the fourth quarter.
"The effect of taking a more prudent approach to the rate of growth, coupled with the measures that have been taken to drive additional cash from debtors and inventories, will result in the group becoming cash generative in the fourth quarter."
Current plans for the group will be met from existing cash and bank facilities, it reassured.
June was a dismal month for the company as it received its first order cancellations worth 3 million dollars as well as a rescheduling of orders, pushing some orders into 2009, both in Europe and the U.S.
In its electric vehicle unit, output was hindered by a supply chain problem which hit the group's working capital.
"Although the directors expect that the current supply chain issues will be resolved by the end of this year, there continue to be areas where volume supply is unproven, and the forecast sales of electric vehicles are now lower than current market expectations."
Tanfield is postponing its move to a new, dedicated site and revising its expansion in the U.S.
The company said turnover for the first six months was up 36 percent on a proforma basis at 91 million pounds compared to the same period in 2007.
In reaction to the news, WH Ireland warned that "the group's very existence is threatened by the severity and pace of deterioration in trading". Repeating its 'sell' recommendation, the broker set a new price target of 10 pence and has cut its 2008 earnings estimates from 7.0 pence to 2.8 pence and from 8.6 pence to 2.5 pence in 2009.
"Powered Access is a viciously cyclical market and Tanfield will be forced to batten down the hatches to see out the economic slowdown," it added.
WH Ireland said that accounting issues related to the financial year 2007 mean that underlying profitability is also less than previously expected. lorraine.turner@thomsonreuters.com lht/jlw/lht/slm
den her falder voldsomt, først fra 200 til 70, da jeg skrev den ind i en liste og nu ned til 5
godt jeg ikke købte den
el-vehicles med low emission
hvad mon der er sket med den? - er det en fætter til wagon
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=TAN.L&t=5d&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=
Brazilian petrochemical and chemical wholesales increased 32.3% in the January-May period this year compared to the same five months of 2007, according to a report from national association of petrochemical and chemical distributors Associquim and São Paulo state industry association Sincoquim.
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The growth was due to intense demand for products despite price increases as a result of higher feedstock and raw material costs, Associquim president Rubens Medrano told BNamericas.
"The market continues to grow, but there is a concern about how final consumers will react to the price increases of products," he said, adding that at the beginning of June wholesales of petrochemical products had already started to show a decline.
"We'll have to wait to see how the market will react to the price increases," the executive added.
Despite steep hikes in oil prices, the domestic petrochemical industry is likely to grow around 10% this year, Medrano said.
jeg synes de fleste olie aktier falder ret voldsomt selvom olien er steget til 146
det er nok fordi oliens kvalitt er for lav
der er for meget vand i olien
hold kæft, hvor er de åndsvage de anal-ytikere
det allervigtigste i asien bortset fra det strukturelle boom i kina, der fortsætter uændret de næste mage år er totalt uafhængigt af udviklingen i usa
er at de asiatiske lande ex kina, indien, japan i 1998 fik en drastisk nedgang pga den såkaldte asien krise
d.v.s. hjemmemarkederne kollapsede, og investeringerne der i vækstperioden op til 1998 lå på 30-40% af BNP kollapsede sammen med forbruget, salg af biler og huse mm, så importen faldt med over det halve, men eksporten fortsatte med at stige, investeringerne faldt til næsten ingenting, eller under 5-10% af BNP
med det vedvarende opsving og sidenhen boom i asien i perioden siden 1998 kom forbrug, bilsalg og boligbyggeri sammen med eksporten så højt op at investeringerne igen begyndte at kravle op fra de under 10%, men først for alvor efter 2005 og selvom de nok er kommet op på 15-20% af BNP er de på vej op mod 25-35% igen og risikoen for at den styrke i investeringerne i asien, har intet med en recession i usa at gøre - investeringer skal udgøre en større andel af BNP jo højere væksten i industriproduktionen er, 50% for 17% som i kina og vietnam og 30-35% for en vækst i IP på 10% som i det meste af asien incl. indien, det er fordi høj vækst kræver en løbende udbygning af produktionskapaciteten, der jo sker gennem investeringer, men det fatter den kloge dame fra danmark ikke
og alle deres korrelationskvotienter er bare et eksempel på det lave videnskabelige niveau de fleste anal-ytikere befinder sig på, og de er jo som regel også ansat i de store amerikanske finanshuse, der er ved at gå konkurs pga forkerte investeringer i bolig mortgage markedet med gearede instrumenter, de heller ikke forstår, men bare 'anal-ysere' med diverse korrelationskvotienter, de ikke selv ved hvad betyder
Myth: Decoupling; Busted, for Now
Asia ex Japan Strategy Markus Rosgen, Elaine Chu, Chris W Leung October 24, 2007
- Growing consensus that Asia can decouple. We find no supportive evidence - Correlations between Asian export growth & US/ G3 non-oil have risen 2.1x over the last 20 years to 0.7. The same series using intra-regional exports has shown a six-fold jump to 0.6.
- Asian ROE's fell more in the 2001 downturn than in the three prior US recessions - The 2001 downturn did not lead to a recession, yet ROE in Asia ex fell by 280 bps vs. an average of 150 bps in the prior three recessions. Hardest hit in the post-1990 recessions: tech, other financials, materials &industrials. ROEs actually rose for the utilities, telecoms and banks.
- A common misconception: North Asia is more US growth sensitive -We have found that India, Korea and Taiwan have elasticities of less than 1 to US GDP growth, whilst ASEAN ranges from 1.3 to 1.7. Yet investors are overweight ASEAN on the belief that they are buying domestic consumption.
- Domestic consumption-to-GDP ratios have fallen in Asia; export ratios have risen - The ratio of consumption to GDP has fallen over the last five years to 59%. At the same time, the contribution of net exports to GDP growth is higher today than in the last 15 years. Nor have Asian consumers ever behaved count-cyclically.
- Stock market correlations stand at 30-year highs - Never over last 30 years have market correlations been negative nor been as high as now, between Asia & the USA & Europe. Correlation coeff of 0.6 and above doesn't make for decoupling.
So much for the idea of Asia decoupling. And, as discussed in my current and previous analyses, the anti-decoupling arguments made by Citigroup for Asia hold even more strongly for Europe, Latin America and other emerging market economies.
Finally, the Financial Times’ Alphaville presented yesterday the following commentary supporting the idea of recoupling, following my Recoupling blog: Don’t count on decoupling to get you out of this one
Put down the comfort blanket. Step away from the idea of decoupling. It may not be the thing to save the day after all.As Martin Wolf pointed out this week in the FT, we are in the midst of “the great unwinding” - the re-import by the US of the stimulus it imparted to the rest of the world between 1996 and 2004, when its domestic purchases grew faster than GDP and the current account deficit exploded.The US wants its stimulus back. And with an ever weaker dollar, it’s going to get it, dammit.This unwinding is a turning point, says Wolf. The rest of the world and the emerging markets in particular must now become the demand engines of the world economy. “Will they do so? This is the big macroeconomic question to be answered over the next few years,” he writes.So keep clinging to the decoupling life raft and praying that we all stay afloat, right?Wrong. The backlash has begun.
Melvyn Krauss, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, this week was scathing of the European faith in decoupling to save their economic skins. Writing in the Japan Times he said: "Decoupling is an idea that is based on bad economics — and on some Europeans’ reluctance to accept the fact that Europe’s short but sweet economic expansion is also coming to an end."
So what if the US has become less important for European exports, while Asia’s significance has grown, he asks? "The links between Europe and America are, frankly, much more complex than the advocates of decoupling appreciate."
And the idea that a US recession has no effect on Asia is, says Krauss, nonsense. "So Europeans should not be tempted to think that they are somehow “decoupled” from America’s foibles and woes. Until recently, many Europeans thought they were insulated from the current US housing and mortgage crisis. But in what has been a truly malignant “export” from America to Europe, the US created “garbage debt” in the form of sub-prime mortgages, and Europeans — hungry for extra yield, and as reckless as Americans — bought it. Many European banks’ balance sheets are now as contaminated as those of American banks, and no one is sure who is holding — or hiding — the junk, and how to value it."
The theory of decoupling then is not a panacea - it’s a curse, designed to deny the “very real threats” to the robustness of Europe’s economy. It’s very existence, says Krauss, should be a cause for concern.
And if we needed further convincing, FT Alphaville’s favourite bear Nouriel Roubini has also this week torched our decoupling succor.In a sense, the argument is now defunct, says Roubini. Even the most ardent proponents of decoupling would struggle to make the case that in the event of a US hard landing that Europe and the rest of the world could just keep on trucking.But in any case, he adds, what we have is recoupling, not decoupling. In fact, the eurozone has experienced a double whammy - loss of competitiveness relative to the US dollar and other dollar-zone currencies.
"Recoupling or contagion is also evident in financial markets. Certainly European financial markets did not decouple from the summer and fall financial turmoil in US financial markets; rather there was massive contagion: the ECB was forced to inject liquidity faster and more than the Fed. And the lingering liquidity and credit crunch has been as severe - if not more severe - in Europe than in the US."
Equity markets have also recoupled with downward pressure in the US rapidly reflected in European equities, argues Roubini. And global shocks - higher risk aversion, the housing cycle, oil and energy prices, other commodity price shocks - will affect Europe as much as the US. Recoupling occurs through confidence channels - as European corporations pull sharply back on capex. A US recession says Roubini will lead to a “serious and significant” slowdown of growth in the rest of the world.In a repeat of 2001 to 2003, the delusion that the Eurozone can decouple from the US will delay the appropriate action, simply ensuring that, again, the slump is deeper and more protracted than the US version, he adds.
"For now it is clear that it is still the case that when the US sneezes the rest of the world gets the cold. And since the US will not just sneeze but is risking a serious case of protracted and severe pneumonia the rest of the world should start to worry about a serious viral contagion from this US sickness….There was never real decoupling; the perceived “decoupling” was only a side effect of the modest slowdown of US growth; now that the slowdown is turning into a hard landing contagion and recoupling is reestablishing itself with a vengeance."
Thus, as the FT appears to agree, decoupling is out and recoupling is in. Finally, for more details, links and analyses on this decoupling/recoupling debate see RGE Monitor’s detailed coverage of Can Asia Decouple from the U.S. Slowdown?
jeg er ikke enig i artikelens konklusioner, men man skal da også høre andre synspunkter, nu hvor der ikke er mange andre end humle og mig, der overhovedet kan sætte mere end 3 ord sammen i een sætning, så det med modspil og argumenter i en aktiedebat i danmark, findes simpelt hen ikke
I elaborated my views in the recent Global Recoupling Rather than Decoupling as the US Heads towards a Recession While there I discussed how Europe will not decouple from the U.S. hard landing the argument holds a fortiori for China, Asia and other emerging market economies.
Paradoxically China is the one country that has, so far, decouple the most – both in real and financial terms from the U.S. but it will also be the first and most serious victim of a U.S. led recession. The decoupling of China is clear as its growth rate has not decelerated, in spite of the U.S. slowdown, and its financial markets have – so far – blissfully avoided (thanks in part to its financial system partially isolated via capital controls from the global one) the turmoil and volatility that hit the US and Europe since the summer. But the reason for the Chinese growth decoupling is that, until recently the US slowdown was still modest (short of the coming hard landing) and it was not concentrated in private consumption but rather housing: China is mostly exporting low-priced consumer goods to the U.S. and the recoupling of China will occur soon once the US consumer recession is in full swing. Thus, the biggest victim of a US consumer led recession will be the country – China - that, so far, has decoupled the most from the US. And for China a fall in its growth rate from 11% towards 6-7% would be the equivalent of a "hard landing" as China – to maintain its social and political stability given its widening income and wealth inequality – needs to grow at least 10% a year in order to move about 15 millions poor farmers from the rural to the urban and industrial sector every year. No wonder that Chinese officials have started to express serious concerns about the current sharp slowdown in Chinese exports to the US, from an annualized growth rate of over 20% in Q1 to a rate of 12.4% in Q3 of this year ("If demand in the US drops further, Chinese exporters will be devastated by a rapid and continuous fall in orders," a Chinese official report said).
And once there is a sharp growth slowdown in China the next victims of this recoupling will be East Asia and commodity exporters. There is a current myth among some analysts that the increased amount of trade between East Asian economies shelters them from a US slowdown. But in spite of the growing intra-Asian trade the cyclical and structural dependence of East Asia on US growth is now larger than five or ten years ago. The reason – as analyzed in detail in recent work by, for example, the Asian Development Bank – is as follows: it used to be the case a decade ago that East Asian economies tended to export directly final goods to the US. But the rise of China has radically changed the Asian global production and supply chain: now East Asian countries tend more to produce inputs and intermediate goods and raw materials that are exported to China; in turn China, given its lower labor cost, processes these inputs and assembles them into final goods that are exported to the US. Thus, in spite of growing intra-Asian trade the dependence of Asia on US growth is now larger than any time before, both structurally and cyclically. So the argument that Asia can decouple from the US because of this greater intra-Asian trade is altogether flawed. Rather, once China slows down the Chinese demand for these Asian intermediate inputs and its demand for raw materials from Asia, Latin America and Africa will fall. Thus, you will observe both a slowdown in Asian growth and a sharp fall in commodity prices that will hurt all commodity exporters. Some argue that, while a US hard landing may hurt China and Asian economies, there is wide room for domestic demand and non-US demand to maintain the growth of Asia. But this is another myth that has little basis. The role of domestic demand in China’s growth is very modest. You have an economy where exports are 40% of GDP; where investment is 50% of GDP and, leaving aside housing investment, most of such investment is directed towards the productions of more exportable goods; where the current account surplus has gone from $20b in 2002 (2% of GDP) to an expected $300 billion plus this year (12% of GDP). China and Asia strongly depend on trade and on trade to the US. And, as recent research by Morgan Stanley shows, there is a very low probability of major improvements in domestic demand or non-US external demand.
This growing link between Asia and US growth – and growing correlation between equity returns in Asia and those in the US – has been confirmed by a recent Citigroup research piece. This research piece came to the following conclusions about the decoupling myth being busted:
Myth: Decoupling; Busted, for Now
det er noget værre vrøvl, der står i artikelen, kinas eksport steg 28% i maj trods en stagnation i eksporten til usa og japans eksport til usa, kina, europa er ca halvdelen af japans eksport og usa er en trediedel af dette, altså en sjette del af japans samlede eksport, hvor japan endda tager markedsandele i usa's bilmarked, så de skal eksportere flere biler til usa trods faldet i bilsalget i usa
og kinas hjemme marked er meget større end man tror, så kinas hjemmemarked kan sagtens kompensere for nedgangen i usa, man skal bare ikke sammenligne de data, der nævnes med BNP, for BNP tallet er 5-6 gange for lavt sat
så eksporten er IKKE 40% af BNP, men da den stadig stiger med 25-30% selvom usa har haft recession siden begyndelsen af 2007, så er der jo ingen ko på isen, bortset fra at kvaliteten for deres ekspor produkter er for lav ifølge en verdenskendt dame, der rejser meget i kina og ved hvor dårlige toiletforholdene er på de hoteller hun bor på, men hun har nok ikke råd til at bo på de hoteller, kineserne bor på
mexico er jo også et olieland og de producerer næsten lige så meget olie som iran
så det er ikke så mærkeligt at væksten i mexico stiger selvom de er nabo til usa, der tager 80% af deres export
så mexico er sammen med mange andre olie producerende lande en vigtig bærende pille i det globale boom
og da canada også boomer uden nedgang i boligbyggeri og bilsalg og et accelererende boom i resource industrierne kan usa se frem til stigende eksport til cdn og mex, der tilsammen tager næsten 33% af usa's samlede eksport, og den stærke dollar i canada hjælper også en del
Mexico Banks' May Private Lending Up 18.5 Pct
Luis Rojas Mena - Reuters
go to original
Mexico City - Mexican bank lending to individuals and companies, a key engine of local growth this year, grew 18.5 percent in May from the year-ago period, the central bank said on Monday.
Banks' consumer credit fell 9 percent, the Banco de Mexico said in a statement.
Much of the drop came because Banamex, the Mexican unit of Citigroup (C.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), recently moved credit card debt off its books and into its specialized lending company, Tarjetas Banamex.
Healthy bank lending is seen as helping Mexico's economy grow despite the slowdown in the United States, the destination for more than 80 percent of Mexican exports.
The government expects the Mexican economy to grow 2.8 percent this year, down from 3.2 percent in 2007.
Growth in consumer lending peaked at an annual rate of nearly 50 percent in 2005 and 2006. Since then, it has trended lower.
Bank mortgage lending rose 18.1 percent in May while bank loans to businesses were up 27.3 percent, the central bank said.
Credit from non-bank lenders rose 115.1 percent, reflecting the movement of Banamex's credit card portfolio over to Tarjetas Banamex.
The average credit card interest rate in May was 34.24 percent, about the same as in April, the central bank said.
Consumer credit was nascent in Mexico when its economy was dragged down by the last U.S. recession at the beginning of the decade. Now, lending is growing steadily, boosting domestic consumption and home building, and is expected to help offset a drop in U.S. demand for Mexico's exports.
Lending in Mexico dried up in the mid-1990s after a financial crisis devastated the country's banking industry.
Since then, international finance houses such as Citigroup and BBVA (BBVA.MC: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) have bought up most of Mexico's largest banks and in recent years they have started lending again.
ECB expected to raise interest rates
Thursday July 3, 1:40 am ET
By George Frey, AP Business Writer
Analysts expect ECB to raise interest rates by at least a quarter percentage point
men sikke noget vrøvl at skrive at EU udgør 22% af verdens BNP, det er fordi de ikke har fattet at det skal købekraftskorrigeres
tænk at de stadig roder rundt i alle de misforståelser omkring størrelsen af de forskellige dele af verden
jeg tror hanne burde tænke mere på den mangel på kvalitet, der er i det statistiske system i den rige verden end kvaliteten på boligbyggeriet i kina
hun kan jo bare rejse til bruxelles og med egne øjne se, at de ikke kan regne
men det er jo det, der er problemet, at den slags kan man ikke se, når man rejser, for så ser man bare en masse mennesker, der siger en masse sludder ligesom på de fleste chatboards
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) -- Analysts widely expect the European Central Bank to raise its main interest rate Thursday for the first time in a year in an effort to rein in escalating inflation, but whether such a move will help or hurt is still in question.
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ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet said at the bank's last monthly meeting June 5 that the bank is in a state of "heightened alertness" on inflation and could raise the main rate "by a small amount." He said at that meeting that members of the ECB's governing council had already made a case for raising rates even then.
The last time the ECB raised rates -- in June 2007 -- it was a by a quarter point. If the bank raises rates Thursday and holds to that pattern, its main interest rate would rise to 4.25 percent from the 4 percent it has stood at since last summer.
While Trichet has said his main objective is to keep prices stable in the 15-nation euro zone -- a bloc with 323 million people, and 22 percent of global gross domestic product -- he has also recently suggested that repeated interest rate hikes are probably not likely.
Inflation has been trying central banks around the world as commodity prices have spiked in a surge of new global demand. While higher interest rates can slow economic growth as money becomes more expensive to borrow, Trichet appears to have targeted inflation as the bigger threat.
On Monday, Eurostat, the E.U. statistics agency, said inflation in euro nations hit a record 4 percent in June, double the ECB's inflation target of just under 2 percent.
The Bank for International Settlements -- a sort of central bank for central banks -- said Monday that world headline inflation has risen significantly to 4.75 percent.
"The risk is that (world) inflation will rise significantly more in the coming months as food and energy prices remain elevated, (and) some second round effects on wages materialize," the Basel-based BIS said. It noted that "downside pressures on growth are likely to persist."
A rise in rates will likely send the already strong euro higher against the dollar, which will push up the price of oil as more buyers move in to buy the commodity denominated in dollars.
Nonetheless, most analysts seem to have come to view a hike in rates as a certainty.
The "ECB should hike the refinance rate by 25 basis points, and conclude that for the time being that is enough," said Aurelio Maccario, the chief euro zone economist with UniCredit in Milan.
"However, even dismissing the possibility of a series of hikes in the short term and barring any further step-up in the current hawkish rhetoric tomorrow, the ECB will remain alert during the next few months because with oil prices still on a roll, inflation will likely accelerate further after having hit 4 percent in June," he said.
European Central Bank: http://www.ecb.int
cosan CZZ i brazilien noteret i usa
producerer ethanol i brazilien baseret på sukker og de får 7 gange så meget ethanol ud af sukkeret sammenlignet med ethanol producenterne i usa baseret på corn mm
de har lige købt hele tank nettet fra shell i brazilien på 1500 tankstationer, så de selv i detail ledddet kan distribuere deres ethanol til bilerne
og man kan sagtens forestille sig en storstilet eksport offensiv, for med de arealer der er i brazilien og med en faktor 7 bedre end ethanol fra corn i usa er de meget rentable og kan sagtens tjene masser af penge på at sælge ethanol til de nuværende priser
http://www.mz-ir.com/cosan/limited/index2.htm
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=CZZ
Outlook - ensign drilling, canada
The first quarter activity levels in Canada, while down from activity levels of a year ago, exceeded the Company's original expectations. Strengthening natural gas commodity prices, combined with record levels of crude oil prices, resulted in improved demand for oilfield services in the first quarter. First quarter activity levels would have been slightly higher were it not for a shortage of skilled labor within the industry. While an oversupply of equipment still exists, and it remains to be seen whether the province of Alberta's latest tinkering with the royalty regime will improve the economics for exploration and production companies, there is growing optimism around a recovery in the Canadian oilfield services industry. However, we are not yet out of the woods. The Company still expects utilization and operating margins to be in line with seasonal and forecasted lows through the second and third quarters of 2008, as demand for oilfield services lags the recent improvement in natural gas commodity prices. The Company is positioning itself for improved levels of demand and operating conditions for the 2008/09 winter drilling season in Canada.
The first quarter activity levels in the Company's United States segment met expectations. The addition of the 13 newly constructed ADRs had a positive impact on both utilization and operating margins. Activity levels are expected to continue to improve through the remainder of the year. Additionally, the Company will continue to cultivate and develop expansion opportunities to increase its size in this core market, a market Ensign has been in since 1994.
The three newly constructed drilling rigs in the Company's international segment started to contribute in the first quarter of 2008, slightly behind schedule due to construction and commissioning delays. These new rigs and contracts on existing rigs should enable the international division to show year over year growth in utilization and operating margins through the remainder of the year. Construction activities have commenced on six new ADRs for the international market. These new builds are destined for Africa and the Middle East and will not begin to meaningfully contribute to the Company's financial results until the beginning of the 2009 fiscal year.
While the recovery in the Canadian oilfield services industry may have started with improved prices for natural gas, the Company believes that activity levels and financial contributions from its Canadian operations will be restrained through the remainder of the year. The continued weakness in Canada will be partially offset by strong contributions from the Company's expanded United States operations and improved contributions from the Company's international operations. The advantages of Ensign's established global strategy will continue to benefit Ensign shareholders.
NEW DELHI: Truckers across the country will go on an indefinite strike from Tuesday midnight to push their demand for abolishment of toll tax and rationalisation of duty of diesel, the transporters’ apex body said on Tuesday.
“We will go on an indefinite strike from Tuesday midnight. All the transporters will down their shutters and there will be no movement of goods on the roads till our demands are met by the government,” All India Motor Transport Congress (AIMTC) president Charan Singh Lohara said.
AIMTC claims the support of all state transporters’ association with a combined fleet size of 48,00,000 trucks. “We want the advalorem duty on diesel to be replaced with fixed rate of duty on per litre of the fuel,” Lohara said.
He alleged that the government is encashing the international crisis on crude oil prices many-fold and forcing the truckers to buy premium diesel at higher and unregulated prices.
He also said that the government is also using the toll taxes on highways as a tool to earn extra revenue by continuing to charge the tax even after the recovery of investment in construction of highways. The government also increased the tax by 50% in February 2008 instead of doing away with it.
Asked about the service tax relief given by the government to the transporters recently, Lohara said, “The exemption is an eyewash. We are still being sent service tax notice by including us in other categories.”
The transport industry provides employment to two crore people directly and gives bread and butter to another 10 crore people by including their family members, Lohara said.
The strike, however, can be withdrawn if the government concedes to their demand. AIMTC representatives will meet the finance minister P Chidambaram in due course to discuss their demand. “We will meet the finance minister in the afternoon to present our demand. We will not withdraw our strike call till our demands are met,” he said.
jeg har det på samme måde med dig som du har det med mig
jeg kan ikke finde hverken hoved eller hale i det du fremfører
og jeg er bestemt ikke gammeldags, men langt foran alle andre i anvendelse af avancerede økonomiske teorier og modeller
skal vi ikke bare stoppe her?
med hensyn til at kunne overskue alle mine indlæg, hvoraf mange er informationer som opfølgning på scenarier, jeg beskriver af og til
så hænger infomationerne jo sammen omkring de scenarier, jeg har beskrevet utallige gange, men dem gider jeg da ikke skrive om hver dag
og jeg vil minde om debatten i 2002-2003 hvor jeg forudså et opsving og et langvarigt boom i løbet af 2003 og deraf følgende aktieboom
det blev så starten til verdens største globale boom i bl.a. investeringerne der blev trukket af et boom i den fattrige verden
men i hele 2002-03 blev jeg gjort til grin fordi ingen troede på det scenarie og alle diskuterede politik og skældte mig ud, frege kaldte mig fantast og det der var værre
og man regnede hele tiden med at verden efter at IT boblen brast ville styrte ned i noget der lignede 30'ernes depression
men jeg holdt fanen højt fordi jeg havde overblikket, men det var der ikke ret mange der interesserede sig for og forstod heller ikke detaillerne i mine argumenter
så forudså jeg at olien skulle i 100 og guldet i 800
nen det troede man heller ikke på
allerede i 2004-05 havde humle og mig, humle er nok den eneste, der kan fatte det jeg skriver, en interessant diskussion sammen med alle analfabeterne om at man burde sætte renten op hurtigt i usa, fordi ingen andre i verden havde ansvarsfølelse nok til at føre ansvarlig rentepolitik og pengepolitik, for ellers ville der komme globale prisstigninger på råvarer og andre varer, inflation og større rentestigninger senere, hvis man ikke bremsede op dengang
det gjorde man så ikke, men satte kun renten op langsomt med 0.25% ad gangen og resten af verden sad bare og glædede sig oveer boomet uden at tænke på konsekvenserne eller forsøge at gøre noget for at forhindre den overophedning, der nu er slået ud i lys lue
men trods den for langsomme rentestigning i usa, nåede man at sætte den oppe så mange gange, at den steg fra 1% til 5.25% og så ramte det boligmarkedet, boligbygeriet og finansverdenen gennem det man kalder sub prime krisen, som kun har ramt usa
men da var det jo for sent
fordi usa fik en recession, som ingen vil erkende startede allerede i begyndelsen af 2007
og fik en meget alvorlig udvikling i sin indenlandske økonomi medens resten af verden fortsatte boomet og dermed også boomet i råvarepriserne og investeringerne trods recessionen i usa
men desværre var recessionen i usa så voldsom, at man blev nødt til at sænke renten til 2% her i begyndelsen af 2008
og nu må resten af verden kæmpe med inflation og stigende renter, der ikke kan bremse væksten og usa er allerede igang med et nyt opsving trukket af det uændrde stærke boom i den fattige verden selvom alle tror at usa vil trække resten af verden ned
derfor er det meget vigtigt at følge alle nyancerne i styrken eller mangel på samme i forskellige lande og brancher
for vi står foran endnu et voldsomt globalt boom, der bare er en fortættelse af det der allerede er igang
og så komme chokket, når olien rammer 200 og israel angriber iran
for så kollapser det hele om et par år efter et stærkt boom, der kan give et bullmarked her og nu globalt set
det fatter hanne ikke
at det er det scenarie, jeg følger op på
men hun er jo også bare en landsbytosse ligesom de fleste andre uden omløb i hovedet
hap var faktisk den værste, hans økonomiske forståelse var helt nede på nul og han var en idiot, der bare ville så splid, og hanne og frege er ikke blever raske endnu efter haps angreb
de skal have psykologisk hjælp
det er jo ligesom dengang i gamle dage på spekulant
du kom aldrig med noget relevant om aktier og konjunktur
og jeg byggede en sammenhængende beskrivelse af verden op
som man kan bruge som udgangspunkt for at samle informationer, der hvor de findes og
så bruge dem til at lave prognoser
men det vd jeg godt at du aldrig har fattet
det er også derfor du og andre hellere vil begrave hovedet i sandet og holde jer til danske aktier, som i tror i forstår eller diskutere politik uden relevans for aktierne og konjunkturerne
sandheden er at i intet forstår
derfor vil jeg også sætte pris på at du holder dig væk
og overlade vores lille debat til dem, der kan tænke i globale sammenhænge og det handler ikke bare om boligerne i kina ikke kan holde i mere end tyve år
og jeg kan da godt forstå at du bedre ville kunne følge med, hvis jeg kun skrev et indlæg med een information om ugen, men
sådan fungerer verden kke, det er verdens mangfoldighed man skal kunnde fatte for at kunne danne sig et overblik
og du har aldrig været i stand til at fatte sammenhængene i den informationsstrøm jeg leverer
og det er faktisk synd for dig, at du er så dum, men det er du jo ikke alene om på de andre sider
jeg er begyndt at drikke olie, for det er billigere end øller
men jeg kommer ikke så langt på literen
og det er meget værre end at være fuld
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Soaring corn and soy prices on top of rising construction costs and tight credit markets have pushed about a dozen U.S. biofuel plants to file for bankruptcy protection, experts said.
Prices for corn, the feedstock for most U.S. ethanol plants, hit fresh records above $8 per bushel this week as floods this month in the Midwest have caused billions of dollars of crop damage.
"Corn prices are making the feasibility of ethanol plants every day more and more questionable," said Alex Moglia, president of Moglia Advisors in suburban Chicago, which helps biofuel companies restructure.
Meanwhile prices for soy oil, the feedstock for most biodiesel plants, have been high on rising global demand for months, making life miserable for most producers. The miserable profit margins have pushed many makers of the alternative motor fuel to run plants at only about half of their capacity.
Moglia said about 12 small to midsize biodiesel and ethanol plants have declared bankruptcy in recent months. Renova Energy LLC, a company that owns a partially built 20 million-gallons-per year ethanol plant in Idaho, was the latest to declare bankruptcy last week. Kansas-based Ethanex Energy Inc
declared bankruptcy in March.
"There will be more to follow," said Moglia. Some plants are restructuring their debt and taking steps to manage risks, but many others are not, he said.
U.S. ethanol plants are still opening but plans for the opening of plants through 2009 are being increasingly delayed or scrapped. Please click Continued...
Lula Abandons Radical Past, Ushering in Brazil Growth (Update1)
By Joshua Goodman and Adriana Arai
June 26 (Bloomberg) -- Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva rode to office on a wave of anti-capitalist rhetoric that panicked investors and brought the country to the brink of default in 2002. He starts the second half of his last term with the nation boasting the highest credit rating in its history.
To achieve this transformation, he abandoned the combative discourse that made him one of the government's most powerful critics. Instead, Lula, 62, has embraced a pragmatic mix of populist policies and capitalist economics that eased poverty, spawned a 12-fold gain in the stock market's value in dollar terms and created a record number of Brazilian billionaires.
``It's less damaging to the country when the bankers earn money than when they lose money and the central bank has to intervene,'' Lula said today in a Bloomberg Television interview.
He's also lucky: Soaring prices for food and mineral exports allowed Lula to defer spending cuts while growth rose to 5.4 percent in 2007, double the average of the past decade.
``Lula has proved to be a very skillful and pragmatic leader, completely contrary to the profile the opposition painted of him as a dangerous revolutionary who'd drive them into the hole,'' said Thomas Skidmore, a historian trained at Harvard and Oxford universities and author of six books on Brazilian history.
Now, Lula is seeking to spread more of the country's increased wealth to the poor, laying a base for political and economic stability that may help Brazil end its 185-year history of boom and bust. To do that, he must defeat the demons that have long haunted the country's economy: inflation, inadequate schools, corruption and Latin America's heaviest tax burden.
Gross Debt
Brazil still runs a budget deficit of 1.9 percent of gross domestic product at a time when economic growth has pushed tax collections to a record. The government's gross debt, equivalent to 57 percent of GDP, is almost double the average of other nations rated investment grade, according to Moody's Investors Service.
``There are some terrible cracks in this miracle,'' Skidmore said.
Lula's rise from poverty to the helm of the world's 10th- biggest economy marked the first time that Brazil's leader wasn't from the country's elite.
The seventh child in a family of eight, Lula was born in Garanhuns in the northeastern state of Pernambuco, one of the poorest areas of Brazil. At the age of seven, he left with his family in a truck for Sao Paulo, Brazil's industrial heartland, where he sold peanuts on the street and shined shoes.
Crushed Finger
He quit school at 14 and worked in a warehouse, then a screw factory. When he was 19, he got a job at a metalworking shop. In his authorized biography, he explains how he lost the little finger of his left hand there: One night a part on the arm of a press broke, causing the stamper to fall. He had to wait for the shift to end at 6 a.m., when the shop owner arrived, before he could go to a doctor, who amputated the crushed finger.
In 1969, he started organizing Sao Paulo auto workers, leading strikes against military rulers in the 1970s. He served a month in prison in 1980 and created the Workers' Party later the same year. The former union chief made failed bids for the presidency in 1989, 1994 and 1998, pledging to boost state control of the economy and break up big landholdings.
For his fourth try, Lula sought to attract more-moderate voters while still attacking then-President Fernando Henrique Cardoso for selling state assets. In January 2002, a month after Argentina's record $95 billion default, Lula said Brazil was too poor to pay its $300 billion foreign debt.
Yields Doubled
As he rose in the polls ahead of the election, Brazil's real plunged 40 percent against the dollar, and yields on the then-benchmark 8 percent dollar bond due in 2014 more than doubled to 26 percent.
The default fears became almost self-fulfilling as the weakened currency and soaring yields swelled Brazil's debt to about 80 percent of GDP in August 2002, up from 42 percent in January 1998.
With support from the lower classes, intellectuals, students and unions, Lula won 61 percent of the vote in a runoff on Oct. 27, beating his opponent, ex-Senator Jose Serra, from Cardoso's ruling coalition. Nana Calazens, a 42-year-old receptionist in Sao Paulo at the time, told Bloomberg after the election that she voted for him for the first time because she wanted Lula ``to increase jobs, salaries. We need someone that will do more for the less privileged.''
Once in office, Lula shocked friends and foes by expanding on many of Cardoso's plans, including ordering a record 14.1 billion reais in spending cuts as part of a $30 billion loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund.
`Early Stages of a Meltdown'
``They were in the early stages of a meltdown,'' said Anne Krueger, former first deputy managing director of the IMF and now a professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. ``It was the whole macroeconomic package, and the adherence to it, that allowed Lula to turn the situation around.''
The about-face angered the Marxist academics, union radicals and Landless Worker's Movement militants who helped Lula become the first opposition leader elected president since Janio Quadros took power in 1961.
``As a former union leader, you'd expect him to take bolder measures to help the people and reduce social inequalities,'' said Jose ``Ze'' Maria de Almeida, 50, who was jailed alongside Lula in 1980 for their labor activities. ``He tossed all his beliefs in the garbage can to gather friends and get elected.''
Socialist Ideology
The clearest sign of Lula's break with socialist ideology was naming Henrique Meirelles, 62, a former FleetBoston Financial Corp. executive, to run the central bank and later giving him a seat on the Cabinet to shield him from critics. While Lula had complained for years that the bank kept its target rate too high, he and Meirelles, maintained Cardoso's policy on rates to control inflation.
``Appointing Meirelles was the single most important trigger for the bull market that followed,'' said Geoffrey Dennis, a Latin American equities strategist at Citigroup Inc.
To win congressional support for his economic agenda, Lula formed an alliance with former adversaries, including a conservative party whose members worked with the 1964-1985 military dictatorship that put him in jail.
Lula also bought time to implement his plans by using the trust of the poor to keep a political peace that he, as a leader of the leftist opposition, never offered his predecessors. He urged patience even as most low-income Brazilians saw few benefits in the first years of his presidency.
Investor Confidence
By April 2003, Lula's efforts had restored investor confidence, setting off a rally that has strengthened the real 121 percent so far against the dollar, while the benchmark stock index has jumped fivefold, beating all major markets in the world. Brazil became a net foreign creditor for the first time in January as rising export revenue boosted international reserves to more than $190 billion.
``Lula realized that the best for popularity was to keep inflation under control and not risk the country's economic stability and credibility,'' said Mark Mobius, 71, who oversees about $42 billion of emerging-market equities as executive chairman of Templeton Asset Management Ltd. in Singapore.
By September 2005, the central bank was ready to begin a series of 18 cuts that brought the benchmark rate to a record low of 11.25 percent in September 2007 from 19.75 percent. By March 2007, inflation had slowed to 3 percent from 17.2 percent in May 2003.
`Pleasant Surprise'
``Lula showed he wasn't what people were thinking,'' said Marcio Cypriano, chief executive of Banco Bradesco SA, the largest Brazilian bank that isn't controlled by the government. ``It was an extremely pleasant surprise.''
These conditions have helped to create another record: According to Forbes magazine, the country has 18 billionaires this year, compared with seven in 2002.
Lula ``managed not to make any visible or serious mistakes and deserves a lot of credit for that,'' said Edmund Phelps, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for economics and a professor at Columbia University in New York, who spoke at a conference alongside Lula last month in Rio de Janeiro.
In recognition of Brazil's newfound stability, S&P in April raised its long-term foreign-currency debt rating to BBB-, the lowest level of investment grade.
In a May 16 interview, Roberto Egydio Setubal, head of Banco Itau Holding Financeira SA, Brazil's second-largest nongovernment bank, said his nation is in the midst of a ``transformation'' that's creating the best conditions for business he has ever seen.
Junk Bonds
Moody's still classifies Brazilian bonds as junk, and Raphael Kassin, head of emerging-markets fixed income at Credit Suisse, says S&P's change may have been premature.
``Lots of people are bullish on Brazil, but at the end of the day nothing has changed from a year ago,'' Kassin said in a phone interview from Singapore. ``Debt levels are still high, and instead of cutting spending, the government has inflated payrolls.''
Much of Lula's success may be due to soaring prices for Brazil's leading exports, driven by growth in demand from China and India. Commodity sales have spurred growth, attracted record foreign investment and boosted average monthly tax collections to 41.2 billion reais since he took office in January 2003, compared with 15.8 billion reais in the previous three years.
Ore, Soybeans
The price of Brazil's biggest export, iron ore, has almost tripled, according to Rio de Janeiro-based Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, the world's largest producer. Oil, the second-largest export, more than quadrupled to $136 a barrel; and soybeans, the third, almost tripled to $15.02 a bushel, according to Bloomberg data.
Brazil is also the world's largest exporter of sugar, coffee, chicken, beef and orange juice.
The good news keeps gushing, literally, 7,000 meters (22,966 feet) below the sea floor. In November, the government- controlled oil company, Petroleo Brasileiro SA, announced the biggest oil discovery in the Americas in more than three decades.
The Tupi field, with as much as 8 billion barrels of reserves, is only a ``tiny'' part of the potential resources in the so-called pre-salt region, said Jose Sergio Gabrielli, the Rio de Janeiro-based company's chief executive officer. The region may contain 50 billion barrels of oil, according to Peter Wells, director of U.K. research firm Neftex Petroleum Consultants Ltd.
No OPEC
Lula today said the country will at least triple its oil reserves from exploration of the new offshore area. He said he has changed his mind about seeking membership for Brazil in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
``I want Brazil to export refined products,'' said Lula, who wore a light gray suit and a black tie peppered with white dots. ``I'm under no illusion that Brazil will join OPEC. I used to be, but am no longer.''
Lula says he'll use the remainder of his term to make sure the country's poor get a bigger share of Brazil's expanding wealth. The poorest workers' incomes already rose 22 percent between 2003 and 2007, almost three times faster than the average, the Institute for Applied Economic Research, a government-funded research group, said this week. The pay of the highest-earning workers grew 5 percent.
``He's had the wind at his back, there's no question about that,'' said James Moffett, who helps manage $4 billion at UMB Asset Management in Kansas City, Missouri, about $250 million of which is in Brazil. ``But Brazil under Lula would've been a more stable environment even without the commodity boom.''
Cash Payments
During his first four years, Lula tripled the number of families getting cash payments, called the Bolsa Familia in Portuguese, in exchange for a commitment to send their children to school.
Seeking to appeal to these constituents, Lula has sidelined plans to cut spending and eliminate the budget deficit. He also stopped pushing changes unions oppose in labor laws. Lula has hired five times more workers than Cardoso did during his two terms. He has also expanded the government's role in the economy, creating subsidies for hand-picked industries including consumer electronics and pharmaceuticals.
Lula has said Brazil should spend government revenue from the oil discoveries on a massive spending program for education when production goes on line in about 2015. In a September television interview on ``Charlie Rose,'' Lula said he wants to be remembered as the president who invested the most in schools.
Lula's Legacy
Lula's legacy will also include far-reaching government bribery scandals that led some of his closest advisers to step down and weakened his ability to move legislation through congress. In December, the Senate refused to renew a tax on financial transactions that accounted for as much as 10 percent of government revenue -- a measure Lula lobbied hard to keep.
Jose Dirceu, a co-founder of Lula's Workers' Party, resigned in 2005 as Cabinet chief amid allegations he knew about payments to legislators in exchange for their votes in Congress. An investigation later led the lower house ethics committee to recommend the expulsion of 11 deputies.
Nine months later, Antonio Palocci quit as finance minister amid claims he violated banking secrecy to gain the records of a witness against him in a congressional graft probe. Brazil's Energy Minister Silas Rondeau resigned last year amid a probe into allegations he may have accepted kickbacks on government contracts. All three have denied the allegations.
Lula, who pleaded ignorance to the activities of his closest advisers, took to the airwaves in August 2005 to apologize and urged his supporters ``not to lose faith.'' A year later, he won the presidency for a second term.
Brazil Inflation Rate to Rise to 6.3% by Year-End (Update2)
By Katia Cortes
June 30 (Bloomberg) -- Brazil's inflation rate will rise to 6.30 percent at year-end, a central bank weekly survey said, raising concern consumer prices may surpass policy makers' target range for this year.
The estimate for year-end is higher than the 6.08 percent forecast made a week earlier, according to the June 27 survey of about 100 economists published today. The central bank targets inflation of 4.5 percent, plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Policy makers may have to raise interest rates faster and further as wholesalers pass on their rising costs to consumers, said Antonio Madeira, a senior economist with MCM Consultores. Brazil's broadest measure of consumer, construction and wholesale prices accelerated at the fastest pace in five years in June, with the year-to-date rate at the highest since 1999.
``The inflation scenario worsened a lot and demands stronger action from policy makers,'' Madeira said in a phone interview from Sao Paulo.
Economists in the survey forecast that the benchmark rate will end 2008 at 14.25 percent, a full 3 percentage points above the record low 11.25 percent in place until April 16.
Policy makers since then have pushed the overnight rate up to the current 12.25 percent and meet four more times in 2008. The survey showed that economists expect a half-point increase to 12.75 percent at the bank's July 22-23 meeting.
The annual inflation rate 12 months ahead will be 5.28 percent, up from a previous forecast of 5.15 percent, the survey showed. Economists in the survey also forecast an annual inflation rate of 4.80 percent next year, up from a previous forecast of 4.78 percent.
The yield on Brazil's interest-rate futures contract for January 2010 delivery rose to 15.13 percent, up from 15.04 percent on June 27.
...............
Brazil's Industrial Output Growth Slowed in May (Update1)
By Joshua Goodman and Diana Kinch
July 1 (Bloomberg) -- Brazil's industrial output expanded less than economists expected in May, easing pressure on the central bank to accelerate interest-rate increases.
Industrial production rose 2.4 percent in May from the year- ago month, compared with a revised 10 percent jump in April, according to a national statistics agency report distributed today in Rio de Janeiro. The gain was less than the 4.2 percent median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of 26 economists.
``This brings some relief to policy makers so they don't have to increase rates at such an intense pace,'' said Jankiel Santos, an economist at Banco Espirito Santo de Investimento SA.
Policy makers will raise the benchmark interest rate to 12.75 percent from 12.25 percent this month after two half-a- point increases to rein in prices, according to a June 27 central bank survey of 100 economists. Annual inflation has remained above the central bank's 4.5 percent target since the beginning of the year, pushed by economic expansion near a three-year high and a surge in food prices.
After stripping out seasonal factors, output fell 0.5 percent in May from April, the agency said.
Swelling incomes and credit have been boosting domestic demand for goods such as cars, home appliances and electronics, even in the face of slackening export volumes.
A sign that economic growth may be peaking, car production fell 5.5 percent in May from the previous month. Another 15 of 27 industrial activities tracked by the government also experienced monthly declines.
.............
Argentine Farm Leaders Urge Suspension of Higher Tax (Update1)
By Heather Walsh
July 1 (Bloomberg) -- Argentine farming groups urged the government to suspend export-tax increases that triggered protests and led to food shortages.
Lifting the tax for 180 days would allow more time for a consensus on a tax plan, Mario Llambias, president of the Argentine Rural Confederation, said today in comments broadcast on Cronica Television.
President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has asked Congress to pass as law the variable-rate tax increase that boosted levies on soybeans and sunflower seeds to more than 40 percent from a fixed 35 percent. Soybean prices in the U.S. soared to a record today after floods damaged Midwest crops. Argentina is the world's third-largest exporter of the oilseed.
The government expects Congress, which is debating the tax proposal, to support the levy, though legislators may change the original proposal, Justice Minister Anibal Fernandez said today, according to the newspaper Clarin in its online edition.
Government controls on agricultural products including beef are hurting farm output, Alfredo de Angeli, who helped lead roadblocks in the province of Entre Rios, said in comments today broadcast by Cronica. Farmers won't support proposals to grant some producers government refunds on the taxes, because payments to other agricultural producers have been delayed, De Angeli said.
Argentine farmers last month lifted roadblocks that had sparked shortages of beef, poultry and fuel in some areas. Farmers need ``patience'' as some areas called for blockades to resume, De Angeli said today.
The tax that sparked the protests was imposed in March. The U.S. is the world's biggest soybean exporter, followed by Brazil.
.............
det boomer stadig i argentina selvom de havde en pause i den ekstremt høje vækst pga strejkerne
men med de høje priser på deres landbrugsprodukter er det klart at det fortsat boomer og en vækst i de offentlige udgifter på 40% viser også at man har stimuleret væksten voldsomt så argentina fortsat vil bidrage stærkt til det globale boom i infrastruktur investeringer, forbrug og efterspørgsel efter råvarer, også olie og man skal huske at nabolandende brazilien, chile og peru også boomer, så hele latinamerika boomer voldsomt, især i den sydlige del, men den nordlige del er også godt med, der er det bare lidt mere kompliceret med chaveauxs socialistiske eksperimenter, hvor christina fernandes indgreb er mere uskyldige, det er jo bare skattestigninger og dem man jo 'sagtens' vænne sig til - man skal bare besøge danmark
Argentine Farm Strike Hurt Economy, Minister Says (Update2)
By Eliana Raszewski
June 30 (Bloomberg) -- Argentina's Economy Minister Carlos Fernandez said the country's economy has suffered from a three- month conflict with farmers, who blocked routes and withheld grain shipments to protest a new export tax system.
``The farmers' strike and blockades have hurt, but since they were lifted all the variables are getting back to normal,'' Fernandez said today in an interview with Radio Diez from the northern province of Tucuman. ``We're monitoring tax revenue data and it continues to be good.''
The blockades created shortages of food and industrial supplies since March, when the government imposed a variable export tax on farm goods. The sliding tax scale raised taxes on soybeans and sunflower seeds from a fixed 35 percent to more than 40 percent. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner on June 17 asked Congress to ratify the tax.
Merrill Lynch & Co. said in a report today that the farm strike has degraded the political and economic climate in Argentina, leading analysts to cut their growth forecast for this year to 6.8 percent from a previous estimate of 7.5 percent on higher risks of stagflation, a period of inflation and slow growth. The estimate is below the average 8.5 percent growth that the country reported in each of the past five years.
Tax Collections
Argentina is the world's second-largest corn exporter and the third-largest soy exporter. Cereals and oilseeds provide the government with more than half of its export tax revenue. The government will report June tax collections tomorrow.
``Public sector expenditures growth of roughly 40 percent year over year partly explains the government's insistence in raising export taxes,'' Merrill Lynch said in today's report sent by e-mail.
The economy minister said the government is working to boost food and oil output to prevent Argentina from importing global inflation to the domestic market. The country reported annual inflation of 9.1 percent in May compared with 8.9 percent in April. Daniel Volberg, an economist at Morgan Stanley in New York, said annual inflation is almost 23 percent.
``Additional acceleration could cause a sharper retrenchment in consumption and increase the risks of a harder landing in the next 18 months,'' Merrill Lynch said.
bilsalget i usa i går aftes som jeg ikke fik kommenteret fordi jeg løb tør for indlæg og ikke ville i fængsel igen
var altså bedre end ventet
og by the way så fortsætter housing starts i japan med at ligge næsten på det gamle niveau inden faldet i efteråret sidste år, så nedgangen kun er ca 6-7% i gennemsnit i 08 1h, så her i højsæsonen i foråret og den tidlige somemr har japan fået en pæn fremgang igen i det aktuelle byggeri sammenlignet med slutningen af 2007 og begyndelsen af 2008
bilsalget i usa startede med at første melding var et fald hos ford på 28%, hvilket var med til at aktierne faldt
men man skal regne med at der er 24 salgs dage i juni i år og 27 sidste år og uanset om man synes man skal korrigere for dem, var der mange salgstal, der kom ukorrigeret, således også ford
jeg bruger både korrigerede og ukorrigerede data, fordi de korigerede er de mest rigtige, men samtidgi kan en forskel på hele 3 dage betyde så meget for resultatet på over 10% at man også skal korrigere de korrigerede data lidt tilbage ved at tage et overordnet hensyn til at uanset antallet af salgsdage er det stadig juni måned, der som altid har 30 dage
men nedenfor er de korrigerede salgsdata, der viser meget mindre fald og GM overraskede ved kun at falde 8.6% korrigeret, medens der stadig var stigninger i en række japanske biler, honda, subaru, mazda, suzuki, merceds, VW/audi og ikke mindst BMW og hyundai-kia
så det samlede resultate er kun et fald i bilsalget til ca 13.7 mio annual rate, hvilket ikke er så slemt som det har lydt til de sidste uger og aktierne steg også voldsomt da GM kom med sit salgsresultat
July 1 (Reuters) - Following are U.S. sales and market
shares of cars and light trucks listed by auto groups and their
wholly owned subsidiaries for June versus the same year-earlier
month and for the year-to-date. Percent changes are based on
the daily sales rate.
Makers June 2008 % Chng Share Yr Volume % Chng Share
------ -------- ------ ----- --------- ------ -----
GM-Group 264,201 -8.6 22.1 1,601,303 -15.8 21.5
Traditional 262,329 -8.0 22.0 1,589,235 -15.7 21.3
Saab 1,872 -51.7 0.2 12,068 -28.6 0.2
----------
Ford-Group 184,143 -19.1 15.4 1,222,816 -13.7 16.4
Traditional 173,582 -18.9 14.5 1,151,762 -13.5 15.4
Volvo 7,001 -17.7 0.6 46,181 -13.6 0.6
Jaguar 1,360 8.5 0.1 8,381 -0.3 0.1
Land Rover 2,200 -40.5 0.2 16,492 -27.3 0.2
----------
Chrysler 117,457 -27.9 9.8 867,826 -21.5 11.6
Mercedes 19,576 12.4 1.6 119,279 1.5 1.6
----------
VW-Group 31,411 14.3 2.6 160,547 0.6 2.2
Traditional 23,208 12.8 1.9 115,524 1.2 1.5
Audi 8,203 18.5 0.7 45,023 -0.9 0.6
----------
Hyundai-Grp 78,325 16.5 6.6 388,685 0.1 5.2
Hyundai 50,033 14.0 4.2 231,066 -1.7 3.1
Kia 28,292 21.1 2.4 157,619 2.8 2.1
----------
Other Firms 499,846 -13.6 41.8 3,094,470 -3.0 41.5
Toyota 193,234 -11.5 16.2 1,240,086 -6.2 16.6
Honda 142,539 13.8 11.9 798,358 4.8 10.7
Nissan 75,847 -7.5 6.3 522,321 -1.8 7.0
Mitsubishi 7,494 -35.2 0.6 53,883 -22.9 0.7
Mazda 23,771 3.8 2.0 153,141 1.0 2.1
BMW 26,155 0.1 2.2 157,913 -3.3 2.1
Subaru 18,007 18.4 1.5 94,095 5.1 1.3
Isuzu 364 -39.4 0.0 3,339 -11.0 0.0
Suzuki 9,785 6.6 0.8 56,248 -1.5 0.8
Porsche 2,650 -8.7 0.2 15,086 -15.0 0.2
Total 1,194,959 -8.5 100.0 7,454,926 -9.7 100.0
--------------------------------------------------------------
pippen synes da det snart er blevet et bull marked igen
vi er næsten i nul, siger hun, det kan man da ikke klage over
Ford vehicle sales plunge 28% in June
GM fares better than expected; Toyota stung while Honda gains
By Shawn Langlois, MarketWatch
Last update: 2:27 p.m. EDT July 1, 2008Comments: 39SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Ford Motor Co. shares dropped as much as 9% early Tuesday after the company pinned an expected plunge in June U.S. vehicle sales on broader economic woes and offered little hope for improvement in the second half of the year.
GM 12.29, +0.79, +6.9%) rode an end-of-the-month sale to post a decline that was less severe than analysts had expected. GM's stock, a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, staged a swift turnaround after the release to add almost 6%.
Ford's (F:Ford Motor Company
News, chart, profile, more
HMC 34.08, +0.05, +0.2%) bucked the trend as strong demand for its smaller-car lineup led to increased sales from a year earlier. Honda's stock rose fractionally.
Dearborn, Mich.-based Ford said that total sales, including its Volvo brand, fell 28.1% to 174,091 cars and trucks from 242,029 last June. Retail SUV sales dropped 40% through the first half of the year compared to the same period in 2007.
Ford, Lincoln and Mercury car sales fell 12.1% to 65,109 as Ford was unable to make enough smaller cars to meet rising demand for more fuel-efficient vehicles. The Focus sedan, for instance, posted a 53% surge in retail sales in the first half of the year.
Truck sales fell 35.6% to 101,981, with the flagship F-Series, the one-time industry sales leader, posting a 40.5% decline amid record-high gas costs and the persistent housing slump. Smaller passenger cars from Toyota and Honda now own the top spots.
"Consumer fundamentals and consumer confidence deteriorated as the first half unfolded," said Jim Farley, head of Ford's marketing and communications division. "The economy enters the second half of the year with a notable absence of momentum and a high degree of uncertainty."
GM's drop could have been worse
General Motors reported an 18.2% decline in light vehicle sales to 262,329 cars and trucks from 320,668 in June 2007. Sales of cars slid 21.1% while trucks declined 16%. GM also was a tad more optimistic than its crosstown rival Ford with its assessment of the coming months.
"We continue to believe that there will be some strength in the economy in the second half of the year," sales analyst Mike DiGiovanni said in a conference call. "However, we're not naive enough to think this isn't a challenging time."
GM said that the truck market remains burdened by a sharp rise in fuel prices, although the segment's market-share performance looks to be strong compared with April and May.
Mark LaNeve, vice president of GM North America vehicle sales, service and marketing, also touted GM's burgeoning line of hybrids and fuel sippers.
Sales of the subcompact Honda Fit rise 78.2% to 10,003 vehicles from last year.
"Make no mistake about this ... Asian automakers do not have a monopoly on fuel-efficient vehicles," he said in a statement.
Toyota slammed; Honda bucks trend
Toyota reported an uncharacteristic 21.4% drop in June U.S. sales to 193,234 cars and trucks. Sales fell almost 30% on the luxury Lexus side to 20,253 cars and SUVs.
Passenger cars slid 9.4% to 131,966 units last month while sales of trucks slumped 38.8% to 61,268 vehicles. with consumers gravitating toward more fuel-efficient models.
Honda was the only manufacturer to reporting increased sales, up 1.1% to 142,539 vehicles from 140,935 a year ago despite fewer selling days. Total U.S. car sales rose 19.3% to 97,639 vehicles, while total U.S. truck sales dropped 24% to 44,900 in June from a year ago.
The subcompact Honda Fit provided a lift, rising 78.2% to 10,003 vehicles from last year, while its Accord saw sales climb 37.3% to 39,704 vehicles
Incentives dip from last year
Despite some added promotions from GM and Toyota, the industry spent an average of $2,356 per vehicle on incentives in June; that's down about 1% from a year ago, according to car-buying research site Edmunds.com.
"General Motors' last-minute 72-hour sales campaign helped increase their incentive spending for the month, and Toyota needed some additional dollars to move their large SUVs and trucks from dealer lots," analyst Jesse Toprak said.
GM led the top automakers by spending $3,454 per vehicle on average. Chrysler wasn't far behind at $3,427; Ford came in at $2,745.
Toyota didn't spend nearly the same amount at just $1,186 per vehicle, but that figure still represents the most the company has ever put toward incentives. Honda spent the least of all at $1,367, down from its year ago totals but up from last month.
Edmunds.com is also looking for increased incentive spending on the big SUVs and trucks, specifically from Chrysler with its Dodge Ram and Ford with the F-Series pickup.
Shawn Langlois is a reporter
og tata har en stigning på næsten 7% med tunge lastbiler oppe med ca 45%
NEW DELHI: Domestic auto major Tata Motors on Tuesday said it has sold 47,245 vehicles in June this year, a 6.61 per cent increase over the corresponding period year ago.
It had reported sales of 44,317 units in the same period last year.
The passenger vehicle business achieved total sales of 17,017 units in the domestic market in June, a decline of 2.30 per cent over the same month last year, the firm said in a statement.
Indica reported sales of 8,560 units, a decline of 27 per cent, compared to the same month last year. However, the Indigo family recorded sales of 4,747 units, a strong 102 per cent growth over June last year.
Sumo and Safari accounted for sales of 3,710 units, a growth of 11 per cent compared to June last year, it added.
The company said sales of commercial vehicles in June 2008 in the domestic market were at 26,797 units, up 25.12 per cent, compared to 21,417 units in corresponding month a year ago. M&HCV sales stood at 12,845 units, a growth of 9 per cent, while LCV sales were 13,952 units, up 45 per cent.
Tata Motors said cumulative sales of passenger vehicles in the domestic market for the fiscal were 51,094 units, a marginal decline of 1 per cent over the same period last year.
Cumulative sales of commercial vehicles in the domestic market for the fiscal stood at 71,480 units, up 16 per cent over last year.
Cumulative M&HCV sales stood at 35,835 units, up 10 per cent over last year, while LCV sales for the fiscal were 35,645 units, a growth of 23 per cent over last year, it added.
maruti steg kun lidt i juni, men trodsalt en stigning så sammen med motorcyklerne er der tale om fortsat vækst i bilsalget og motorcyklerne i indien også i juni trods stigningerne i oliepriserne, inflationen og renterne og den almindelige hysteri
NEW DELHI: Beating the fuel prices blues, automobile industry continued to show signs of recovery from last year's downturn with major companies, led by Hyundai and Maruti along with Hero Honda and Bajaj Auto, reporting jumps in their sales during June.
Country's second largest car maker Hyundai Motor India (HMIL) today reported a 34 per cent increase in domestic passenger car sales at 21,881 units during June, against 16,335 units in the corresponding month of 2007.
The company's overall sales (including exports) during June were up 45.3 per cent at 40,182 units, compared to 27,653 units in the same month a year ago.
Market leader Maruti Suzuki India also reported a 2.22 per cent rise in total vehicle sales during June at 61,247 units, compared to 59,917 units in the same month last year.
The company's domestic sales edged up 0.7 per cent to 56,411 units as against 56,000 units in June last year.
Country's largest two wheeler maker Hero Honda Motors reported a 16 per cent rise in its motorcycle sales in June to 2,95,675 units, compared to 2,55,200 units in the same month last year.
With this, the company said, its cumulative sales for the first quarter of this fiscal went up by 11 per cent to 8,94,244 units, against 8,02,853 during the corresponding quarter last fiscal.
Country's second largest two-wheeler maker Bajaj Auto also reported an eight per cent growth in its motorcycle sales in June at 1,75,903 units, compared to 1,62,730 units in the same month last year.
The sale of two wheelers, including scooters, during the month stood at 1,77,112 units, a jump of 7 per cent over the last year's corresponding month's sale of 1,65,236 units.
ifølge TV2 er danmark i recession og har været det længe med
negativ BNP vækst i både 07 4q og 08 1q
så vores statistikker er åbenbart bedre end de amerikanske til at vise de reelle data
men jeg mener nu at recessionen i usa er værre og har været det i det meste af 2007 og indtil nu, men måske snart er ved at lette
det er sjovt at tænke på at valgkampen kørte midt i en recession og at man kun snakkede om at der manglede 'hænder' og at man ville importere arbejdskraft og give flere penge til flere offentligt ansatte
så endnu et eksempel på at politikere er virkelighedsfjerne