China’s industrial output grew at the slowest pace in three years and President Hu Jintao said economic expansion faces “notable downward pressure,” signaling that officials may need to add further to stimulus after approving subway and road projects.Production increased 8.9 percent in August from a year earlier and fixed-asset investment growth in the first eight months eased to 20.2 percent, the National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday in Beijing. Inflation accelerated for the first time in five months.Enlarge image
Shipping containers are stacked at the Yangshan deep water port in Shanghai. Photographer: Kevin Lee/BloombergEnlarge image
Food inflation accelerated for the first time in five months, rising 3.4 percent from a year earlier. Consumer prices increased 0.6 percent from the previous month, the biggest rise since January, while food prices increased 1.5 percent from July. Photographer: Nelson Ching/BloombergThe data underscore risks that full-year growth in the world’s second-biggest economy will slide to its lowest in more than two decades and undermine support for the ruling Communist Party during its once-a-decade power transition to a new generation of leaders later this year. The rebound in inflation, excess capacity in some industries and banks’ bad loan risks from past monetary easing highlight the potential cost of ramping up stimulus efforts.“Politicians want a benign backdrop for their party congress gathering and slumping stock prices and a worsening growth slowdown could spoil the party,” said Lu Ting, chief China economist at Bank of America Corp. in Hong Kong. “Putting together the economic fundamentals and the timing of major political events, there will be a second round of policy easing including cuts to banks’ reserve requirements and some fiscal stimulus.”Trade Support
Customs bureau data today may show exports rose 2.9 percent from a year earlier, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey, slumping from a 24.5 percent pace in the same month last year. Overseas shipments in July rose 1 percent as sales to European Union countries fell and growth in U.S. exports stalled.China’s Commerce Minister Chen Deming said specific measures to support and stabilize foreign trade will be announced soon, according to an interview broadcast yesterday by China Central Television. He also said the nation’s foreign trade situation in the fourth quarter will be better than in the third.UBS AG and ING Groep NV on Sept. 7 cut their forecasts for economic expansion this year to 7.5 percent amid a weakening global outlook and less forceful policy support than they previously expected. That would be the slowest pace since 1990.ING lowered its estimate for China’s third-quarter growth to 7.1 percent while UBS projects a 7.3 percent pace. The economy expanded 7.6 percent in the three months through June from a year earlier, the least in three years and the sixth straight slowdown in growth.‘Arduous Task’
Speaking to business executives at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Vladivostok on Sept. 8, President Hu said China’s small and medium-sized enterprises are having a “hard time” and exporters are facing more difficulties. The government has an “arduous task of creating jobs for new entrants to the labor force.”Hu also urged governments in the Asia-Pacific region to speed up infrastructure development, describing it as key to promoting recovery and achieving sustained and stable growth amid increasing downward risks to the global economy.His comments followed a slew of announcements by the Chinese government approving new roads, railways and urban infrastructure that Nomura Holdings Inc. estimates have a combined value of about 1 trillion yuan ($158 billion).The news drove the Shanghai Composite Index (SHCOMP), China’s benchmark stock gauge, 3.7 percent higher on Sept. 7, the biggest gain in eight months. The index had previously dropped 17 percent from this year’s March 2 high as cooling economic growth hurt earnings.Inflation Accelerates
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-09/china-s-inflation-accelerates-in-blow-to-easing-prospects-1-.htmlGreek gov't fails to agree on spending cuts
ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- The leaders of the three parties in Greece's coalition government failed to agree Sunday on a package of spending cuts worth â?¬11.5 billion ($14.7 billion), a raft of measures the prime minister had said is crucial to restoring the country's financial credibility and sustaining its bailout funding.
Conservative Premier Antonis Samaras and the other two leaders -- socialist Evangelos Venizelos and Fotis Kouvelis of the Democratic Left -- disagreed on across-the-board cuts in pensions and wages. The latter two insisted that Greece's international creditors give the country more time to implement the spending cuts.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/story/2012/09/9/greek-govt-fails-to-agree-on-spending-cuts/57720448/1
Ship Magnate Uses Gut in $11 Billion Bet Worst Since ’70s Ending
The flow of much of the world’s oil is controlled from a small suite of offices perched over a Tiffany & Co. store in the Chelsea section of London. That’s where John Fredriksen, a Norwegian shipping magnate worth $13.2 billion, manages the world’s largest fleet of supertankers, the most valuable deep-water drilling company and an armada of about 128 other vessels that carry minerals, grains and liquefied gases.Every morning, he plows through a stack of reports on the operations of his maritime empire. Whenever he makes a bet-the- company move, which he does every few years, Fredriksen sets the data aside. “I still work on a gut feeling,” he says in a conference room adorned with a painting of a supertanker named after Kathrine, one of his two daughters.Enlarge image
John Fredriksen, the world's biggest tanker owner, is betting $11 billion to extend his dominance over the transportation of energy. Photographer: Henry Bourne/ Bloomberg Markets via BloombergAs he navigates the worst shipping market since the 1970s, Fredriksen’s instincts are telling him to buy, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its October special issue on the 50 Most Influential people in global finance. He’s investing $7 billion in 18 rigs to pump oil from beneath the ocean floor and $4 billion in about four dozen new vessels to transport liquefied natural gas, gasoline, propane and other fuels. While Fredriksen loves tankers -- images of crude carriers are etched on the water glasses in his office -- he’s now trying to increase his dominance over the global circulation of liquid energy in most of its forms.Fredriksen, 68, is making the biggest wager in a swashbuckling career that has brought billions of dollars in windfalls as well as bitter setbacks -- such as the almost four months he spent in a Norwegian jail charged with fraud. A stout man with the weathered face of a mariner, Fredriksen is fond of joking that 42 of the 50 years he has worked in the tanker trade have been awful.
Andre Esteves, chief executive officer of Grupo BTG Pactual, jokes that his bank's initials stand for `Better Than Goldman.' Photographer: Gabriel Rinaldi/ Bloomberg Markets via BloombergWith UBS’s cash crunch deepening in 2009, Esteves and some former partners offered $2.5 billion to repurchase their firm. This time, UBS accepted. Since then, Esteves, 44, has fashioned what’s now Grupo BTG Pactual into a regional power to challenge weakened global rivals and still-sturdy local institutions, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its October special issue on the 50 Most Influential people in global finance.With his bank No. 1 in Brazilian equity underwriting, Esteves jokes that BTG -- officially Banking and Trading Group - - stands for Better Than Goldman.Esteves is leading a shift from a Wall Street-dominated universe as he amasses clout in the largest emerging economy after China. Aiding him is what he calls global finance’s worst moment: misbehavior ranging from JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)’s multibillion-dollar derivatives loss to the rigging by Barclays Plc and other firms of the London interbank offered rate.
A man sweeps the sidewalk outside the JP Morgan Chase Inc. headquarters in New York. Photographer: Peter Foley/BloombergThe solution: At least seven banks plan to let customers swap lower-rated securities that don’t meet standards in return for a loan of Treasuries or similar holdings that do qualify, a process dubbed “collateral transformation.” That’s raising concerns among investors, bank executives and academics that measures intended to avert risk are hiding it instead.“The dealers look after their own interests, and they won’t necessarily look after the systemic risks that are associated with this,” said Darrell Duffie, a finance professor at Stanford University who has studied the derivatives and securities-lending markets. “Regulators are probably going to become aware of it once the practice gets big enough.”Adding to the concern is the reaction of central clearinghouses, which collect from losers on derivatives trades and pay off winners. Some have responded to the collateral shortage by lowering standards, with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange accepting bonds rated four levels above junk.
Apple Inc. shares surpassed $700 in late trading after announcing record first-day orders for the latest iPhone. Photographer: David Paul Morris/BloombergShares climbed as high as $700.44 after reaching a record $699.78 at the close in New York. The stock has advanced 73 percent this year.The iPhone 5, which features a bigger screen, faster chip and a lighter body, sold 2 million units in first-day orders, more than double a record set by the previous model, Apple said. Since its 2007 debut, the device has become Apple’s top-selling product, accounting for about two-thirds of profit. Signs of robust demand reinforced expectations that Apple will withstand accelerating competition from Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) and Google Inc. (GOOG) in the $219.1 billion smartphone market.“It leaves me in awe,” said Rex Ishibashi, chief executive officer of Callaway Digital Arts Inc. (2326), which develops games for the iPhone. “It’s reflective of how important these devices and these digital technologies have become in our lives.”Apple’s surge gathered steam Sept. 14, after it began taking orders for iPhone 5. Apple’s website said new orders wouldn’t ship until Sept. 28, a week after the handset is due in stores, an indication that supply may be running thin.“The initial batch is sold out,” Shaw Wu, an analyst at Sterne Agee & Leach Inc., said in an interview. He raised his sales estimate for the quarter ending in September to 26 million units, from 23 million. “We think that could turn out to be conservative.”
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