When Singapore missed its GDP target in Q2, Maybank said we are heading for a technical recession next quarter. A technical recession happens when there are two successive quarters of fall in GDP. I remember it was July 2001. Three years after I came to Singapore, the country was in recession. The economy contracted by 2 percent - a big contrast to the strong growth of … [Read more...]
How the US-China Trade War is making the crazy rich Chinese poorer
Last Thursday, Donald Trump imposed new trade tariffs against China with 25 percent duties on 279 product categories worth a total of US$16 billion. China immediately responded by imposing retaliatory taxes on the same value of imported US products in 333 product categories. Who is the winner or loser in the US? For China, since the total amount of export to US … [Read more...]
When fear of downturn becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy
In my earlier blog post "Why property prices won’t be recovering any time soon", I talked about 'regime uncertainty' and how the recent China stock market crash further undermined market confidence. During the free fall between June 12 and July 7, in less than a month Chinese equity investors lost more than $3.4 trillion in equity value. By end of August, investors suffered a … [Read more...]