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from Global Investing:

A shoe, a song and the promise of the West

I found myself at Selfridges this week, specifically in what the London retailer says is the world's largest shoe department.

Slightly dazed by cornucopia of women's shoes on slick display, I was roused only when the haze of muzak wafting over the PA system was suddenly dispersed by the jaunty strains of the Chinese New Year ditty 'Gongxi Gongxi'.

A 1946 composition from Shanghai, the song has gone from classic to kitsch, evolving to become the most popular festive song in the Chinese-speaking world. Its ubiquity rests on the many -- for me at least -- teeth-grindingly cloying versions played all over shops and markets in Asia. (Click here for example and don't say I didn't warn you)

I was somewhat surprised by the song's appearance in the British retail icon -- not least because it's still some ways off the Year of the Dragon. But then looking at the shoppers around me it all made sense.

Mainland Chinese travellers spent some £200 million on Bond Street last year. That's a 155 percent surge from 2009, according to an association of luxury retailers in the London thoroughfare.

Never mind that these products are largely assembled back in their home country, Chinese tourists buy their designer bags on Bond Street and elsewhere in Europe to avoid China's luxury sales tax. More importantly, these status-conscious buyers have the assurance that they are not being sold knock-offs -- a risk rampant in a country notorious for its lack of regard for intellectual property.

Those reasons are similar to those that drive the wealthy elite in many emerging economies to London, a city that Goldman Sach's Jim O'Neil has dubbed the "BRIC capital of the world".

from Global Investing:

If China catches a cold…

China has defied predictions of a hard economic landing for some time now so it is somewhat unsettling to see  investors positioning for a sharp slowdown in the world's second-largest economy.

Over the last 10 years, the world has become accustomed to Chinese annual GDP growth of above 9 percent. A seemingly insatiable demand for commodities from soya beans to iron ore has catapulted the Asian giant to near the top of the global trade table. China is the biggest trading partner for countries on nearly every continent, from Angola to Australia.

But many are now fretting that an unhappy coincidence between stuttering global demand and domestic strains in the property and banking sectors could knock Chinese growth to below 7 percent (the level commonly identified as a 'hard landing'), with grave implications for the rest of the world.

"It used to be the case that if the US sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. But with the US already confined to the emergency room since 2008 thequestion is what happens if China catches a cold," says Citi in a recent report.

Many are now preparing for the first sneeze.

Commodity exporters are expected to bear the brunt of a sharp Chinese slowdown. Investors have pared back exposure to Brazil, Russia, Chile and South Africa, citing fears over China.

On the flipside, Turkey, Mexico, Israel and India have been identified as less vulnerable.

from MacroScope:

The thin line between love and hate

The opinion on Turkey’s unorthodox monetary policy mix is turning as rapidly as global growth forecasts are being revised down.

Earlier this month, its central bank was the object of much finger-wagging after it defied market fears over an overheating economy by cutting its policy rate. It defended the move, arguing that weaker global demand posed a greater risk than inflationary pressures.

Investors were not persuaded. When I told one analyst about the Turkish rate move, he practically sputtered down the phone: "You're not kidding?!"

The lira sold off, dropping to 2-1/2 year lows against the dollar.

But the central bank could yet be vindicated. With fears intensifying over weakening global demand, its decision to cut rates looks increasingly prescient. As my colleague Sujata Rao has pointed out, other emerging-market central banks have followed the Turks.

Witness Societe Generale’s head of emerging markets strategy Benoit Anne's mea cupla in a note issued just two weeks after Turkey's controversial rate decision:

"I guess I need to apologize to the Central Bank of Turkey which on many occasions had been the object of my sarcasm over the past few months: the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey is actually at the forefront of policy-making in the emerging-markets universe. And I bet some other central banks will follow suit with rate cuts in the pipeline."

from MacroScope:

Brazil joins fellow-BRIC China in world’s Top 5

Volkswagen's Brazil car factory. Sales are booming as the economy roars ahead

Distracted by the upheaval in the Middle East and $120 per barrel oil,  few noted Brazil's ascent last week to the ranks of the world's top five economies. Strange given that the move comes just months after China displaced Japan as the second-biggest economy in the world.

Goldman Sachs Asset Management head Jim O'Neill points out that  Brazil -- part of the BRIC group of big emerging economies -- grew 7.5 percent in 2010. By the end of last year the economy was valued around $2.2 trillion. That's next only to the United States, China, Japan and Germany. And bigger than France and Britain.

O'Neill, who coined the BRICs concept in 2001, says the achievement has come earlier than he had expected. But then Goldman analysts had expected China to overtake Japan only in 2015.

Brazil is unlikely to continue growing at last year's annual rate of 7.5 percent which was a 24-year high. O'Neill expects trend growth closer to the 5 percent level. But BRIC juggernaut looks unstoppable --  Goldman's latest forecast is for the BRICs' combined economies to match the G7 rich states in the next decade and overtake the United States by 2018.

In current U.S. dollar terms, combined BRIC GDP at the end of 2010 was just over $11 trillion, more than double the nominal GDP assumed back in 2003,China's economy is two times larger than it was in 2003 and Brazil's is three times bigger than 2003 levels.

from MacroScope:

The wavering faith of capitalism’s high priests

Yet another guardian of market orthodoxy has uttered what was once an unspeakable heresy.

This week, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development's (EBRD) acknowledged that its old approach of encouraging growth in client economies by reducing the role of the state and fostering private ownership was "simplistic".

"The problem with this view is that markets cannot function properly unless there are well-run, effective public institutions in place," the London-based development bank said in its annual transition report.

The EBRD was set up at the end of the Cold War to help former Soviet bloc economies make the transition to free markets so this admission is startling to say the least.

Barely three years ago, the belief that untrammelled free markets were anything but a force of good was unassailable. Other tenets of this creed were that market forces could best allocate resources and that 'light-touch' regulation of the financial industry ensured growing prosperity for all.

Then the world economy was pushed to the brink. The proliferation of barely regulated financial derivatives amplified the  spectacular housing bust in the U.S. globally, shaking faith in free markets to the core  so much so that then-U.S. President George W. Bush was prompted to mount an extraordinary defense of capitalism.

from Global Investing:

PIGS, CIVETS and other creature economies…

Given the ubiquity of BRICs and PIGS, it seems everyone else in the financial and business world is attempting to conjure up catchy acronyms to group economies with similar traits. All with varying degrees of success.

HSBC chief Michael Geogehan has been championing 'CIVETS' to describe Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa as the next tier of developing economies poised for spectacular growth.

Evoking the skunk-like animal blamed for the spread of the deadly SARS outbreak in Asia is not exactly auspicious but then it will probably be less offensive than the porcine moniker for Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain. The collective term -- with permutations such as PIIGGS to include Ireland and Great Britain among the list of debt-ridden countries -- has been denounced by politicians in Portugal and Spain.

In less troubled times, of course, these economies were often dubbed 'Club Med', with all its associations of sun-saturated holidays by the sea.

No such allusive qualities exist in PriceWaterhouseCoopers' 'E-7'. The consultancy's term for fast-growing emerging economies China, India, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey could well be the name of a face-cream or some other chemical compound.

Also carrying a hint of the pharmaceutical is  'N-11' -- the handy shorthand for Goldman Sach's 'Next 11' group of countries that could take their place as the world's largest economies alongside the original BRIC giants Brazil, Russia, India and China this century.

Goldman, of course, is behind that most widely used acronym for the 'Big Four' of emerging economies. Others have jumped onto the bandwagon, tagging other developing economies to the original four to come up with 'BRICK' ('K' for South Korea) and the hard-to-pronounce 'BRIMC' ('M' for Mexico).  Less intuitive permutations include 'BRICA', which includes Arab economies such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and 'BRICET', which includes Eastern Europe and Turkey.