The Great Debate UK
from Reuters Investigates:
An economic giant’s Achilles heel
A year ago, Nick Carey went on a road trip around America for a project called "Route to Recovery" that took him to places hit hardest by the recession. Nick went to Saginaw, Michigan, this time for a follow-up special report on the manufacturing sector and structural unemployment: "Is America the sick man of the globe?"
One of the characters he met was Olen Ham, a retired GM worker and UAW member who is among the last of those who took part in the historic "Sitdown Strike" in 1936 that he says helped create America's middle class. You can hear from Olen in this video:
Manufacturing has borne the brunt of the lay-offs in recent years, as this graphic shows:
Here's another graph that shows how unemployment and manufacturing are closely linked.
from Commentaries:
Why the carmaker in front is cutting back
Good news: global car capacity is being cut by 700,000 vehicles. Bad news: the company doing the cutting is the world's most efficient manufacturer, Toyota.
Across the world, governments are pledging money to keep local plants open, mostly plants which have no long-term future, and which are far less efficient than the production line in Japan that Toyota is closing.
from The Great Debate:
China risks overcooking the economy
-- Wei Gu is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are her own --
While China has been outspoken in expressing concern about the United States printing too much money, those worries might be better focused at home. No country beats China when it comes to effective monetary easing.
Beijing has scrapped lending quotas, adopted a loose monetary policy and kept interest rates at a four-year low to boost liquidity and promote growth. The policy has worked. China has lent out more money in the first four months of this year than the whole of 2008. Money growth in China is up more than 25 percent this year, versus about 10 percent in the United States. Click here for a related graph.
from The Great Debate:
China Inc. takes stock after overseas buying spree
-- Wei Gu is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are her own --
Abundant liquidity, government support and a strong yuan fueled Chinese companies' overseas buying spree.
But since they went out at the peak of the market and did not have a clear strategy for acquisitions, it should come as no surprise that most of those deals have turned sour. Once bitten, twice shy.
from The Great Debate:
Downturn hits China’s manufacturing heartland
-- John Kemp is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own --
The global slowdown is hitting China's modern manufacturing base in Guangdong province especially hard. Deputy governor Huang Longyun on Thursday warned a news conference "the situation is grim" and the manufacturing hub around Pearl River Delta is bearing the brunt of China's slowdown.
Guangdong's burgeoning factories have supplied most of the cheap manufactured items flooding world markets in the last five years. They have also been the source of most of the marginal demand for crude oil, refined products and other raw materials. The province's slowdown will therefore have profound effects on global markets and prices in 2009.
