World

Asia, China, Market, World

Has investment banking lost its appeal among graduates from China’s elite schools?

In April, six months into an internship at an investment firm in Beijing, 24-year-old Wang Xuan (pseudonym) was told by Human Resources (HR) that he would not be offered a full-time position. Wang was unexpectedly calm when he got the news, remarking: “I anticipated this.” Signs of trouble emerged last year. He had come across reports of job cuts within the sector and got wind of discussions in the pantry regarding unpaid bonuses from the previous year. Senior colleagues openly expressed a desire to “lie flat” and resign themselves to the possibility of being laid off. Wang sighed, “Longtime employees might receive a retrenchment package of up to a million RMB. With that sum, they can afford to take a gap year and recharge. But for fresh graduates like us, it’s all about facing the ...
Why do crises occur so frequently when we can prevent them and understand why they occur?
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Why do crises occur so frequently when we can prevent them and understand why they occur?

One of my favourite exam questions is: "Given our extensive knowledge about the causes of financial crises and the measures needed to prevent them, why do they happen so frequently?" We have had a deep understanding of financial crises for over 200 years. A 19th-century central banker dealing with the severe crisis of 1866 would find few surprises in the more recent ones. All crises share the same fundamental causes. Excessive leverage renders financial institutions vulnerable to even small shocks. Self-preservation in times of stress drives market participants to prefer the most liquid assets. System opacity, complexity, and asymmetric information make market participants mistrust one another. These three fundamental vulnerabilities have been behind almost every financial crisis in...
Emergency Power Source? How to Stop AI From Making the Next Economic Crisis Worse
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Emergency Power Source? How to Stop AI From Making the Next Economic Crisis Worse

Good morning. It is an honor to join you here at the AI for Good Global Summit. We are hearing about some of the extraordinary ways Generative Artificial Intelligence could benefit our societies, including helping us live healthier lives and accelerating scientific breakthroughs. Many experts also believe the technology could provide significant economic benefits, for example by providing a serious boost to productivity. This could help lift the global economy at a time when the growth outlook for the medium term is the weakest in decades. This said, many also agree that AI’s promise comes with considerable uncertainty and significant risks. To date, most warnings have focused on security, privacy, misinformation, and ethical concerns. Taking an economic perspective, I would like...
Asia, China, Market, World

China hands rare death sentence to former senior banker for taking US$151 million in bribes

Former manager Bai Tianhui is the second China Huarong official to receive the ultimate penalty, after his former boss was executed in 2021No mention was made of Bai’s intention to appeal the court’s ruling, which is unusually severe in Chinese corruption cases A court in eastern China delivered a rare death sentence on Tuesday, after finding that a former senior banker accepted bribes worth more than 1.1 billion yuan (US$151 million) in his role with one of the country’s top four state asset managers. Bai Tianhui, former general manager of China Huarong International Holdings (CHIH), took advantage of his position to aid others in the acquisitions and financing of projects in exchange for the huge sums, the court found. A report on the Secondary Intermediate People’s Court of Ti...
Asia, China, Market, World

Georgian Finance Minister, delegation of China’s Export-Import Bank discuss cooperation

Georgian Finance Minister Lasha Khutsishvili on Wednesday discussed economic and trade cooperation with China with a visiting delegation of the country’s Export and Import Bank state policy bank. The meeting comes as part of intensified ties between the two governments, who signed a strategic partnership agreement in July last year. The Georgian Ministry said the meeting with the delegation also featured Ekaterine Guntsadze, the country’s Deputy Finance Minister.
Amid concerns about high inflation, the central bank of Sri Lanka maintains steady interest rates.
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Amid concerns about high inflation, the central bank of Sri Lanka maintains steady interest rates.

Sri Lanka's central bank decided to maintain interest rates unchanged on Tuesday in order to keep inflation under control. As the country continues to grapple with the severe financial crisis, the rate hold comes as a measure to stabilize the economy. The Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) announced that it has kept the Standing Deposit Facility Rate steady at 8.50 per cent and the Standing Lending Facility Rate at 9.50 per cent. In March, the CBSL implemented a 50 basis points reduction in rates as part of its ongoing easing cycle, which has resulted in a total decrease of 700 basis points since June. As per a report by Reuters, this partially offsets the 1,050 basis points increase that occurred since April 2022. In April month, Sri Lanka's annual inflation rate stood a...
The middle class in China is thrown off balance by the country’s real estate crisis.
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The middle class in China is thrown off balance by the country’s real estate crisis.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping's relentless pursuit of multi-storied housing projects has pushed country's once flourishing real estate sector into deep uncertainty. Now a study has found that China's middle-class families remain vary of spending on property.  In a quarterly survey of household wealth and income, researchers at a Chinese university found that their index of families' expected future spending was even lower than the early days of Covid pandemic, South China Morning Post reported. In the China Household Wealth Index Survey conducted by Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu, Sichuan province, the index of spending expectations fell to 101.9 in the first quarter of this year, down from 103.0 in the fourth quarter of 2023.The survey measures the spe...
Asia, China, Market, World

G7 steps up economic and financial war against Russia and China

The three-day meeting of the finance ministers and central bankers of the G7 group of imperialist powers held in Stresa, Italy, concluded on Saturday. Significantly, it stepped up its aggressive stance against Russia and China, as well as giving carte blanche to the Israeli genocide in Gaza. A major item on the agenda was how the $300 billion worth of foreign assets of the Russian central bank, frozen by the US and European powers at the start of the Ukraine war, could be used to finance the Zelensky regime as it prepares to throw thousands more men into the meat-grinder, on top of the hundreds of thousands already killed or wounded. As well, revealing the interconnected character of the imperialist war fronts, the meeting adopted a more strident attitude to China and its so-called ...
Politics of Asia’s Economic Crisis: Agreements and Disagreements
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Politics of Asia’s Economic Crisis: Agreements and Disagreements

The Politics of the Economic Crisis in Asia: Consensus and Controversies offers an assessment of the political economy factors that contributed to the Asian financial crisis and that will shape its recovery. It reports the findings of the Carnegie Economic Reform Network meeting in Bangkok in June 1999, which included former financial Ministers, high ranking regional officials and academics, and staff of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. This publication was prepared by Lesley O'Connell under the direction of Nancy Birdsall. The Background paper on which it is based was prepared by Stephan Haggard, with input before the meeting and revision after by Daniel Morrow, Nancy Birdsall, and David Lipton. 62 pp.
Asia, Market, USA, World

BMW and Jaguar used banned China parts – US probe

BMW, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and Volkswagen (VW) used parts made by a supplier on a list of firms banned over alleged links to Chinese forced labour, a US congressional report has said. At least 8,000 BMW Mini Cooper cars were imported into the US with components from banned Chinese firm Sichuan Jingweida Technology Group (JWD), according to the report by Senate Finance Committee chairman Ron Wyden's staff. "Automakers’ self-policing is clearly not doing the job," the Democrat Senator said. BMW said it had "strict standards and policies regarding employment practices, human rights, and working conditions, which all our direct suppliers must follow". It added it had taken steps to "halt the importation of affected products and will be conducting a service action with custo...