There are many signs of a global economic recovery. For instance, there has been an increase in Japanese industrial output, which rose 5.9 percent in May and is expected to increase steadily through August 2009. At the same time, economic confidence has increased considerably in the euro zone, as reported by the economic sentiment index, which turned out better than most forecasts. Although those might seem like positive signs for the world, the Bank for International Settlement is still wary from the way complex securitized products pushed the world’s financial system into a ...

According to Fitch, the central government’s debt was about 21.9 percent of GDP by December 2008. The "relatively low" debt burden allowed the government to take on a large stimulus program to ease out of the recession, but Fitch pointed out that local governments, who borrowed indirectly "through state enterprises" were not taken into account, and thus the debt is actually a lot larger than reported. Local governments were responsible for "supporting economic growth" and many launched major projects, which were state-sponsored. These projects are liabilities that were not included in the country’s debt. Fitch also considers Chinese banks a possible sovereign liability, ...

    An important factor in the tremendous growth in Chinese exports, was the country's pursuit of policies encouraging the establishment of foreign-invested factories. In 2004, nearly half of Chinese exports were produced by foreign-invested firms. Initially, China had major political concerns of relinquishing control of Chinese assets to foreigners, due to the socialist character of the economy. Once they recognized that FDI could transfer useful technical and managerial skills, China encouraged it.

In the 1990's, the government introduced rules and policies which paved way for immense FDI capital flow into China. The Chinese government allowed ...
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Unlike their Western counterparts, the major Asian economies have thus far resisted the complete metamorphosis of their mortgage markets into the classic Anglo-American model. The American system, as highlighted in a recent media blitz, is replete with intermediaries (“brokers” as we know them), non-bank entities (mortgage banks like Countrywide, Indymac, and GMAC), and a vast – albeit rapidly shrinking – secondary market where the loans are bought and pooled together into structures known as mortgage-backed securities before being sold to institutional investors. The U.S. and U.K. also feature fairly ...
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