Friday, 29 May 2015
Adesina gets it
AKINWUMI ADESINA (pictured) has been elected the new president of the African Development Bank (ADB). For our story on the ADB and the election in last week's print edition, click here.
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Britain's productivity puzzle, New Jersey's tourism boom and China's stockmarket bubble
THIS week's print edition has an array of economics articles that may be of interest. The following have particularly caught our eye:
A new look at Britain's productivity puzzle (Britain)
A wave of people and spending is about to hit New Jersey (United States)
Why China's manic bull market is so dangerous (Finance)
Also, don't forget to take a glance at this week's Free Exchange column, which explains why pacific trade talks have exposed the limits of economic modelling.
And if you fancy writing for The Economist, Continue reading
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Thursday, 28 May 2015
A weighting game
THE Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a putative trade agreement, would ease commerce between America, Japan and ten other countries that between them account for two-fifths of global GDP. But how beneficial would it be to these economies? Advocates claim it would boost their output by nearly $300 billion in a decade. Critics say it would make little or no difference.
The disagreement reflects the difficulty of gauging the impact of free-trade agreements. Almost all economists accept the benefits of free trade as laid out in the early 1800s by David Ricardo. Countries do well when they focus on what they are relatively good at producing. But Ricardo looked at only two countries making two products, at a time when few non-tariff barriers such as safety standards existed. This renders his elegant model about as useful for analysing contemporary free-trade deals as a horse and carriage are for predicting the trajectory of an aircraft.
Instead, most economists use what is known as computable general equilibrium (CGE) analysis. CGE models are built on top of a database that seeks to describe economies in full, factoring in incomes, profits and more....Continue reading
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When the talking has to stop
THE latest episode in Greece’s long-running economic drama is coming to a head. Since the victory of the radical-left Syriza party in the election of late January, Greece’s creditors and the new government headed by Alexis Tsipras have been exchanging threats. A resolution of some kind must occur in June, and sooner rather than later in the month.
It could still be a disastrous falling-out that leads to Greece defaulting on official loans, imposing capital controls, freezing deposits and tumbling out of the euro. But as time and money run out, the concentrating of minds on both sides seems likely to bring a deal.
Mr Tsipras is the one under most pressure. A recent payment to the IMF of €750m ($825m) was made only by drawing down a special account Greece held at the fund. Next month the government is due to pay the IMF double that amount, starting with €300m on June 5th. It may not be able to: a government minister said on May 24th that the money wasn’t there. Even if the first instalment can be rustled together, the government will be hard-pressed to find the €300m due on June 12th and the €600m due on the 16th;...Continue reading
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Undue credit
DAVID EINHORN, a hedge-fund manager, saw the financial crisis coming and made a fortune from it. But not all his predictions have been as prescient. Asked in 2012 about rating agencies, which, unlike him, had failed to discern the impending disaster, Mr Einhorn said, “It’s a matter of time before they all disappear.”
After all, the three big rating agencies, Fitch, Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s (S&P), had all judged Lehman Brothers a safe bet until the morning of the day it defaulted; they also gave high ratings to securities based on subprime mortgages that turned out to be toxic. “Deeply disappointing,” was how Ray McDaniel, the boss of Moody’s, described its performance.
In response, politicians vowed to change the industry beyond recognition. They handed the job of regulating them to new outfits: a special unit of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in America and the European Securities and Markets Authority in the European Union. A provision of America’s Dodd-Frank financial-reform law, enacted in 2010, states that any requirements in regulation for a security to be rated should be...Continue reading
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Compacts of god
INSURANCE only works if reinsurance works, those in the business say. An insurer that would face crippling losses if, say, a hurricane struck an island where it had covered lots of property against extreme weather, would typically insure itself against such an event with a reinsurer. But the $425 billion industry is under threat as insurers increasingly offload risk directly to capital markets instead. This month Warren Buffett, who has investments in reinsurance, dismissed it as a “fashionable asset class” whose prospects have “turned for the worse”.
Two things have made life more difficult for reinsurers. First, as insurance companies merge into fewer, global players, the share of policies they seek to reinsure has declined rapidly over the past decade, says James McPherson of PwC, a consultancy. A Slovenian insurer that used to take out reinsurance against a big snowstorm, for example, no longer needs to do so if it is part of a global insurance firm that can offset the risk with unrelated policies in other parts of its portfolio. Technological advances and regulatory pressures...Continue reading
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The economics of bluffing
WILL Greece default on its debts and leave the euro? Will Britain decide to leave the European Union? Politicians in the two countries have threatened, implicitly or explicitly, to take these drastic steps if their European colleagues do not offer them inducements to stay.
Many people regard these threats as a bluff. They think that Greece does not really want to leave the euro, and that David Cameron, Britain’s prime minister, does not want his country to exit the EU. When push comes to shove, Greece will do a deal (see article) and Mr Cameron will persuade British voters to stay in the EU in his planned referendum. But there are risks that neither outcome will turn out as planned. In both cases, political leaders are making a risky bet.
The financial analogy is with writing (selling) an option. In the markets, an option is the right to buy (a call) or sell (a put) an asset at a given price; say shares of Apple at $130. In return for granting the buyer of the option this right, the writer...Continue reading
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Marjorie Deane internships
Applications are invited for The Economist’s 2015 Marjorie Deane internships. Financed by the Marjorie Deane Financial Journalism Foundation, the awards are designed to provide work experience for a promising journalist or would-be journalist, who will spend three months at The Economist writing about economics and finance. Applicants are asked to write a covering letter and an article of no more than 500 words that they think would be suitable for publication in the Finance and economics section. Applications should be sent to deaneintern@economist.com by July 3rd. For more information, please visit http://ift.tt/1gKuRFS.
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Homeowning Hamlets
IN A world of fully rational human beings, people would all be constantly checking the financial markets for profitable opportunities. But often they ignore a chance to save money even when it is right under their noses.
That conclusion is clear from a new study of the Danish mortgage market.* Danish homeowners tend to use fixed-rate mortgages, which they can refinance at any time without penalty. This refinancing can occur even when borrowers are in negative equity (meaning that they owe more than their house is worth) or when their creditworthiness has deteriorated; restrictions only apply when the homeowner tries to increase the size of the loan.
As rates on long-term mortgages fell from more than 7% to around 4% in the aftermath of the financial crisis, some Danes were quick to refinance loans taken out at higher interest rates. The academics dub these people “levelheads”—the kind of rational agents beloved by economic models. But a second group, nicknamed “woodheads”, were slow to refinance, either because they were not paying attention or because of inertia (they could not...Continue reading
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Feeling valued
THERE was a time when virtually all the ills of the world economy were blamed on the yuan. Critics charged that China’s intervention to suppress its currency had led to anaemic imports from Europe and America, to a savings glut that flooded America with cheap credit and even to the global financial crisis, since the cheap credit enabled irresponsible lending. The allegations were exaggerations. But it was evident that China had held its exchange rate down, boosting its companies at the expense of others. So it was a notable shift when the International Monetary Fund declared this week that the yuan was “no longer undervalued”.
Not everyone agrees. Jack Lew, America’s treasury secretary, was quick to say that he still sees the yuan as undervalued. With China in their sights, American senators passed a bill earlier in May that could lead to sanctions against foreign countries deemed to manipulate their currencies. The IMF’s previous assessment that the yuan was too cheap had lent a veneer of intellectual credibility to such drives. Its new language strips that away.
The change was a long time in coming. The IMF had...Continue reading
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A goring concern
THE slowdown in China’s property market has been cruel to makers of wooden flooring. After double-digit growth for much of the past decade, sales have slumped. Kemian Wood Industry, which used to boast of the quality of its composite floorboards, took radical steps to deal with the downturn. It switched its focus to online gaming and changed its name. After its rechristening as Zeus Entertainment in early March, its share price doubled in short order. This past week, though, its transition plan hit a snag. CCTV, the state broadcaster, accused it of being one of a series of companies that are “fabricating themes and telling stories” to inflate their share prices.
Zeus Entertainment denies the allegations. But the wider trend is clear. At least 80 listed Chinese firms changed names in the first five months of this year. A hotel group rebranded itself as a high-speed rail company, a fireworks maker as a peer-to-peer lender and a ceramics specialist as a clean-energy group. Their reinventions as high-tech companies appear to have less to do with the gradual rebalancing of China’s economy than with the mania sweeping its stockmarket.
The...Continue reading
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The start of the rebellion?
THORSTEIN VEBLEN, an economist who dabbled in sociology, reckoned that the best-off members of a community established the standards that everyone else followed. Less-well-to-do individuals, he reckoned, tried to emulate the well-off and signal their worth through things like "conspicuous consumption" or "conspicuous leisure".
In Veblen's day, leisure was a badge of honour. But as we have argued in the past, these days work is rather modish. Hanging around at home is not seen as a sign of success, as it was for Veblen, but a sign of uselessness. Devising whizzy computer code, or solving complex financial problems, now has social status. Such work is also paid really well. All this means that over time, working hard has become cool. The share of college-educated American men regularly working more than 50 hours a week rose from 24% in 1979 to 28% in 2006, but fell for high-school dropouts. Highly educated people take less leisure time than they did fifty years ago.
All this suggests that as...Continue reading
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Wednesday, 27 May 2015
A bit of a pickle
IN 2002 Caesar Barber, an obese man, sued McDonald’s and other fast-food firms for making him fat. Their crime, Mr Barber argued, was to withhold nutritional information from their customers. “They never explained to me what I was eating,” he said at the time.
Mr Barber’s case was dismissed. But in response 26 American states adopted “Commonsense Consumption Acts”, commonly known as “cheeseburger bills”, to protect fast-food firms from such lawsuits. By making it clear that the weak-willed could not blame fast-food companies for their girth, the argument went, businesses would not just be protected from frivolous lawsuits. Such laws would also spur people to take more responsibility for what they ate.
A new paper, from two economists at Vanderbilt University, looks at the impact of the new laws.* Since different states adopted cheeseburger bills at different times, disentangling their impact from other factors (such as changing tastes or other regulations) is straightforward.
Using data from 2000 to 2012, the authors find that cheeseburger bills did...Continue reading
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Tuesday, 26 May 2015
Finding equations to explain the world
JOHN NASH may be best known for being portrayed by Russell Crowe in the biopic “A Beautiful Mind”, but his essential and lasting contribution is in the world of economics. In 1994 he shared the Nobel prize in the field with two other scholars for work in “game theory”, which helps individuals and firms understand the way their own decisions affect the decisions of others (see article).
Yet until his untimely death on May 23rd, aged 86, Mr Nash was always first and foremost a mathematician. When he and his wife were killed in a car crash in New Jersey, they were on their way home from the airport after a trip to Norway, where days earlier he had picked up the Abel prize, one of the field’s most illustrious, for advances in the theory of “non-linear partial differential equations” (he shared it with Louis Nirenberg of New York University).
In pure maths, where Mr Nash turned his attention after his game-theory work in the early 1950s, such equations are used to analyse abstract geometric objects, such as “submanifolds of...Continue reading
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A crazy casino
CHINA'S stockmarket has often been called a casino, with share prices bearing little connection to underlying economic conditions. But while the market has strayed from growth trends in the past, its divergence over the past few months has reached new extremes. Economic growth in the first quarter fell to 7%, the slowest annual figure in six years, but stocks have more than doubled in value since the middle of last year. A shift to monetary easing and fiscal stimulus—and expectations of more of both—help explain why the rally began. But the longer it has continued, the more it has looked like a classic case of irrational exuberance.
Is the Chinese...Continue reading
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Crunch time for Athens
GREECE approaches a real deadline with creditors on June 5th, America's economy shakes and China's stock market wobbles
Sunday, 24 May 2015
Nash's Nobel prize
The games economists play | Oct 15th 1994
Game theory is now part of almost every economist's tool-kit, as this week's Nobel economics prize recognises
IT SOUNDS like a sports fan's dream. In Stockholm on October 11th, three men shared a $1m prize for their skill at analysing games. They are not television pundits, or armchair critics of Manchester United ot the Miami Dolphins, but economicsts. Two americans, John Harsanyi and John Nash, and a German, Reinhard Selten, have won this year's Nobel prize for economics for their studies of "game theory".
Game theory may sound trivial. It is not. In the past 20 years or so it has revolutionised the economics of industrial organisation and has influenced many other branches of the subject, notably the theories of monetary policy and international trande. These dats, no economics students can hope to graduate without knowing the rudiments of it.
Odd though it may seem, until game theory came along most economists assumed tyhat firms could ignore the effects of their behaviour on the actions of others. That is fine when markets are perfectly...Continue reading
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Friday, 22 May 2015
Financial crime, Ukraine's economic mess and "basic income" policies
THIS week's print edition has an array of economics articles that may be of interest. The following have particularly caught our eye:
Why America's approach to punishing financial crime is muddled, lenient and self-defeating (Leaders)
Why the West should do much more to help Ukraine's economy (Leaders)
And don't forget to take a glance at this week's Free Exchange column, which looks at why introducing a "basic income" for all is unaffordable.
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Thursday, 21 May 2015
A faulty gauge
EXPORTS from north-east Asia have long been a good gauge of the health of the world economy. The region, which knits together Japan’s high-tech wizardry, Korean and Taiwanese expertise in electronics, and China’s prowess in assembly, produces nearly a quarter of all goods shipped around the world. This juggernaut now appears to be slowing. South Korean exports fell by 8.1% in April from the same month a year earlier, the worst figure in two years. China’s were down by 6.4% year on year. Taiwanese and Japanese exports are limping along as well. The weak figures seem to point to a renewed funk for the world economy. In fact, Asian exports are simply not the reliable barometer of global demand they once were.
First, there is the problem of currency swings. The bad showing for Asia is made worse by the convention of reporting data in dollar terms. America buys only about 15% of Asian exports, but when the dollar is as strong as it has been, the value of exports to other countries appears to shrink. In other currencies, or in volume terms, shipments have been more robust. Frederic Neumann of HSBC, a bank, notes that Europe’s imports...Continue reading
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America the not so brave
CRACKING down on tax evasion “has been a core piece of President Obama’s agenda” since before he took office, according to a spokesman. His administration’s campaign to that end has been a “groundbreaking” success, according to the Department of Justice, the agency that has led it. Indeed, the DoJ considers it nothing short of “historic”.
There is some truth in all this. In 2010 Congress knocked a hole in the once-impregnable secrecy of Swiss banks by passing the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). It forces financial firms around the world to disclose their American clients or face penalties. Swiss banks have paid billions in fines for helping Americans evade tax; Wegelin, the country’s oldest private bank, had to close its doors in 2013 after pleading guilty to conspiracy to evade taxes. A dozen big Swiss banks are still under investigation, and 100-odd smaller ones have joined a programme that will let them avoid indictment by coming clean and paying fines.
But the American government has been nowhere near as energetic and effective as it claims. It has been slow to chase...Continue reading
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Waste not, harm not
BLUNDERS in economic policymaking abound, but among the worst are energy subsidies. They stoke waste, squeeze other spending, enrich middlemen and help the comfortably-off more than the poor, who use little energy.
Include the cost of pollution and the bill is even higher. A new IMF working paper puts it at a stonking $5.3 trillion, or 6% of global GDP—more than all government spending on health care. The+ biggest subsidies are in the poorest countries (where they can reach 18% of GDP) and the lion’s share goes to coal, the dirtiest fuel, which no country taxes properly. By contrast, renewable energy subsidies (mostly in the rich world and not covered in the IMF paper) amount to a mere $120 billion, and would vanish if fossil fuels were taxed fully. The biggest subsidiser of fossil fuels is China at $2.3 trillion, followed by America ($700 billion), Russia ($335 billion), India ($277 billion) and Japan ($157 billion).
Big numbers bring big headlines. In this case, they also introduce much greater margins for error. The common and strict definition of subsidies is “pre-tax”: directly intervening to keep a price...Continue reading
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Unsettling settlements
THE scene was familiar: regulators meting out vast penalties to banks, scathing statements about gross misconduct, yet no individuals charged with any crimes and some confusion as to what exactly the banks were admitting to and what effect that would have. On May 20th a consortium of American and British government agencies announced settlements with six international banks regarding claims that they had manipulated currency markets. The six—Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and UBS—agreed to pay $5.6 billion in penalties. All but Bank of America also admitted to crimes, although the significance of that is unclear.
The settlement is the culmination of a long investigation into perhaps 20 employees of the banks, who referred to themselves as the “cartel”. Between 2007 and 2013 they used coded communication in an online chat room to help one another make money, especially by rigging the two daily “fixes” of the exchange rate between the dollar and the euro, violating rules on market manipulation and collusion. As one of them wrote in a chat session, “If you aint [sic] cheating,...Continue reading
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A cosmetic approach
IN THEORY, all 5,400 listed firms on America’s equity markets are always for sale. In reality, bids rarely come out of the blue. That may explain why a notice posted on May 14th on the website of America’s main stockmarket regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), of a ludicrously high bid for Avon Products, a beleaguered door-to-door cosmetics company, prompted investors to buy first and ask questions later.
By the time the soaring share price had forced three trading halts on the New York Stock Exchange, those who had bothered to read the relevant filings closely were ready for Avon’s shares to plunge, as they duly did. The bidder, whose announcement the SEC posted automatically, claimed to be incorporated in the British Indian Ocean Territory, home to more long-range bombers than corporate raiders. Its name, PTG, was a play on TPG, a big private-equity firm.
Eventually, Avon announced that it had not heard from any would-be buyer, and that it was not even sure PTG existed. (Curiously, after the hoax was exposed, Avon’s share price came to rest above its...Continue reading
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War-torn reform
EVEN before the Russian invasion of the east of the country last year, the task of reforming Ukraine’s economy was daunting. Its people are poorer than they were when the Soviet Union ended (see chart 1). Corruption pervades Ukrainian life. The traffic police demand bribes at random and newspapers carry advertisements for companies that will forge exam papers for you. To this set of chronic problems, the war has added acute ones: the destruction of much of the country’s industrial base, spooked investors and a balance-of-payments crisis. If Ukraine is to build a stable economy, it must fix the public finances, shake up the all-important gas sector and stamp down on corruption against the backdrop of an unresolved conflict.
Ukraine’s public debt is around 100% of GDP, much of it denominated in foreign currency. Already unsustainable, its debt burden is on an upward path: in the first quarter of 2015, Ukrainian GDP fell by...Continue reading
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Reversal of fortune
FOR a while, it seemed that two market trends were inexorable. The euro was falling towards parity with the dollar and yields on German ten-year government bonds were on their way to zero. Both reversed in April (see chart).
The shift was so dramatic that it seems likely investors were caught napping. Dhaval Joshi of BCA, a research group, says that the European Central Bank’s bond-buying created a degree of “groupthink” among investors, with everyone convinced that yields were headed lower. When the trend changed, there was a stampede for the exits.
In the currency markets, investors were bullish on the dollar at the start of the year in the belief that the American economy was strengthening and that the Federal Reserve would push up interest rates, perhaps as soon as June. But the economic data have been disappointing: revisions may show that GDP declined in the first quarter and the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model suggests the second quarter is only on target for annualised growth of 0.7%. Meanwhile, economic data in the euro zone were generally better than expected—hence a pattern of selling the dollar and buying...Continue reading
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Basically unaffordable
WITH cash-strapped governments around the world looking for ways to cut welfare bills and reduce deficits, it might seem an odd time to consider a generous new universal benefit. Yet the basic income—a guaranteed government payment to all citizens, whatever their private wealth—is creeping onto the policy agenda. The Swiss will soon vote on a proposal for a basic income of 2,500 francs ($2,700) per month, following the success of a national petition. Amid turmoil in Greece, Yanis Varoufakis, its finance minister, has hinted that he is a fan. Britain’s Green Party has adopted a version of the policy. Turning it into a substitute for all welfare payments would be prohibitively expensive. But it might work as one element of the safety net.
The idea has a long intellectual heritage. In 1797 Thomas Paine, one of America’s founders, penned a pamphlet arguing that every person is entitled to share in the returns on the common property of humanity: the earth’s land and natural resources (today, you might include radio spectrum or the profits of central banks). Paine suggested paying...Continue reading
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Justice, interrupted
THE scene was familiar: regulators meting out vast penalties to banks, scathing statements about gross misconduct, yet no individuals charged with any crimes and some confusion as to what exactly the banks were admitting to and what effect that would have. On May 20th a consortium of American and British government agencies announced settlements with six international banks regarding claims that they had manipulated currency markets. The six—Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), and UBS—agreed to pay $5.6 billion in penalties. All but UBS also admitted criminal behaviour, although the significance of that is unclear.
The settlement was the culmination of a long investigation into the actions of perhaps 20 employees of the six banks, who referred to themselves as the “cartel”. Between 2007 and 2013 they used coded communication in an online chat room to help one another make money, especially by rigging the two daily “fixes” of the exchange rate between the dollar and the euro, violating rules on market manipulation and collusion. As one of them wrote in a chat session, “If...Continue reading
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Wednesday, 20 May 2015
What is austerity?
LOTS of people debate and campaign against austerity, but what exactly is it? Dictionary definitions vary. Merriam-Webster defines it as
a situation in which there is not much money and it is spent only on things that are necessary
or
enforced or extreme economy
An austere individual would be someone who lives within their budget, that is, spends less than their annual income. Anyone who has lived through a round of cost-cutting at a company will know it usually involves absolute reductions in spending; a clampdown on expenses (taxis, overseas trips) and staff redundancies.
But that is not what economists tend to mean when they talk about austerity. A government can impose an austerity programme and still spend far more than it receives in the form of taxes; indeed the British coalition government had a deficit of 9.3% of GDP in the first year of austerity, a very high figure by peacetime standards. But because this was less than the 11% of GDP in the year before, it counts as austerity.
What economists generally mean by austerity is a reduction in the "structural deficit" of the government, that is, ignoring the effects of the economic cycle. The automatic stabilisers of the economy...Continue reading
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Tuesday, 19 May 2015
What goes down, must come up
FOR the first time since 1960, the price of British goods and services has fallen over the course of a year—but only just. Prices fell by 0.1% in the year to April 2015, having been unchanged in the year to March. The change is tiny and its cause is not a concern. But a threshold has been breached: Britain is now in deflation.
Price rises have been smothered by falling oil prices. A year ago, a barrel of the black stuff cost $103; today, $65. That has made it 12% cheaper for Britons to fill their cars with fuel. Food is also 3% cheaper than in April 2014, in part due to an ongoing price war between supermarkets. And the pound is on the rise; sterling is up 17% against the euro in the past year, making imports from Continental Europe, Britain's biggest trading partner, cheaper.
But these...Continue reading
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Hurrying up
GREECE'S looming debt payments, America's deadline for prosecuting white collar financial crimes and Europe's improving economy
Sunday, 17 May 2015
Aust dollar falls after US data
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Who's funnelling foreigners into Aussie homes?
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Who's funnelling foreigners into Aussie homes?
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The biggest risk in resource stocks
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Forrest emerges as Atlas backer
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Medcraft worried about Sydney, Melbourne property markets
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NZ's Key unveils new property tax
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Slow start expected for Aust market
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Govt level with Labor in new poll
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Slow start expected for Aust market
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Govt level with Labor in new poll
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Rio worries what signal ore inquiry sends
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Pacific Ocean big enough for China, US: Xi
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Rio worries what signal ore inquiry sends
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Rio worries what signal ore inquiry sends
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Pacific Ocean big enough for China, US: Xi
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Greece warns of deadline shortfall
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Aldi pivot trouble for Woolworths
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Greece warns of deadline shortfall
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Aldi pivot trouble for Woolworths
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BHP, Exxon lose another month to Bass Strait oil strike
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BHP, Exxon lose another month to Bass Strait oil strike
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RPM announces the release of HAULSIM 1.3 delivering increased benefits to users
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Friday, 15 May 2015
US industrial output falls for fifth month
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US consumer confidence sinks in May
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US industrial output falls for fifth month
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European stocks dip on Greece focus
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European stocks dip on Greece focus
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Scotland won't get full fiscal autonomy
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Scotland won't get full fiscal autonomy
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Analysts slash US growth forecasts
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Analysts slash US growth forecasts
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Weekend Economist: Short-circuiting the dollar's surge
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Weekend Economist: Short-circuiting the dollar's surge
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Webster’s trickle turns to $500m flood
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Employees lose $25bn to tax creep
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Webster’s trickle turns to $500m flood
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Employees lose $25bn to tax creep
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Wall Street stocks open stronger
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Wall Street stocks open stronger
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Google's self-driving cars to hit the road
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Google's self-driving cars to hit the road
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Tax-free debt, Chinese farm subsidies and Italy's economic schizophrenia
THIS week's print edition has an array of economics articles that may be of interest. The following have particularly caught our eye:
Why tax-free debt is a bad idea (Leaders)
Cuba's poor but picturesque economy (Americas)
Why China's drive for agricultural self-sufficiency is coming at an increasing cost (China)
A look at Italy's economic schizophrenia (Finance)
And don't forget to take a glance at this week's Continue reading
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Russian economy contracts 1.9% in Q1
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China needs more action on growth: Premier
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UK's Cameron seeks to reassure Scotland
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Russian economy contracts 1.9% in Q1
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China needs more action on growth: Premier
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UK's Cameron seeks to reassure Scotland
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China to extend asset-backed securities program
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China to extend asset-backed securities program
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Hong Kong growth slows in Q1
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China steps up defence of steel industry
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Hong Kong growth slows in Q1
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China steps up defence of steel industry
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Worker dies at Newcrest mine
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Worker dies at Newcrest mine
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A chin-stroker
“IT IS CLEAR that [in elections] voters respond much more to short-term growth than to long-term growth”. In other words, an incumbent government is very likely to be re-elected if in recent months the economy has been improving. Paul Krugman, who is spending some time at Oxford University, mused on this finding (which has broad support in the political-science literature) at a lecture yesterday. Mr Krugman delivered a familiar (and not terribly well-prepared) speech on the perils of British austerity.
Mr Krugman made an interesting, if somewhat conspiratorial, point. He argued that the British government’s economic policy from 2010-12 was completely destructive. Indeed, as the chart shows, the British economy is still well below potential. He then pointed out that things started to get better around 2013—thanks in no small part to an easing of austerity. Growth only really got going at the end of 2014—as the election loomed.
Mr Krugman thus implied that the British government—deliberately? mistakenly?—had engineered measly growth at the beginning of its term, thus making it easier for the economy to roar back as the election approached. That would seem to ascribe to the coalition a rather unrealistic level of strategic wizardry and general deviousness. Though interesting, it may say...Continue reading
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Hong Kong stocks end 1.96% stronger
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Hong Kong stocks end 1.96% stronger
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European stocks open stronger
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European stocks open stronger
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Turnbull staffer quits after charges
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Aust dollar falls on $US strength
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Vocus confirms Amcom sale
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Vocus confirms Amcom sale
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Vocus confirms Amcom sale
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WA iron ore price forecast 'conservative'
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Kohler Quizzes: Bulletproof
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Three reasons to worry about rampant house prices
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The Week Ahead
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Picks of the Week
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Thursday, 14 May 2015
The ins and outs
ECONOMISTS have long recognised that there is an association between inequality and development. Unequal incomes can impair growth if those with low incomes suffer poor health and low productivity as a result. But in a forthcoming paper* in the Journal of Political Economy, three economists look at the question in a new light. What may matter most for development, they argue, is not inequality in itself, but economic differences between different ethnic groups.
The authors pinpoint the location of 2,129 ethnic and 7,581 linguistic groups in 173 countries. Then, to estimate their wealth, they use data on night-time light intensity from satellites. (If a given area has more lights, it is likely to be richer.) That allows them to produce an “ethnic Gini index”, a measure of inequality between different ethnic groups within a country. They find that sub-Saharan Africa and East and South Asia are the most ethnically unequal regions, thanks to small but prosperous groups such as Arabs in west Africa. Western Europe, by contrast, is the most ethnically equal.
The authors...Continue reading
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Railing against bailing
DURING a financial panic, said Walter Bagehot, a former editor of The Economist, a central bank should help the deserving and let the reckless go under. Bagehot reckoned that the monetary guardians should follow four rules: lend freely, but only to solvent firms, against good collateral and at high rates. Many American politicians complain that the Federal Reserve is all too happy to lend, but that it ignores Bagehot’s other dictums. On May 13th two senators of very different hues—Elizabeth Warren, a darling of the left, and David Vitter, a southern conservative—joined forces to introduce a bill that would restrict the Fed’s ability to lend during the next financial panic. Does that make sense?
Emergency lending under Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act was one of the most controversial policy responses to the financial crisis. In a letter to Janet Yellen, the chair of the Fed, Ms Warren and Mr Vitter say that from 2007 to 2009 the Fed provided over $13 trillion to support financial institutions. The loans were cheap. A study from 2013 by the Levy Institute, a nonpartisan think-tank, found that many of them were “below or at the market rates” (sometimes less than 1%). Many of the banks that benefited were insolvent at the time. And much of the $13 trillion went to just three banks (Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley),...Continue reading
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A tale of two economies
AFTER three years of recession, Italy’s economy actually grew in the first three months of the year, by 0.3% compared with the previous quarter. It is forecast to grow by 0.7% over the year as a whole, boosted by a weak euro, cheap oil, the European Central Bank’s bond-buying programme and a reform-minded government. That looks good compared with the country’s grim recent record: between 2001 and 2013 GDP shrank by 0.2%.
National economic data always mask regional differences. In Italy, however, they disguise a divide that is deeper than normal (see charts). The country is, in effect, made up of two economies. Take that 2001-13 stagnation. In that period northern and central Italy grew by a slightly less miserable 2%. The economy of the south, meanwhile, atrophied by 7%.
This is partly because the south grew more slowly than the north before the financial crisis. But the main source of the divergence has been the south’s disastrous performance since then: its economy contracted almost twice as fast as the north’s in 2008-13—by 13% compared with 7%. The mezzogiorno—eight southern regions...Continue reading
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Like a shag on a rock
BANKS in Australia, like the rest of the country perhaps, have a certain upside-down quality to them. Their share prices broke free from the gravitational pull that dragged down their international rivals’ during the financial crisis. In recent years they have soared as others have sagged (see chart). Now that big banks in other rich countries are regaining their poise, it is the turn of Australia’s to slide. This topsy-turviness may yet continue given the worsening outlook Down Under.
Serving a buoyant domestic economy with none-too-fierce competition, and unburdened by flailing investment-banking arms, Australia’s big four lenders—Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank (NAB), ANZ and Westpac—used to delight shareholders with bumper dividends. But concerns over their balance-sheets and exposure to Australia’s frothy housing market have caused their shares to dip by 10%-16% in the past month. Annual results released in recent weeks lacked the ebullience of past years, with lending margins slipping and costs ticking up.
Investors fear that the exceptional circumstances underpinning the vibrant returns of recent...Continue reading
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Don’t write off write-offs
WHEN big companies announce write-offs, they tend not to do things by halves. Back in 2008 AIG, an insurance group rescued by the American government, reported an annual loss of $99 billion, with almost $62 billion of that occurring in a single quarter. In 2001 JDS Uniphase, an optical-equipment maker, chalked up a deficit of $56 billion.
Such losses are so big they can seem almost unreal. That can serve a dual purpose. First, the deficit can be dismissed as the product of “mere accounting”, the result of pedantic number-crunching. Assets have been written down in value, but that is not the same as a cash loss. Second, when new managers are appointed, a huge loss can be blamed on the previous regime. All the bad news can be revealed at once, a phenomenon known as “kitchen-sinking”. From that point on, the only direction for profits must be up.
Analysts tend to be very supportive of such arguments. They typically dismiss big write-offs, even when they failed to forecast them. They argue that it makes more sense to focus on operating profits, which reflect the health of the underlying business. These, it is said, are a better guide to the future direction of the firm.
Disrupters disrupted
PARTYING like it’s 1999 might be unwise, but venture capitalists have reason to open a few bottles of Dom Pérignon. In the first three months of the year American VC funds invested $13.4 billion, continuing their best run since early 2000, before the dotcom bubble burst (see chart). The comeback has fuelled an already heated debate about whether the technology sector is foaming again. It has also attracted competition from a host of alternative forms of financing. Could VC, which has fostered so many disruptive companies, itself be disrupted?
The VC industry has not changed much since it emerged in America in the late 1950s. Most VC partnerships are as low-tech as it gets. They are best understood as brotherhoods (only 6% of partners are female) that invest money in high-risk ventures. Ideally, their cash comes with two even scarcer resources: advice in the form of experienced board members and access to VC firms’...Continue reading
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Correction
In last week’s Buttonwood, we quoted Richard Thaler as saying that behavioural economics theories “do not make easily falsifiable predictions, and the data are relatively scarce”. In fact, the quote referred to macroeconomists’ theories. Sorry.
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A nimble mind
THERE is a popular quip (popular in some circles, anyway) that the International Monetary Fund’s acronym stands for “It’s Mostly Fiscal”. In the 1990s it was taken as a given that the Fund would advocate for tighter fiscal policy, whatever an economy's problems might be. To some of those on the receiving end of recent IMF interventions, Olivier Blanchard, who will reportedly retire from his position as the chief economist of the Fund, is the living embodiment of that obstinate approach. Yet in his time at the IMF Mr Blanchard oversaw the production of a stream of thought-provoking research, some of which challenged the conventional economic orthodoxy the Fund is often seen as representing. His work interrogated the world's economic performance before and through the financial crisis, then helped led the academic and policy debate on matters of the highest macroeconomic importance. The Fund will miss him; so, too, will the Fund's supplicant countries.
Mr Blanchard assumed his role at the IMF in September 2008. He had no honeymoon period to enjoy. That month, Lehman Brothers, a giant investment bank, collapsed and threatened to take the...Continue reading
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Miraculous conversion
ALMOST everyone agrees: before the financial crisis, banks were hooked on debt. In 2007, a year before its failure, Lehman Brothers held equity (the money shareholders put into the business) worth just 3.3% of its balance-sheet; virtually all the rest was financed by borrowing. Leverage is an elixir that makes profits soar when times are good, but magnifies losses when the economy sours. Since the crisis, regulators have cranked up their supervision of banks and ordered them to hold more equity and less debt. A new proposal would tweak this model, making banks safer using the discipline of the market rather than the heavy hand of the state.
Banks like debt for several reasons. First, it is cheap compared to equity: banks’ creditors charge relatively little because they know they are likely to be bailed out if the bank fails. Tax breaks for interest payments make debt cheaper still (see this week’s briefing). And unlike equity, issuing it does not entail any dilution of control. But regulators prefer equity, which can absorb losses in downturns and thus ward off bail-outs.
A new breed of hybrid instruments is billed as the best of both...Continue reading
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Some good news for development economists
WE'VE been pointed towards this interesting chart, from a new paper by two economists at the Peterson Institute, a think-tank. It shows that development economists have much to be cheerful about. The chart shows the estimated global per-capita income distribution at three years: 2003, 2013 and 2035. From 2003 to 2013, global income inequality fell. There were fewer people bunched at extreme levels of poverty. The Gini coefficient of global inequality fell from 69 in 2003 to 65 in 2013. And median income rose from about $1,000 to $2,000 in just ten years.
The authors of the paper, Thomas Hellebrandt and Paolo Mauro, think that the next twenty years will be even better, largely thanks to rapid growth in emerging-market economies. Hundreds of millions will be lifted out of abject poverty due to strong growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. And as China's economy continues to expand, consumption patterns of people living there...Continue reading
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Wednesday, 13 May 2015
How will we cope with another downturn?
HOW strong is the American economy? Forecasters are pretty confident; the average prediction is for 2.6% GDP growth this year and for 2.8% next. But actual growth was just an annualised 0.2% in the first quarter and, after disappointing retail sales numbers for April, the Atlanta Fed's GDPnow model, which was pretty accurate about Q1, is going for just 0.7% annualised in Q2. Citigroup's economic surprise index (which shows whether data have been better or worse than forecasts) has been relentlessly negative since the start of the year.
Does this mean the US is heading towards recession? Not necessarily. Whether or not you call it "secular stagnation", the developed economies are in an era where growth seems to be stuttering; last year's first quarter dip in GDP was a case in point. However, as HSBC points out, it is now six years since the US economy bottomed - a reasonably long cycle by pre-1980 standards. Suppose that developed economies did slip back into recession. What could the authorities...Continue reading
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Uncertain times
WITH inflation at 0%, setting interest rates at the Bank of England may at first look like an easy job. Launching its latest Inflation Report today, Mark Carney, the bank's governor, confirmed that inflation should be back on target at 2% by 2017. This suggests market expectations of a first rate rise in the middle of 2016 are roughly right. Yet two important messages in the report suggest that setting interest rates is a much harder task for the bank than it may first appear. One area of uncertainty is the scale and impact of the budget cuts that the new Conservative government, elected on May 7th, seeks to implement. The other is the bank's expectation that in the long run, rates will be lower than before the crisis as a result of a long-run stagnation in demand. The size and scale of the responses needed to guard against these risks are uncertain.
Top of the list of challenges facing the bank, according to Mr Carney, is responding to fiscal policy. To meet its inflation target, the bank has to respond to cuts in government spending which would weaken demand, lower growth and...Continue reading
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A slower slowdown
TODAY'S economic data releases from China were a mixed bag. First, the bad news. It has been nearly half a year since China started easing its monetary policy, and there is still little sign of a rebound in growth. For anyone thinking that the economy would surge back to full throttle, the sluggish response to the stimulus is disappointing. There was, though, also a glimmer of good news. The downturn appears to be abating. Even the beleaguered property market appears to be finding its feet. This should assuage fears that the slowdown might spiral out of control and turn into a rout.
The most worrying figure in today's data releases was fixed-asset investment, which has long been a barometer for Chinese growth. Growth of this key indicator slowed sharply to 12% year-on-year, down from 13.5% in March. That largely stemmed from a sudden slowdown in property investment, growth in which slowed to 6% year-on-year, less than half the average pace of 14% in 2014. The government cushioned the shortfall to a certain extent with infrastructure investment. Spending on roads, railways and sewage systems, to name a few targets, increased 20.3%, about the...Continue reading
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Tuesday, 12 May 2015
Selling in May
WHEN both bonds and equities sell off, something interesting is going on. At the time of writing, the DAX in Frankfurt is down more than 2% and the Nasdaq and S&P 500 off around 1%. Meanwhile the 10-year Treasury bond yield is around 2.3% and the equivalent German yield is 0.68%; recently the latter seemed to be heading for zero. It can't be that economic conditions are deteriorating; that would be good for bonds. And it can't be because conditions are improving; that would normally be good for equities. An unexpected hike in interest rates by the Federal Reserve might explain a dual shift but the last Fed statement hardly suggested the US central bank was in a hurry.
The alternative explanations get quite convoluted, but fairly represent the complex world in which financial traders use a combination of leverage, hedges and diversified positions. When a lot of traders are making the same bet, this drives prices in a certain direction but if the bet turns sour, then prices fall just as fast. So the 2015 consensus bet seems to have been long dollar, short euro, long core European government bonds, long eurozone equities and long Chinese equities. All those bets turned sour in short order. That makes it hard to say which individual trading position was the most important....Continue reading
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Monday, 11 May 2015
Of Hercules and Keynes
THE repayment schedule for the Greek government’s massive debt is entering an unforgiving phase. The IMF expects €750m on May 12th. This is only the start of a summer of herculean labours: Greece will need to find an additional €3 billion each for the IMF and the European Central Bank by the end of August. To do so, it will need those two, along with other euro-zone governments, to disburse the last slice of the bail-out they granted it in 2012. Yet Greece and its creditors cannot agree on conditions for the loan. A meeting of euro-zone finance ministers on May 11th in Brussels was not expected to make much headway.
The Greek government, led by Syriza, an anti-austerity party, has encouraged its creditors by sidelining the combative finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis. Instead, Euclid Tsakalotos, a deputy foreign minister, is now negotiating on Greece’s behalf. But while their bearing may be different, their economic outlook and intellectual roots are exactly the same.
Syriza’s economics ministers are not ex-bankers or technocrats, as in many European countries, but academics. Before joining the cabinet, several, including Messrs Tsakalotos and Varoufakis, were economics professors. Mr Varoufakis taught at the University of Athens, where he set up a PhD program "committed to portraying economics as an irresolvable contest of ideas”. It embraced...Continue reading
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Saturday, 9 May 2015
Indonesia's economy, the fintech revolution and why grannies aren't responsible for inflation in Japan
THIS week's print edition has an array of economics articles that may be of interest. The following have particularly caught our eye:
Indonesia's economy: Spicing up growth (Finance)
Financial services: The fintech revolution (Leaders)
The economics of landlocked countries: Interiors (Americas)
Britain's economy after the election: The climb to come (Britain)
And don't forget to take a glance at this week's Free Exchange column, which looks at why the relationship between ageing and...Continue reading
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Friday, 8 May 2015
An incorrect dial?
WITH today's good news from the Labour Department's jobs report, markets are pondering when the Federal Reserve’s first rate hike might take place. The Fed has said that it will begin raising short-term interest rates once the economy is starting to reach full employment and inflation no more than 2%. With inflation running below target, the labour market is likely to factor heavily in the Fed’s decision.
One key indicator to assess the health of this is America's unemployment rate. But this may be less useful now than it once was. Although the number of jobless Americans has fallen, the share of the working-age population in the labour force has also dropped considerably, from 66% before the financial crisis to less than 63% now. Temporary factors have affected the statistics, but much of the change has been driven by structural factors, such as retirement of the baby-boomer generation and rising college enrollment. These developments may explain why, as the unemployment rate has fallen from 10% in 2009 to 5.4% today, the Fed’s target...Continue reading
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The winning formula?
SINCE the financial crisis began in 2007-08, developed world governments of both left and right have struggled to get re-elected (with the striking exception of Angela Merkel). So the Conservative victory in Britain is a double surprise. Not only did it confound the pre-election opinion polls, it came after five years in which the government failed to deliver an increase in the average standard of living.
How did they manage it and does Britain offer lessons and parallels for other countries? Can austerity be a vote-winning strategy? The first thing to note is that the Conservatives' national share of barely shifted; a small rise to 37% from 36% last time. The junior party in the coalition, the Liberal Democrats, lost two-thirds of its vote share and six-sevenths of its seats. In combination, the coalition parties' vote share has dropped from 59% to 45%.
Nevertheless, one still needs to explain why the Labour party, the main opposition, managed to increase its national vote share by just two percentage points (from 29% to 31%), especially as the previous election was one of Labour's worst ever results. It is not just that Labour was almost wiped out in Scotland, it failed to win converts in England either. The collapse of the LibDems might have been expected to help Labour, some of whose voters...Continue reading
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Thursday, 7 May 2015
Soaring sterling
THE pound jumped in the foreign exchange markets as soon as the exit poll was released last night, and it consolidated its gains as the actual election results confirmed the initial news of a Tory romp. Having started the night at $1.5263 and €1.3541, the pound had jumped to $1.5521 and €1.3831 by 5.45am. Investors had clearly expected a much more muddled result, with days or weeks required to form a government. They were thus pleased both at the relatively decisive nature of the result and that a business-friendly Conservative party had been returned.
The result was also expected to give a boost to the equity market, with spread betters indicating that the FTSE 100 index would open almost 90 points, or 1.3% higher. The result was likely to be positive for the banking and energy sectors, which were expected to be hit by higher taxes and price freezes under a Labour...Continue reading
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[title] http://t.co/qImOnDfj3X
[title] http://t.co/qImOnDfj3X
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May 08, 2015 at 10:18AM
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Property investment pitfalls – and how to reduce your risk exposure http://t.co/BpBfa7hZtq
Property investment pitfalls – and how to reduce your risk exposure http://t.co/BpBfa7hZtq
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May 08, 2015 at 10:18AM
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More STEM education won't protect our jobs from robots - With automation and robotics implementation gaining pace,... http://t.co/G4fA8d2nML
More STEM education won't protect our jobs from robots - With automation and robotics implementation gaining pace,... http://t.co/G4fA8d2nML
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May 08, 2015 at 10:10AM
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Money for old folk http://t.co/jELndtdiPL
Money for old folk http://t.co/jELndtdiPL
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May 08, 2015 at 01:27AM
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The great pruning http://t.co/EWu0vkTKcj
The great pruning http://t.co/EWu0vkTKcj
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May 08, 2015 at 01:27AM
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Playing nicely http://t.co/wuAOZvLBwQ
Playing nicely http://t.co/wuAOZvLBwQ
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May 08, 2015 at 01:27AM
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Reverse speed http://t.co/XILXNJmJLw
Reverse speed http://t.co/XILXNJmJLw
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May 08, 2015 at 01:27AM
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More Kirk than Spock http://t.co/bTIXReD4k9
More Kirk than Spock http://t.co/bTIXReD4k9
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May 08, 2015 at 01:27AM
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A cautious opening http://t.co/cDPbrNcNVY
A cautious opening http://t.co/cDPbrNcNVY
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Spicing up growth http://t.co/z7uodE2BWa
Spicing up growth http://t.co/z7uodE2BWa
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Wednesday, 6 May 2015
Atlassian acquires messaging app Hall: “Mobile is not a fad, it is here to stay” http://t.co/R4tEfQEMfx
Atlassian acquires messaging app Hall: “Mobile is not a fad, it is here to stay” http://t.co/R4tEfQEMfx
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May 07, 2015 at 01:10PM
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Nathan Tinkler is back: Former high-flyer engineers reverse takeover of Orca Energy http://t.co/gaIfSoEEoE
Nathan Tinkler is back: Former high-flyer engineers reverse takeover of Orca Energy http://t.co/gaIfSoEEoE
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May 07, 2015 at 01:10PM
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Strip club hits back at Ad Standards ruling on mobile billboards: “We have the right to advertise our business lik… http://t.co/BlofEFwAgk
Strip club hits back at Ad Standards ruling on mobile billboards: “We have the right to advertise our business lik… http://t.co/BlofEFwAgk
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May 07, 2015 at 01:10PM
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Joe Hockey’s job is safe says PM; ACCC calls for mobile call and text price cut: Midday Roundup http://t.co/rvDwwR0p2m
Joe Hockey’s job is safe says PM; ACCC calls for mobile call and text price cut: Midday Roundup http://t.co/rvDwwR0p2m
— EconoSteel.com (@econosteelmelb) May 7, 2015
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May 07, 2015 at 01:10PM
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Budget 2015: Netflix tax and accelerated depreciation allowance gets the go ahead; Cash for ABS to save census http://t.co/q2B9tCQGlU
Budget 2015: Netflix tax and accelerated depreciation allowance gets the go ahead; Cash for ABS to save census http://t.co/q2B9tCQGlU
— EconoSteel.com (@econosteelmelb) May 7, 2015
from Twitter https://twitter.com/econosteelmelb
May 07, 2015 at 01:10PM
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Whoops! Google accidentally revealed it’s unveiling a new version of Android at Google I/O this year http://t.co/n24tbbdvcP
Whoops! Google accidentally revealed it’s unveiling a new version of Android at Google I/O this year http://t.co/n24tbbdvcP
— EconoSteel.com (@econosteelmelb) May 7, 2015
from Twitter https://twitter.com/econosteelmelb
May 07, 2015 at 01:10PM
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MailChimp getting a major upgrade http://t.co/0CUetT3muJ
MailChimp getting a major upgrade http://t.co/0CUetT3muJ
— EconoSteel.com (@econosteelmelb) May 7, 2015
from Twitter https://twitter.com/econosteelmelb
May 07, 2015 at 01:10PM
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Collapsed training provider fined $160,000 for luring students with fake job ads http://t.co/HE8hvxMyNF
Collapsed training provider fined $160,000 for luring students with fake job ads http://t.co/HE8hvxMyNF
— EconoSteel.com (@econosteelmelb) May 7, 2015
from Twitter https://twitter.com/econosteelmelb
May 07, 2015 at 01:10PM
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Sheryl Sandberg’s beautiful tribute to her husband David Goldberg http://t.co/VmSAD5IHHa
Sheryl Sandberg’s beautiful tribute to her husband David Goldberg http://t.co/VmSAD5IHHa
— EconoSteel.com (@econosteelmelb) May 7, 2015
from Twitter https://twitter.com/econosteelmelb
May 07, 2015 at 12:40PM
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How to know when it’s time to sell your business (and how to do it) http://t.co/a3WPItB0Sz
How to know when it’s time to sell your business (and how to do it) http://t.co/a3WPItB0Sz
— EconoSteel.com (@econosteelmelb) May 7, 2015
from Twitter https://twitter.com/econosteelmelb
May 07, 2015 at 12:40PM
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Billabong signs omni-channel deal to protect it from the “little companies” http://t.co/G4fR7NNciH
Billabong signs omni-channel deal to protect it from the “little companies” http://t.co/G4fR7NNciH
— EconoSteel.com (@econosteelmelb) May 7, 2015
from Twitter https://twitter.com/econosteelmelb
May 07, 2015 at 12:40PM
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ACCC probes HealthEngine over allegations of anti-competitive behaviour http://t.co/VYbJk2g0Id
ACCC probes HealthEngine over allegations of anti-competitive behaviour http://t.co/VYbJk2g0Id
— EconoSteel.com (@econosteelmelb) May 7, 2015
from Twitter https://twitter.com/econosteelmelb
May 07, 2015 at 11:35AM
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Why social graphs won't save us from dishonest online reviews http://t.co/atJpEbwO8i
Why social graphs won't save us from dishonest online reviews http://t.co/atJpEbwO8i
— EconoSteel.com (@econosteelmelb) May 7, 2015
from Twitter https://twitter.com/econosteelmelb
May 07, 2015 at 11:35AM
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Lack of contacts and knowledge major hurdles for refugee entrepreneurs in Australia http://t.co/SeN5TZSkqz
Lack of contacts and knowledge major hurdles for refugee entrepreneurs in Australia http://t.co/SeN5TZSkqz
— EconoSteel.com (@econosteelmelb) May 7, 2015
from Twitter https://twitter.com/econosteelmelb
May 07, 2015 at 11:35AM
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Seven tips to digitally transform your business http://t.co/OgABmP2Kah
Seven tips to digitally transform your business http://t.co/OgABmP2Kah
— EconoSteel.com (@econosteelmelb) May 7, 2015
from Twitter https://twitter.com/econosteelmelb
May 07, 2015 at 11:35AM
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Why Australia must embrace innovation - The next megatrend will need Australia to be more innovative, particularly... http://t.co/XMPQ9fXeh4
Why Australia must embrace innovation - The next megatrend will need Australia to be more innovative, particularly... http://t.co/XMPQ9fXeh4
— EconoSteel.com (@econosteelmelb) May 7, 2015
from Twitter https://twitter.com/econosteelmelb
May 07, 2015 at 10:08AM
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Where to buy steel products in Melbourne
Your One-Stop-Shop for Steel Products . We provide standard and customized steel products to fit your unique needs. Email address “ Econo ...
