1 China as the wild card in world economy
(Neil Gough in The New York Times) Markets around the world have been jolted by
fears that slowing growth and deflationary pressures in Europe, Japan and other
major economies could derail the United States. But the health of China, for
decades an engine of growth, has emerged as one of the most significant wild
cards in the global economy.
It is hard to be certain just exactly how
the Chinese economy is faring, given mixed signals in the data. Chinese
inflation is at its weakest levels in nearly five years. Commodity prices are
plunging. New home sales are declining. Foreign investment is contracting.
The overall economy, though, continues to
chug along at a steady, albeit more modest, pace. China’s gross domestic
product increased by 7.3 percent in the third quarter, compared with 7.5
percent in the previous quarter.
“The question or problem we are all facing
at the moment is, ‘What is right picture for the economy as a whole?’ ” said
Louis Kuijs, the chief China economist at the Royal Bank of Scotland in Hong
Kong. “It’s complicated by negative forces that show up very strongly in
industry but not in the service sector.”
Making sense of China’s economic health is
challenging because the slowdown is partly by design. The Communist leadership
has pledged to reduce China’s dependence on credit-fueled growth and investment,
to instead emphasize domestic consumption. It is a risky proposal, and leaders
have signaled a willingness to live with slower growth, provided employment
holds up and systemic risks are contained.
“We didn’t have any new recruits this
year,” Huang Xinqun, 48, a manager at a large ocean-shipping company, said last
week. “Usually when the manufacturing business is not doing so well, it would
be directly reflected on us,” he said. “We’re like a signal post on how the
economy is doing,” Mr. Huang said. “If companies don’t have that many orders
and products to transport, then we don’t have as much work.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/21/business/international/mixed-economic-signals-from-china.html?_r=0
2 Apple sells 40m iPhones in three months
(Dominic Rushe in The Guardian) Apple sold a record 39.3m iPhones in the last
three months, the company has said, helping the tech giant win its highest
revenues of the year. Entering the Christmas shopping season, its strongest
sales period of the year, Apple predicted its latest iPhones would help boost
sales by at least 10% during the crucial holiday quarter.
Overall, the company’s profit rose more
than 12% from a year ago, to $8.5bn. Total sales also rose more than 12%, to
$42.1bn. The one blemish on Apple’s quarter came from iPad sales, which slipped
13% compared to the same period last year, the third quarter in a row that
sales of the tablets have fallen.
“Our fiscal 2014 was one for the record
books, including the biggest iPhone launch ever with iPhone 6 and iPhone 6
Plus,” Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive said. Demand for the new iPhones “has
been staggering”, said Cook. “At this point we are selling everything we’ve
made.” The company ended the year with $155.2bn in cash and marketable
securities. Revenues at Apple’s retail rose 15% to $5.1bn. Apple is planning to
open 25 new stores in fiscal year 2015. Most will be outside the US.
The results were ahead of forecasts. Wall
Street had predicted that Apple would sell 38m iPhones in the three months to
the end of September, a 12% rise on the 34m mobiles sold by in the same period
last year.
3 US coalition-building – on Ebola (Khaleej
Times) After rallying dozens of nations to join the fight against ISIS
militants, President Barack Obama is back in the coalition-building business —
this time to fight the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Obama is working the
phones with world leaders, appealing to them via videoconference and publicly jawboning
with one clear message: Stopping the deadly virus at its source is the single
best way to prevent the outbreak from spreading. And that requires an infusion
of additional money and resources to the hard-hit countries of Liberia, Sierra
Leone and Guinea.
Obama is sending up to 4,000 troops to West
Africa to supply medical, logistical and training support to the region’s
overwhelmed healthcare systems. The US military also is building more than a
dozen treatment centres in Liberia with hundreds of beds. The president hoped
the commitment of US forces would spur other countries to follow its example.
But while some countries have and continue to contribute to the effort, Obama
says too many others have not, and he has been venting his frustrations with
those that he says are holding back even though they have the resources to
help.
Obama isn’t the only one spreading the
word. The European Union has stepped up efforts to raise more than $1 billion
to fight Ebola in West Africa. The president, as he works to calm the fears of
nervous Americans at home, says he’s been reaching out “directly to heads of
state and government, who, I believe, have the capacities to do more” to fight
Ebola abroad.
Obama has discussed the issue by
videoconference with the leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Italy, and
they agreed to work together on Ebola to “enlist greater support from more
countries” and coordinate their ground efforts, the White House said. Obama
also reviewed the matter with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who said late
last week that a trust fund he launched to fight Ebola has just $100,000. The
president also had a one-on-one conversation with French President Francois
Hollande.
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