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November 30, 2009

Dubai silence not golden as debt looms, UAE Conglomerates

Dubai’s state-related entities borrowed billions during the boom to buy name brand assets abroad and build iconic landmark projects at home in the hope that investors would come.

While the high-leverage model was sustainable during healthy economic times, the global financial crisis has seen property prices fall more than 50 percent in Dubai and the value of many of the emirate's assets abroad fall sharply.

“Dubai has virtually no oil. Real estate was seen as the big revenue generator and that’s just about dead. They borrowed billions. They need to tell us how they plan to service this debt," an economist in London told Maktoob Business.

via business.maktoob.com

This article only proves that my observation (in Chinese) on Dubai was right; at least I share the same opinion with cool-headed media reports.

這篇報導證明我先前對杜拜的觀察是對的，至少跟腦筋清楚的媒體報導一樣。

Filed under  //   critics   dubai   economy   test  

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November 7, 2009

Willy Lam: Rich China, Poor Peasants

The extreme imbalance of wealth distribution in China (and places likewise) could cause potential social and even political problem somewhere.

財富的極端不平均分配，將會是中國（以及其他類似地方）在社會與政治上隨時可能爆發的隱憂。

China recently announced its GDP grew by more than 7.1% in the first half of this year, putting the country on course to displace Japan as the world’s second-largest economy by year’s end. But it’s not time to break out the maotai just yet. Peasants and migrant workers, who compose more than 65% of China’s 1.3 billion people, aren’t benefiting much from this growth.

Much of it is hoarded by the central government. Last year, Beijing collected taxation and other levies of more than six trillion yuan ($878 billion), an eye-popping four trillion yuan more than five years ago. Since the turn of this century, funds flowing into the Beijing treasury have increased by around 22% a year, more than double the average 10% GDP growth for the past two decades.

via online.wsj.com

 

Filed under  //   china   economy  

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