That’s the headline on Page 1 of the Seattle Times today. The article reports that some residents of the Bellingham area, an easy drive from the Canadian border, are grumbling that Canadian shoppers are overcrowding the parking lots of Costco Wholesale and other box stores on the U.S. side of the [continue reading . . . ]
I think a lot about China these days. For nearly a year, a copy of the USA weekly edition of the China Daily, the official newspaper of China’s communist party, has landed on my doorstep every Friday, unbidden. It is a sample, probably related to my Wall Street Journal subscription. [continue reading . . . ]
China has become enormously important to the Pacific Northwest economy. Marple’s Letter reports that China was the primary driver behind a 41% jump in Douglas Fir log exports from the Pacific Northwest last year. It is great news for timber owners — log prices are sharply higher — but bad [continue reading . . . ]
The U.S. economy may be growing so slowly it is hard to find a pulse, but things are different in the rest of the world. The global economy continues to grow, and at a decent pace. Once people get their basic needs for food, clothing and shelter covered, they want [continue reading . . . ]
I’m still receiving a free copy of China Daily USA on Fridays, bundled with my subscription copy of The New York Times. I wrote about this earlier here. This week’s issue tells you all you need to know about the journalistic standards of the official newspaper of the People’s Republic [continue reading . . . ]
Delivered with my New York Times on May 6, what is labeled the “Seattle Inaugural Issue” of China Daily, self-described as “the national English-language newspaper of the People’s Republic of China.” The paper runs 20 pages and is relatively unremarkable, with a couple of exceptions. First, there are almost no [continue reading . . . ]
Is the dollar’s long run as the global reserve currency coming to an end? It is if the Chinese have anything to say about it. China owns the globe’s largest store of dollar-denominated assets outside the U.S. Understandably, it wants to diversify. The world needs an “international reserve currency that [continue reading . . . ]
An old joke about banking: Borrow $1,000, the bank owns you; borrow $1 million, you own the bank. There’s more than a grain of truth to that joke. People worry that China owns the U.S. because it holds trillions of our government debt. Not so much. China has accumulated roughly [continue reading . . . ]
I’m nuts about newspapers. Always have been. I still crave the real thing, newsprint. Of the four newspapers that I read every day, I find the Financial Times by far the most interesting. It is full of commentary — on markets, especially on politics and economics. I never fail to [continue reading . . . ]
China’s one-child policy portends a shrinking work force, yet China will grow old before it grows rich. Here’s the relevant material from today’s New York Times: China’s rise has depended partly on a huge spurt in the number of workers as a percentage of the population. This surge has created a cheap, [continue reading . . . ]