After ALCAN the huge US aluminium producer beat its sales and profits forecasts, today Wal-Mart also beat the expactations for its month on month sales by a large amount. The GAP clothing chain although posting figures which showed a decline, also had nowhere near the decline that had been forecast. In fact, most of the day's figures for companies giving reports on trading showed firms beating rather than falling short of predictions.
Meanwhile, the weekly US inital jobless claims figure came in with a huge reduction of almost 60,000 compared to last week down from over 400,000 to 350,000, although, continuing claims rose substantially i.e. fewer people were added to the dole queue, but more of those already there stayed out of work.
The Chinese Yuan continues to rise by the same 1% per month it has been doing for the last year after the peg against the dollar was relaxed. This could be one reason for the month's figures for the Chinese Trade Surplus falling, along with its exports. Another, could be that China has imposed duties and restrictions on some food exports as the Chinese Stalinists try to direct the economy to meet the growing demands of Chinese consumers, particularly with rapidly rising food prices, and following their hike in fuel prices after they reduced the subisdy on fuel by 24%. In fact, China needs to slowly appreciate the Yuan in order to reduce the inflation it is importing through the peg to the falling dollar. A higher value of Yuan will reduce the cost of imports of food and raw materials. In contrast, it will mean that Chinese goods exported to the West will rise in price. Korea has also beena ctive in the foreign exchange markets in recent days selling dollars and buying Euros. This is all part of the rebalancing of the world economy and the steady bu inevitable decline of the US, and rise of China and its satellites in Asia.
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