Repo Market Decline Raises Alarm as Regulation Strains Debt

Repo Market Decline Raises Alarm as Regulation Strains Debt

Regulations aimed at reducing the risk of another financial crisis are starting to upend a key part of the bond market that expedites trading in everything from U.S. Treasuries to junk bonds.

The repurchase, or repo, market where banks and investors borrow and lend Treasuries and other fixed-income securities shrunk to $4.6 trillion daily outstanding last month, down 35 percent from a peak of $7.02 trillion in the first quarter of 2008, based on Federal Reserve data compiled from its 21 primary dealers. Read more of this post

Mobile-Payment Startups No Match for PayPal

Mobile-Payment Startups No Match for PayPal: Tech

The market for tools that help consumers buy goods using mobile phones is getting crowded, inundating small businesses, putting off venture capitalists and making it hard for many payment startups to make a buck.

Just ask Kristy Fassio, owner of a Fit4Mom exercise franchise near Seattle. She’s getting bombarded with pitches from mobile and web-payment companies pledging to provide low-cost, easy ways for her to accept payments for the mom-focused workout classes she teaches. Some don’t even charge fees. Read more of this post

Nestle’s Sales Slowdown Seen Leading to Slimmer Brand Portfolio

Nestle’s Sales Slowdown Seen Leading to Slimmer Brand Portfolio

Nestle SA, (NESN) the world’s biggest food company, needs to reignite sales that have disappointed investors for four straight quarters. One solution: Get smaller.

The maker of Nescafe coffee and DiGiorno pizza said Aug. 8 that it’s “actively looking” at its 8,000 brands and is seeking to identify the laggards after posting its weakest quarterly revenue growth in four years. Nestle has said it will struggle this year to meet its long-term forecast for annual sales growth of 5 percent to 6 percent, hurt by a deceleration in emerging markets, European weakness and sluggish performances from its diet products, frozen entrees and water. Read more of this post

China Trading Error Reduces Investor Confidence in Stocks

China Trading Error Reduces Investor Confidence in Stocks

The biggest swing in China’s benchmark equity index since 2009 threatens to further erode confidence in the nation’s stock market after it lost more money for investors than any in the world during the past four years.

China’s shares were roiled Aug. 16 by a trading error at Everbright Securities Co. (601788) that spurred a 53 percent surge in volumes and a swing of more than 6 percent in the Shanghai Composite Index. The gauge jumped from a loss of as much as 1 percent to a gain of 5.6 percent in two minutes during the morning session, then ended the day with a 0.6 percent drop. Erroneous buy orders from Everbright’s proprietary trading group sparked the early rally, the securities regulator said. Read more of this post

Indonesia Rupiah, Stocks Plummet on Current-Account Gap

Indonesia Rupiah, Stocks Plummet on Current-Account Gap

Indonesia’s rupiah fell to 10,500 per dollar for the first time since 2009, stocks dropped by the most in 22 months and government bonds plunged after the current-account deficit widened to a record last quarter.

The Jakarta Composite Index of shares has fallen 8 percent in two days, and is now the world’s worst performer this quarter. The yield on 10-year notes surged to the highest since March 2011 after Bank Indonesia said late Aug. 16 the current-account shortfall was $9.8 billion, the largest in data compiled by Bloomberg going back to 1989. Inflation quickened to a four-year high and economic growth slowed to the least since 2010, figures showed last week. Read more of this post

India Markets Plunge Pressures Singh as Economy Teeters

India Markets Plunge Pressures Singh as Economy Teeters

India’s biggest stock market slide in almost two years, surging bond yields and an unprecedented plunge in the rupee are pressuring officials for fresh steps to stem capital outflows and revive a struggling economy.

The S&P BSE Sensex (SENSEX) Index sank 4 percent on Aug. 16 as the rupee touched an all-time low of 62.005 per dollar and the yield on the government bond due May 2023 rose 39 basis points to 8.88 percent, the highest on a 10-year note since 2011. Read more of this post

Investors Ditch Ratings for Returns in Bond Boom: Nordic Credit

Investors Ditch Ratings for Returns in Bond Boom: Nordic Credit

Norway is about to share its European dominance in unrated bonds with the rest of the Nordic region.

Issuance of bonds ignored by Moody’s Investors Service, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings has surged in Sweden and Finland. Many of the companies selling, such as Skanska AB and Finnair Oyj (FIA1S), are finding the lack of a credit rating is no impediment to attracting more local buyers. Read more of this post

How Einstein Thought: Fostering Combinatorial Creativity and Unconscious Connections

How Einstein Thought: Fostering Combinatorial Creativity and Unconscious Connections

“Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.”

For as long as I can remember – and certainly long before I had the term for it – I’ve believed that creativity is combinatorial: Alive and awake to the world, we amass a collection of cross-disciplinary building blocks – knowledge, memories, bits of information, sparks of inspiration, and other existing ideas – that we then combine and recombine, mostly unconsciously, into something “new.” From this vast and cross-disciplinary mental pool of resources beckons the infrastructure of what we call our “own” “original” ideas. The notion, of course, is not new – some of history’s greatest minds across art, science, poetry, and cinema have articulated it, directly or indirectly, in one form or another: Arthur Koestler’s famous theory of “bisociation” explained creativity through the combination of elements that don’t ordinarily belong together; graphic designer Paula Scher likens creativity to a slot machine that aligns the seemingly random jumble of stuff in our heads into a suddenly miraculous combination; T. S. Eliot believed that the poet’s mind incubates fragmentary thoughts into beautiful ideas; the great Stephen Jay Gould maintained that connecting the seemingly unconnected is the secret of genius; Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press embodied this combinatorial creativity; even what we call “intuition” is based on the unconscious application of this very mental faculty. Read more of this post

Feike Sijbesma, chief of Dutch nutrition and chemicals DSM, wants to transform global manufacturing

THE MONDAY INTERVIEW

August 18, 2013 2:20 pm

Feike Sijbesma, chief of DSM

By Matt Steinglass

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For several months now, Feike Sijbesma has been doggedly promoting an idiosyncratic vision for transforming global capitalism.

The head of DSM, the Dutch nutrition and chemicals group, is one of the chemical industry’s strongest proponents of shifting from fossil fuels to processes that use biological materials, such as enzymes produced by algae. All manufacturing should be in the process of becoming 100 per cent renewable, he says. Furthermore, Mr Sijbesma thinks companies around the world should negotiate international metrics – similar to international accounting standards – for assessing their impact on the environment and on society. And those whose impact is more detrimental should pay more tax. He has aired this idea in public and more privately with other industrial leaders and leading thinkers at the World Economic Forum in Davos. With annual revenues of €9bn, his company is a heavyweight in nutrition – it is the world’s largest vitamins maker, among other things – but a small player in the chemicals industry compared with petrochemical titans such as DuPont and BASF. Read more of this post

What If What You ’Survived’ Wasn’t Cancer?

What If What You ’Survived’ Wasn’t Cancer?

You’re feeling fine when you go for your annual physical. But your mammogram looks a little funny, or your PSA test is a little high, or you get a CT lung scan and a nodule shows up. You get a biopsy, and the doctor delivers the bad news: You have cancer. Because you don’t want to die, you agree to be sliced up and irradiated. Then, fortunately, you’re pronounced a “cancer survivor.” You’re glad they caught it early.

But maybe you went through all that pain for nothing.

For decades, the reigning theory has been that the earlier a cancer is spotted and treated, the less likely it is to be lethal, because it won’t have time to grow and spread. Yet this theory infers causality from correlation. It implicitly assumes that cancer is cancer is cancer, even though we now know that even in the same part of the body, cancer is many different diseases — some aggressive, some not. Perhaps people survive early-stage cancers not because they’re treated in time, but because their disease never would have become life-threatening at all. Read more of this post

Singapore: Man with 8cm gash waited 7 hours in vain at hospital only to faint from blood loss

17-08-2013, 05:39 PM

Man with 8cm gash waited 7 hours in vain at A&E only to faint from blood loss !
stitches
Warning, viewer discretion is advised. Pictures are graphic.
STOMPer Isaac says his friend waited seven hours in vain at Changi General Hospital for a doctors to stitch up an 8cm gash on his arm he sustained at work.
His friend’s father eventually decided to relocate him to Mt Alvernia Hospital for treatment, by which time he had passed out from blood loss.
The STOMPer wrote:
“My friend, Lim, in his thirties, suffered a workplace-related accident on Aug 7, at around 11.30am.
“He had fallen down and his right forearm sustained a gash of approximately 8cm length due to a cut from a steel bar.
“His co-workers immediately rushed him to the CGH and they arrived at the Accidents & Emergency department at around noon.
“The staff nurses were quick to administer basic wound dressing and bandage to his wounds, and also an intravenous drip was also given to him.
“Lim’s father also arrived at the hospital at 2pm that day.
“However, even at 3pm, they were told by nurses that doctor was unavailable.
“Every time they asked for a doctor, the nurses would reply the doctor will ‘attend to them in half an hour’.
“To their horror, the doctor still hadn’t come and performed the stitching operation even at 5pm, and the nurses could only ‘top up’ the bandages when the blood seeped through the dressing.
“It was only at 7pm, when Lim said he was feeling faint and going to pass out, that a doctor finally came.
“To their shock, the doctor said there were still four patients waiting in line, and that Lim would have to wait until midnight before he could perform the operation on him.
“Worse still, the doctor even said that he might have to wait until the next morning.
“Upon hearing this, the Lims wanted an immediate transfer to another hospital.
“Much to their chagrin, they were told that ambulances were also unavailable.
“While having to deal with tough luck, the father managed to get his son transferred to Alvernia Hospital, at MacRitchie using his personal vehicle.
“The father was appalled by the doctor’s attitude.
“He said the doctor even shooed them away when he requested to have an immediate transfer.
“He said his son went unconscious as soon as they arrived at Alvernia Hospital, where he finally received the long awaited stitching operation by another surgeon. He received between 15 to 20 stitches.
“The father did receive a ‘concerned’ telephone call from a CGH officer on Aug 16.
“The father reprimanded the hospital staff for their behavior and for having insufficient medical personnel on duty as well as equipment such as ambulances.
“He said the Ministry of Health should look into this matter and seek to improve our hospital’s standards, before someone’s life is lost.”

Love Your Job? Thank Your Country

Love Your Job? Thank Your Country

It is widely assumed that people in economically “advanced” countries do not differ significantly in how satisfied they are with their jobs. Because they are about equally productive, the reasoning is, they must produce things the same way, and so their work experience must be the same, too. In fact, there are striking differences in job satisfaction within the West. The U.K., with very low wages relative to the country’s wealth, reports a pretty decent level of job satisfaction. Yet Germany, with its fairly high wages relative to wealth, reports an undistinguished level of job satisfaction — below Italy and Spain.  Read more of this post

Innovation drives growth for exporters to emerging economies

August 19, 2013 12:03 am

Innovation drives growth for exporters to emerging economies

By Mark Wembridge

In the battle to attract customers in emerging markets and compete with lower-cost economies, British manufacturers have discovered that brains trump brawn. Unable to compete with commoditised goods churned out in cut-price countries, new research shows that UK manufacturers are increasingly targeting innovative niche products which can be exported to emerging economies. According to a study published on Monday by the EEF manufacturers’ association, 71 per cent of British businesses polled said they were planning to use innovative ideas and services to bolster their revenues – up from 54 per cent three years ago. Read more of this post

Wary Investors Turn to Lie Pros

December 29, 2010

Wary Investors Turn to Lie Pros

Deception Detectors Find a New Niche

KYLE STOCK

When screening a fund manager, investors like to see experience and a consistent record or returns. Elizabeth Prial, however, looks for dilated pupils and uneven breathing. Ms. Prial, a psychologist and former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, has spent most of her career looking for lies in the statements of mafia hitmen and terrorists. Now, she is on the hunt for the next Bernard Madoff, selling her deception-detection skills to institutional investors and others with large pools of money who want to know if prospective fund managers are telling the truth. “It’s usually very clear,” she said. “I’m 90% confident in most of the things that I can see.” Amid the rush to fortify the nation’s still-rickety regulations in the wake of the financial crisis, affluent investors are turning to behavioral specialists, looking to find things in faces and phrases that may not be revealed in financial statements. Read more of this post

Liespotting: Proven Techniques to Detect Deception

Liespotting: Proven Techniques to Detect Deception Paperback

by Pamela Meyer  (Author)

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GET TO THE TRUTH

People–friends, family members, work colleagues, salespeople–lie to us all the time.  Daily, hourly, constantly. None of us is immune, and all of us are victims. According to studies by several different researchers, most of us encounter nearly 200 lies a day. Now there’s something we can do about it. Liespotting links three disciplines–facial recognition training, interrogation training, and a comprehensive survey of research in the field–into a specialized body of information developed specifically to help business leaders detect deception and get the information they need to successfully conduct their most important interactions and transactions. Some of the nation’s leading business executives have learned to use these methods to root out lies in high stakes situations. Liespotting for the first time brings years of knowledge–previously found only in the intelligence community, police training academies, and universities–into the corporate boardroom, the manager’s meeting, the job interview, the legal proceeding, and the deal negotiation.

WHAT’S IN THE BOOK?

Learn communication secrets previously known only to a handful of scientists, interrogators and intelligence specialists.

Liespotting reveals what’s hiding in plain sight in every business meeting, job interview and negotiation:

• The single most dangerous facial expression to watch out for in business & personal relationships

• 10 questions that get people to tell you anything

• A simple 5-step method for spotting and stopping the lies told in nearly every high-stakes business negotiation and interview

• Dozens of postures and facial expressions that should instantly put you on Red Alert for deception

• The telltale phrases and verbal responses that separate truthful stories from deceitful ones

• How to create a circle of advisers who will guarantee your success Read more of this post

Comcasted: How Ralph and Brian Roberts Took Over America’s TV, One Deal at a Time

Comcasted: How Ralph and Brian Roberts Took Over America’s TV, One Deal at a Time [Hardcover]

Joseph N. DiStefano (Author)

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Publication Date: March 1, 2005

If you’re wondering who or what is next on Comcast’s “to-do” list–stay tuned. Be sure to take this eye-opening, rare look inside an American corporate dynasty that began as a small franchise in Tupelo, Mississippi, and grew to become the nation’s biggest cable TV company and fastest-growing Internet provider. With the tenacious investigative skills and gusto of the seasoned reporter, Joseph N. DiStefano has written a must-read history of this vital industry and its principal player, as well as the unauthorized biography of Comcast’s founder, Ralph Roberts, and his son and successor, Brian. Though rivals like Fox News owner and satellite TV baron Rupert Murdoch continue to nip at its heels, though consumer discontent simmers, Comcast, with allies in small-town city halls and Washington, D.C., as well as powerful companies like Microsoft, continues to exert influence over Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and every TV viewer. We are, indeed, all COMCASTed. Read more of this post

HSBC and StanChart hit by Asia focus as economies lose momentum

August 18, 2013 2:49 pm

HSBC and StanChart hit by Asia focus as economies lose momentum

By Sharlene Goff, Retail Banking Correspondent

Ever since the financial crisis, HSBC and Standard Chartered have trumpeted their exposure to faster-growing economies as a welcome differential among the UK banks.

But the recent slowdown in parts of their Asian heartlands – both reported weaker growth in markets including China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Taiwan in the first half of this year – means their reliance on the region is fast becoming a concern rather than a comfort for investors. Read more of this post

Climbing trees to catch fish: A curious to-and-fro about China’s constitution bodes ill for political reform

Climbing trees to catch fish: A curious to-and-fro about China’s constitution bodes ill for political reform

Aug 17th 2013 |From the print edition

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FOR well over a century, Chinese scholars have been arguing about national constitutions. In the final years of the Qing emperors, some thought that turning the last imperial dynasty into a constitutional monarchy might forestall its collapse. Conservatives long resisted. But in 1906 a “constitutional reform commission” did report to the Empress Dowager, Cixi. “The real reason”, it concluded, “why other countries have become wealthy and powerful lies in the fact that they have a constitution and decide [important issues] through public discussion.” The dynasty collapsed in 1911. But these days the Communist Party seems to think those Qing reformers were wrong: China does not need a constitution at all, or at least not one that has to be enforced. Read more of this post

Everbright Trading Error Adds to China Broker’s Woes

Everbright Trading Error Adds to China Broker’s Woes

Everbright Securities Co. (601788), the Chinese state-controlled brokerage besieged by falling profits and a regulatory probe, faces a further blow to its reputation after a trading error sparked the wildest swings in the nation’s stocks in four years.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission has started an official investigation into Everbright, the watchdog said in a statement yesterday. The regulator has banned the brokerage from conducting proprietary trading from Aug. 29 to Nov. 18, according to a company statement. Everbright is barred from creating new stock-index futures positions starting today, according to a statement by China Financial Futures Exchange. Read more of this post

Is Hukou Reform the Key to Reviving China’s Economy?

August 19, 2013, 7:44 AM

Is Hukou Reform the Key to Reviving China’s Economy?

As China’s growth slows toward a 20-year low, leaders are searching for a way to revive the economy’s flagging fortunes. The suggestion from some of China’s top policy wonks: reform the hukou system. That was the message that came through loud and clear from a meeting of top academics and policy advisers at a conference hosted by the government’s Chinese Academy of Social Sciences on Friday.

Read more of this post

Most Chinese youths pin hopes on parents for success; It seems that only people with strong backgrounds and connections can “get the last laugh” in such a “snobbish” society

Most youths pin hopes on parents for success: survey

(ecns.cn)    08:22, August 19, 2013

A recent survey shows that most respondents think their peers yearn for effortless success with the help of a strong family background.
The Social Survey Center of China Youth Daily surveyed 3,809 people through minyi.net.cn and sohu.com. Of those surveyed, 80.4 percent believe young people who achieve career success in China are all winners in the “competition of family background,” and 83.5 percent believe their peers hope to join the “competition of family background”.
One respondent said: “Life is a game. Following rules is the only way you can survive”. Young people from ordinary families complain that they are currently being judged on their family backgrounds rather than their abilities and knowledge when they look for jobs. This is probably another one of society’s rules, and it’s called “competition of family background”. Read more of this post

Overcoming the great wall of name squatting in China: How do well-known foreign brands react when unscrupulous profiteers swipe their Chinese names?

Published on 2013-08-10 17:16:39

MONIKER MAYHEM: OVERCOMING THE GREAT WALL OF NAME SQUATTING IN CHINA

How do well-known foreign brands react when unscrupulous profiteers swipe their Chinese names?

ECONOMIC OBSERVER/Worldcrunch

BEIJING — Bottega Veneta, the Italian luxury brand best known for its leather goods, recently renamed itself Bao-Die-Jia in ChineseBut because the Italian apparel has been commonly known by another Chinese homonym, Bao-Ti-Jia, the renaming caused some public outcry, not to mention enthusiastic debate on the Internet. Bottega Veneta has refused to comment, except to say that it has never had an official Chinese moniker before.  But it is widely assumed that the Italian fashion house felt obliged to rename itself in Chinese simply because other Chinese businessmen had preemptively registered the name that was well known to the public. In fact, many other successful foreign brands in China have experienced the same sort of so-called “name squatting”. The only difference is that instead of recognizing the setback discreetly, they often resort to legal recourse. Hermès was probably the first apparel company to encounter this dilemma. As early as 1977, the brand registered its English name and trademark in China — but not its Chinese one. Read more of this post

Property Mogul Wang Jianlin of Dalian Wanda-AMC Emerges as China’s Richest Person

Property Mogul Emerges as China’s Richest Person

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Wang Jianlin, owner of China’s biggest commercial land developer, is the nation’s wealthiest person, based on regulatory filings that show his non-real estate businesses are more valuable than previously calculated.

The chairman of closely held conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group, which became the world’s largest movie theater chain after acquiring AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. last year for $2.6 billion, has a net worth of $14.2 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He is $3.2 billion richer than Zong Qinghou, founder of Hangzhou Wahaha Group, China’s No. 3 beverage maker. Zong is the country’s second-wealthiest person. Read more of this post

Protect Yourself When Outsourcing to China

August 18, 2013, 4:49 p.m. ET

Protect Yourself When Outsourcing to China

SAABIRA CHAUDHURI

Q: If you’re going to source your product or parts from China, what special safeguards should you take?

A: Start the process of finding the right manufacturer using a site likeGlobalsources.com, which aims to help buyers connect with China-based suppliers, suggests Mike Bellamy, an author and owner of PassageMaker Sourcing Solutions.

When you find factories that might meet your needs, ask for references and find out if the manufacturers have a history of respecting intellectual property and doing solid work. But don’t offer those factories complete specifications or samples of the product you want created, advises Mr. Bellamy, since your idea might get filched. Instead, send or show them a similar product for comparison or some rough sketches. And ask for samples before you commit to an order. Read more of this post

Samsung’s struggles in China: Record sales don’t mean record revenue

Samsung’s struggles in China: Record sales don’t mean record revenue

By Kaylene Hong, 3 hours ago, 06:59am

Over the weekend, Yonhap News reported that Samsung is struggling in the Chinese market. Yes, struggling. Despite optimistic figures from analyst firms showing record-breaking unit sales of Samsung smartphones in China — Strategy Analytics pinned Samsung’s Q2 2013 sales number at 15.3 million while Canalys had it at 15.5 million — it seems like the number of phones Samsung sold has not translated into robust amounts of revenue. According to the Yonhap News report, Samsung’s net sales stood at KRW77.2 trillion ($69.4 billion) in the first half of this year. Out of that, China accounted for KRW12.6 trillion ($11.3 billion) or a 16.4 percent share — down from the 20.4 percent share recorded in the Korean company’s annual net sales last year. Read more of this post

QR code-based Price Comparison App Wochacha Now Has 140 million Users in China

QR code-based Price Comparison App Wochacha Now Has 140 million Users

By Tracey Xiang on August 16, 2013

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During 2013 Spring Festival earlier this year, many Chinese people who traveled back home from first-tier cities found their parents and friends in second- or – lower -tier cities were using Wochacha. Starting as a price comparison app, now it enables users to buy some goods directly. If you order goods from Wochacah’s partner supermarkets, deliverymen will send goods to your door. Brands or merchants can set up a channel on Wochacha selling goods or engage users. The QR code scanner now becomes more useful too that can track your parcels or download digital content. In addition it provides users with deals or coupons, price indexes, quality reports, etc. Read more of this post

Taobao’s Online Education Market Launched; Teachers, education organizations or agencies, or third-party online education services can set up Taobao stores to sell live broadcasts, recorded videos, offline courses or events

Taobao’s Online Education Market Launched

By Tracey Xiang on August 19, 2013

Taobao Classmates (not official translation) , an online course market, was launched recently. Teachers, education organizations or agencies, or third-party online education services can set up Taobao stores to sell live broadcasts, recorded videos, offline courses or events, or courses on third-party sites (including Tmall) — in short,  anyone is allowed to set up a store selling online educational content or related physical goods such as offline event tickets. Just the same with buying physical goods on Taobao, consumers need to log into Taobao and pay with Alipay — not a problem to the majority of Chinese. There is, of course, no delivery fee unless a store charges you for delivering physical tickets and the like. Some well-known online education services have joined in offering courses ranging from language learning to makeup. Actually a large number of online course or service providers already set up Taobao stores to sell their offerings. What more Taobao Classmates can provide is having consumers watch video courses without leaving Taobao. On its introduction page, Taobao Classmates estimates the unique visits will reach 500 thousand by the end of September. Dao Zhengone, director of the Alibaba Local Life BU which build the marketplace, estimated that transactions on the platform could possibly reach one billion yuan in a year.

China banks take a hit, world watching whether it can pull through financial reforms

Updated: Monday August 19, 2013 MYT 9:20:19 AM

China banks take a hit, world watching whether it can pull through financial reforms

CHINESE banks’ profits are expected to fall in the first half against a negative outlook for the next three years. The nine Hong Kong-listed mainland banks are expected to report about 10% growth in net earnings when they start releasing results this month, according to analysts. Meanwhile, the non-performing loans ratio is expected to rise by 0.93%. Some analysts see an increase in bad loans and interest rate liberalisation as denting mainland banks’ profits, says the South China Morning Post (SCMP). Regulators have asked lenders not to extend new loans to sectors hit by overcapacity, such as steel and cement. “That means companies will struggle in the case of a prolonged economic slowdown and have problems repaying existing loans,” says SCMP. Read more of this post

What’s Ailing America’s Cattle? Scientists Suspect Livestock-Feed Additives Are Behind Distress

August 18, 2013, 7:34 p.m. ET

What’s Ailing America’s Cattle?

Scientists Suspect Livestock-Feed Additives Are Behind Distress

JESSE NEWMAN and KELSEY GEE

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A growing number of cattle arriving for slaughter at U.S. meatpacking plants have recently shown unusual signs of distress. Some walked stiffly, while others had trouble moving or simply laid down, their tongues hanging from their mouths. A few even sat down in strange positions, looking more like dogs than cows.

“I’ve seen cattle walking down a truck ramp tippy-toed,” said Temple Grandin, a doctor of animal science and consultant to the livestock industry. “Normally, they just run down the truck ramp and jump out. We do not want to see bad become normal.” Read more of this post

Shale Grab in U.S. Stalls as Falling Values Repel Buyers

Shale Grab in U.S. Stalls as Falling Values Repel Buyers

Oil companies are hitting the brakes on a U.S. shale land grab that produced an abundance of cheap natural gas — and troubles for the industry.

The spending slowdown by international companies including BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP) and Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) comes amid a series of write-downs of oil and gas shale assets, caused by plunging prices and disappointing wells. The companies are turning instead to developing current projects, unable to justify buying more property while fields bought during the 2009-2012 flurry remain below their purchase price, according to analysts. Read more of this post

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