Pimco’s El-Erian: U.S. Could Become Japan

February 14, 2014, 8:30 A.M. ET

Pimco’s El-Erian: U.S. Could Become Japan

By Jack Otter

Mohamed El-Erian, the outgoing CEO and co-CIO at Pimco, said at a conference Thursday that the U.S. was in danger of “becoming Japan” if Congress cannot get over its dysfunction and take action to spur growth. El-Erian, speaking with CBS business analyst Jill Schlesinger at a LinkedIn conference in Manhattan, warned that the U.S. economy cannot be supported forever by the Federal Reserve alone. Read more of this post

Even Among the Richest of the Rich, Fortunes Diverge; our 0.1 percent household made about 206 times, and our 1 percent household about 41 times, what our average household did.

Even Among the Richest of the Rich, Fortunes Diverge

By ANNIE LOWREYFEB. 10, 2014

WASHINGTON — YES, we know the economic fortunes of the 99 percent and 1 percent have diverged over the last three or four decades. But the fortunes of the 1 percent and the 0.1 percent, or the 0.01 percent, or the 0.001 percent, have diverged even more. Economists have taken to calling it “fractal inequality.” It is not just that the rich have pulled away from the average American. It is that the richer you are, the more you have pulled away. Read more of this post

A World Unprepared, Again, for Rising Interest Rates

A World Unprepared, Again, for Rising Interest Rates

FEB. 11, 2014

Eduardo Porter

MEXICO CITY — I was living in São Paulo in 1997 when, out of the blue, aninvestment banker I knew in London called to ask about Brazilian cocktails. He didn’t want one. He needed a name for a potential economic crisis, in the vein of Mexico’s Tequila affair in 1994 and Thailand’s Tom Yum Kung debacle, which was unfolding at the time. Read more of this post

When Investor Websites Get Duped; Seeking Alpha’s policy of granting anonymity to writers of stock stories can have troubling consequence

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2014

When Investor Websites Get Duped

By JOHN KIMELMAN | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR

Seeking Alpha’s policy of granting anonymity to writers of stock stories can have troubling consequences.

In recent years, Website Seeking Alpha has emerged as a watering hole for both positive and negative stories about stocks. Read more of this post

$1.8 trillion in trust products may be headed for default this year

$1.8 trillion in trust products may be headed for default this year

By Gwynn Guilford @sinoceros February 13, 2014

Last month, China’s banking sector dodged a potential catastrophe when a mystery group stepped in at the 11th hour to pay investors in the now-infamous “Credit Equals Gold #1, a defaulted $495-million trust product. Barely two weeks have passed and now another trust product has failed to pay back investors. Read more of this post

Property speculators in Wenzhou hit by plummeting prices

Property speculators in Wenzhou hit by plummeting prices

Staff Reporter

2014-02-14

The resale market for housing in Wenzhou was badly hit following the government’s second round of cooling measures announced in September 2010, with the city having posted the country’s sharpest decline in prices after recording the highest appreciation, state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) reports. Read more of this post

Unaffordable cities: Singapore workers tread water on millionaires’ island; With 17% of city state’s residents worth S$1m, those who serve, drive and treat them may as well live on another planet

Unaffordable cities: Singapore workers tread water on millionaires’ island

With 17% of city state’s residents worth S$1m, those who serve, drive and treat them may as well live on another planet
Marc Nair in Singapore

theguardian.com, Thursday 13 February 2014 07.00 GMT

It is a balmy Saturday afternoon in the suburbs of Singapore. Patricia, 21, and her partner Sham, 28, share their first meal of the day: a box of chicken nuggets at McDonald’s. “It’s getting much harder to survive in Singapore,” Patricia says between bites. “I love my job, but my pay doesn’t match up to the cost of living here. But what choice do I have?” Read more of this post

Korea’s CJ billionaire chairman gets 4 years in jail, $24 million fine

CJ chairman gets 4 years in jail, $24 million fine

Feb 15,2014

	CJ Group Chairman Lee Jay-hyun leaves the Seoul Central District Court yesterday in a wheelchair after being fined and sentenced to four years behind bars. [NEWSIS]

A Seoul court yesterday sentenced CJ Group Chairman Lee Jay-hyun to four years in prison and ordered him to pay a 26 billion won ($24.4 million) fine for massive embezzlement, tax evasion and breach of trust, disappointing the country’s 14th-largest conglomerate and signaling that courts will continue to play hard ball with business moguls breaking laws.
“The defendant avoided paying taxes amounting to 26 billion won by wielding his influence as the biggest shareholder [in CJ Group],” said presiding judge Kim Yong-gwan during a verdict deliberation at the Seoul Central District Court.
The judge added that Lee created slush funds worth nearly 60.3 billion won for personal use through misappropriation of company funds in a systematic and secretive way. The court also accepted the prosecutors’ claim that Lee created paper companies offshore to transfer his illegally amassed fortune to their accounts in order to avoid paying taxes.  Read more of this post

Certified public accountants lose former prestige in S. Korea

Certified public accountants lose former prestige in S. Korea

Yong Hwan-jin

2014.02.14 17:58:34

South Korea is about to have 20,000 certified public accountants (CPAs). The country has 16,000 CPAs in total now, according to the Korean Institute of Certified Public Accountants. The number of accountants more than tripled from 5,000 CPAs in 2004. Given that the number of CPAs rises nearly 1,000 every year, 20,000 people are forecast to have the CPA licenses in 2016. 
CPA licenses have lost their earlier charm. An entry-level CPA earns about 38 million won ($35,802), lower than 40 million won a counterpart earns at Samsung Electronics. In the 1990s, an entry-level CPA made 40 million won, overwhelmingly larger than 18 million won a counterpart received at the tech company.  Read more of this post

Why China’s banking system is in so much trouble; The full transcript of the Telegraph interview with China expert Charlene Chu

Why China’s banking system is in so much trouble

The full transcript of the Telegraph interview with China expert Charlene Chu

By Harry Wilson, Banking Editor

3:31PM GMT 14 Feb 2014

How bad are the problems in the shadow banking sector?

I’ve been pretty concerned at what’s going on in China since the start of the global crisis and the start of the credit boom. One of the facts that has always been an issue is that more and more credit is being extended through shadow banking channels, the trust companies being the most prominent of those.  Read more of this post

Is Aldi doing to Tesco what Ryanair did to British Airways? The growth of Aldi and Lidl looks to be a permanent change in the way Britain shops, rather than a blip

Is Aldi doing to Tesco what Ryanair did to British Airways?

The growth of Aldi and Lidl looks to be a permanent change in the way Britain shops, rather than a blip

By Graham Ruddick

6:39PM GMT 13 Feb 2014

Deepdale, the home of Preston North End, is a football ground steeped in history thanks to its association with the former England winger Sir Tom Finney. But from December, the area has also provided a glimpse into the future for Britain’s supermarkets. Read more of this post

S.E.C.’s Review of Stock Trading Will See Some of Its Own Work; The agency may have helped create the problem it is now hoping to solve

FEBRUARY 11, 2014, 5:32 PM  1 Comment

S.E.C.’s Review of Stock Trading Will See Some of Its Own Work

By STEVEN M. DAVIDOFF

There are now at least 58 stock exchanges in the United States, many of them dark pools where the trades can be made anonymously. Withinstitutional investors claiming they are outgunned by high-frequency traders, and individual investors adrift in fragmented markets, it’s no wonder that Mary Jo White, the new head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, is moving to review and overhaul how stocks are traded. The issue is that the S.E.C. may have created the problem it is now hoping to solve. Read more of this post

Why India’s emerging market is in trouble

Why India’s emerging market is in trouble

February 11, 2014: 1:01 PM ET

The nation’s central bank recently blamed the U.S. Federal Reserve for its economic problems, but India’s challenges run deeper than monetary policy.

By Sanjay Sanghoee

FORTUNE — In the wake of a global stock market selloff driven by worries over slower growth in emerging markets, the head of India’s central bank, Raghuram Rajan, criticized the U.S. Federal Reserve as it pressed on with plans to dial back its monthly bond purchases: “International monetary cooperation has broken down,” said Rajan, who added that “the U.S. should worry about the effects of its polices on the rest of the world.” Read more of this post

Wayne LAU Run-wei Trends – (Spore) – Raising the alarm on suspicious trading in Singapore; Australia formalised a Suspicious Activity Reporting law that broadly follows the rules described earlier but is more detai

Raising the alarm on suspicious trading

Business Times

12 Feb 2014

R. Sivanithy

IT’S probably not that widely known, but stockbrokers and trading representatives (TRs) are obliged under current Singapore Exchange (SGX) rules not only to refrain from indulging in suspicious trades but also to report such trades to the authorities. Given that there have often been calls for regulators to do more to stamp out market manipulation and rigging, it is necessary to remind the broking community of this duty. Read more of this post

Unpaid Rice Farmers Protest as Thai Government’s Problems Mount

Unpaid Rice Farmers Protest as Thai Government’s Problems Mount

By Aukkarapon Niyomyat & Amy Sawitta Lefevre on 3:40 pm February 10, 2014.
Bangkok. Hundreds of farmers rallied outside Thailand’s justice ministry on Monday to protest against the state’s failure to pay them for rice bought under a controversial subsidy scheme that the caretaker administration in Bangkok is struggling to fund. Read more of this post