“The Chinese economy has started to slow due to excess capacity. The rapid investment-led boom of the last five years has borrowed growth from the future.”
“Government officials are still learning to trust the market mechanism. They are containing inflation, but you're building up more and more distortions in the economy.”
“[Even developed, energy-efficient economies like Japan and South Korea are feeling oil's bite. Growth in Korea is likely to be at least 20% below what the Ministry of Finance and Economy was targeting at the beginning of the year, economists estimate. In Japan, $60 oil for 12 months could shave half a percent off GDP growth in an economy that had recently begun to perk up, according to Reiji Takeishi, a senior fellow at the Fujitsu Research Institute in Tokyo. The oil-price hikes so far, estimates Morgan Stanley economist Andy Xie, mean the Asia-Pacific region is spending 1.2% more of its total GDP on oil imports than it did last year.] There's no question that oil is the strongest headwind for growth now, ... This is a very delicate moment, no doubt about it.”
