Taoyuan Nights

Quick Asian housing news round up:
In Korea…
“SEOUL, Nov 4 (Reuters) – Housing prices across South Korea will rise in 2010 for a sixth consecutive year and by the fastest pace in four years, an industry association research agency forecast on Wednesday.” (when do industry association representatives ever say anything else?) , “Kookmin Bank [...]

“On Thursday, the Taiwan Institute for Economic Research (TIER) revised its economic forecast for this year, predicting the nation’s GDP would contract 2.89 percent year-on-year, worse than its previous estimate of a 1.91 percent decline.”
Funny, really, you’d think people who were predicting 3 significant figures of accuracy would be ashamed of not even getting the [...]

The following link (Telegraph) is one of the better pieces I’ve read lately.
As you may know, historically, economists/financiers seem to have held the view that although Japan had horrific government debt relative to the size of its economy (GDP), this was ‘OK’ since it was all lent by Japanese citizens (because of the high savings [...]

Having ‘dropped unemployment’ and ‘raised salaries’, as per their election promises, a Taiwanese government report now promises:
“in the absence of an ECFA, the country stands to lose 47,000 jobs and the Gross Domestic Product growth will be cut by 0.179 percent.”
“In the event Taiwan and China sign an ECFA without including the liberalization of agricultural [...]

People who died ‘before their time’, from various causes.
H1N1 Swine Flu : US Deaths, 365 days preceding 29/04/2009: 1 American.
Seasonal Flu : US Deaths, 365 days preceding 29/04/2009: 20,000-60,000 Americans.
Ciggy Flu (Smoking) : US Deaths, 365 days preceding 29/04/2009: 467,000 Americans.
Fatty Flu (obesity) [...]

It’s good to see the IMF are gradually catching up with this blog ^_^
From the Taipei Times:
In January 2009, the IMF predicted a 4% drop in Taiwan’s GDP in 2009.
Now, in April 2009, the IMF has just predicted a much worse drop of 7.5% in Taiwan’s GDP in 2009.
That’s a pretty big difference in just [...]

You may be wondering if my claims about Taiwan’s economy falling into a deep, dark hole are just hyperbole.
Take a look at this and this!
Singapore’s economy shrank by 20% in the 3 months at the start of 2009, compared to the previous 3-month period; and it fell 11.5% year on year comapred with last year. [...]

Some people have complained that it’s hard to reply to my articles on this blog.
If you’d like to drop me an email about anything I’ve written, my email address is ‘|\/|u ‘ at taoyuan-nights.com. (hint: read |\/| as a capital letter.)

Some good news:
In my previous posts, I’ve referred to published articles which state that Taiwan’s exports are almost 70% of GDP. However, recently I noticed other articles, particularly one from the UN, that say that exports are only 50% of Taiwan’s GDP. If this latter figure is correct, then the more-than-halving of exports we saw [...]

There’s so much bad news going around just now…
Taiwan Export Orders Fall 22%, Fifth Monthly Decline
Wage declines thwarting economic efforts: analysts
TSMC is restoring regular hours.. but only after getting rid of 1000 employees!
Taiwan giveth and Taiwan taketh away…after encouraging people to spend, new laws will lead to a sharp cut in consumer lending.

Suicides rising [...]