Taoyuan Nights

The Taipei Times writes:
“The latest statistics from the Ministry of the Interior showed that the number of property transfers declined by 35 percent to 26,527 in August from 40,839 in May when President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) took office. Sales in Kaohsiung City, Taipei City and Taichung City in August saw some of the biggest drops [...]

First… please enjoy this video :)
Finance has for a long time been the UK’s biggest sector, ever since we wasted all the oil we had on a gigantic social welfare system, and closed down our factories.
That ends today. Excluding HSBC which isn’t really ‘British’, there were only 7 big British banks in existance 18 [...]

Taipei Times reports that Taiwan is catching up with reality and beginning to understand that Taiwanese 18th-floor 2-bed apartments are not actually worth more than Californian luxury detached housing (…or European castles!).
“The real-estate market is becoming a buyers’ market, with nearly 70 percent of home buyers expecting to see falling property prices over the next [...]

Today, Taiwan’s main stock market index (TAIEX) dropped almost 6% in a single trading session. Taiwan’s government has recently banned shorting of stock, has dumped public funds into the market in a (futile) attempt to keep the index up, and dropped the interest rate twice in two weeks.
But I guess it wasn’t those ‘evil’ [...]

I was going to write a roundup about some of Asia’s recent exciting financial adventures (Pakistan is bankrupt, Thailand is essentially bankrupt and undergoing yet another revolution, stockmarkets are falling through the floor, currencies are either shooting up or zooming down, interest rates are being changed).
Fortunately I found that someone at the FT had already [...]

McCain. Palin. Obama. Biden.

Of course… talk of whether McCain or Obama have greater support for Taiwan seems somewhat surreal to my mind – given another 4 more years of the present Republican party, America may not even exist anyway :-)
Elsewhere … Korea finds out the long-term costs of fueling an economy with high levels [...]