《The parable of Argentina》
- Embraced Washington consensus in the 1990s but the crunch in 2001 left it permanently suspicious of liberal reform
- Argentina’s decline has been largely self-inflicted: protectionism, prefer quick-fix rather than thorough reform of the country’s schools
《A century of decline》
Three deep-lying explanations:
- Rich but not modern 100 years ago: low literacy rates, lowest secondary-school attendance;
- Being out of sync with the rest of the world, trading policy: the divide between farmers and workers;
- Not evolving political apparatus, short-termism;
《The petrostate of America》
- Franking: should have added 2-4% to American GDP;
- Oil boom, owed less to geological luck than enterprise, ready finance, and dazzling technology;
- Foreign policy might not change, but energy policy should: lift the oil export ban, getting permits of gas export more easily; generating cash to pay foreign policy dividends; also might cause domestic gas prices to rise a little;
《Saudi America》
- Turn America into a swing producer; make both dollar and the economy less sensitive to oil prices;
- Back to stabilizing role it played in the 1960s;
- Crude-oil could start more or less straight away; but the political debate is only in its infancy;
《TV star》
- Advocating of consolidation: more power to negotiate with content companies; margins only 50% compared to broadband 100%;
- Financial discipline, better control cost than conventional Hollywood boss;
- “Not the best at innovating, but the best at scaling others’ innovations”
《Fixing forward guidance》
- Specific threshold of Fed and BoE: 6.5% and 7%; they are muddying them now;
- Fed downplayed; BoE scrapped the unemployment threshold – a clearer message;
《Closing the gap》
- Gap between actual and potential output, hard to discern; three different indicators tell different stories;
《The growth paradox》
- No link between economy growth per capita and stock market returns: “value” effect; stock market not a perfect representation of the domestic economy (real dividend growth more slowly than the economy);
《No profits, we promise》
- JD is pursuing an “asset-heavy” model that puts scale and market-share above short-term profits;
- Two big questions: logistic infrastructure and local rivals (Tencent and Alibaba)
《A number of great import》
- Current account surplus narrowed to only 2% of GDP last year; but by far the largest services deficit in the world (already helped by less competitive yuan, which rose over 7% last year);
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