China might soon be littered with incomplete building projects and half-built roads.
Chinese banks have been ordered to trawl through existing loan agreements that are ultimately used by local governments to raise funds – and stop lending to those projects backed only by expected fiscal revenues. The aim is to reduce the chance of default. Read more
Zimbabwe’s central bank owes mining companies “a substantial sum of money” that it is unable to repay at the moment, the Mines Minister says. Zimbabwe “empathises with the mining companies and feels obliged to make good,” Obert Mpofu said at a presentation in Cape Town today. (from Bloomberg) Read more
So says Argentine central bank governor Martin Redrado, after a great deal of confusion. Judge Thomas Griesa was reported as lifting the ban, but hours later Mr Redrado told the press he could not access the account. The embargo was part of a long-running legal action by bondholders still unpaid since the 2001 Argentinian default. The dispute is not directly related to the Argentinian President’s recent (indeed, ongoing) attempts to unseat Mr Redrado. Read more
Argentina seems determined not to repeat the default of 2001. Economy minister Amado Boudou has said $6.6bn of the central bank’s international reserves will be placed into a fund this month, to help the government pay bondholders and international lenders for debts. The fund will cover about half of $13bn interest and principal payments due in 2010. The government said today it will give the central bank 10-year dollar-denominated notes, known as Letes, in exchange for the funds. Read more
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Chris Giles has been the economics editor of the Financial Times since 2004. Based in London, he writes about international economic trends and the British economy. Before reporting economics for the Financial Times, he wrote editorials for the paper, reported for the BBC, worked as a regulator of the broadcasting industry and undertook research for the Institute for Fiscal Studies. RSS
Michael Steen, Frankfurt bureau chief, covers the ECB and the eurozone's economies. He joined the Financial Times in 2007 as Amsterdam correspondent and later worked as a front page news editor in London. Before joining the FT, he spent nine years as a correspondent at Reuters, mostly in foreign postings that included a previous stint in Frankfurt, as well as Moscow, Kiev and central Asia. He read German and Russian at Cambridge.RSS
Robin Harding is the FT's US economics editor, based in Washington. Prior to this, he was based in Tokyo, covering the Bank of Japan and Japan's technology sector, and in London as an economics leader writer. Robin studied economics at Cambridge and has a masters in economics from Hitotsubashi University, where he was a Monbusho scholar. Before joining the FT, Robin worked in asset management and banking. RSS
Ralph Atkins, capital markets editor, has been writing for the Financial Times for more than 20 years following an economics degree from Cambridge. From 2004 to 2012, Ralph was Frankfurt bureau chief, watching the European Central Bank and eurozone economies. He has also worked in Bonn, Berlin, Jerusalem and Brussels. RSS
Claire Jones is Money Supply economics team writer, based in London. Before joining the Financial Times, she was the editor of the Central Banking journal and CentralBanking.com. Claire studied philosophy and economics at the London School of Economics. RSS
