Felix Salmon. Rortybomb. Real Time Economics. China’s GDP growth fell in the first quarter to its slowest pace since September of 2012, slipping to 7.4% on-year growth from 7.7% the in the fourth quarter. The increase was slightly higher than economists’ expectations of a 7.3% gain. Authorities released other data that suggested continuing weakness, but not at a quickening pace. Industrial production grew 8.8% on year in March below expectations of 9% but up from an average 8.6% expansion in January and February, combined to limit distortions from the Lunar New Year holidays.
Retail sales were 12.2% higher on-year in March, up from 11.8% growth in January and February. Fixed-asset investment, meanwhile, slipped to 17.6% on year in the first quarter from 17.9% growth in the first two months. Markets rose on the data, with both the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock markets clicking higher. Some economists saw a massaging of the GDP figures. Planet Money. Naked capitalism. Marginal Revolution. Greg Mankiw's Blog. Making Sense with Paul Solman. Ezra Klein. Interfluidity. Free exchange. Joe Nocera. Economix Blog. Economist's View.
Economists' Forum. Global economic recovery stuck below takeoff speed By Eswar Prasad and Karim Foda The global economic recovery remains stuck below takeoff speed, unable to achieve liftoff and facing the risk of stalling. Half-hearted fiscal austerity measures are proving to be a drag on growth and doing little to rebuild investor and consumer confidence. Monetary policy continues to shoulder the burden of limiting downside risks and has kept financial markets buoyant even in the face of weak growth prospects. The Brookings-FT Tiger index shows growth momentum remains weak in nearly all major advanced and emerging market economies.
The best that can be said about the weak pace of economic activity is that it has bottomed out in some key economies. However, prospects of a strong cyclical pickup in growth are likely to be hampered by continued policy uncertainty and concerns about further financial market turbulence, with the simmering eurozone debt crisis once again coming close to boiling over. Read more. EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty. Econbrowser. Brad DeLong. Paul Krugman - The Conscience of a Liberal. Calculated Risk. Beat the Press. The Balance Sheet. I like Matt Yglesias’s characterization of the financial-reform bill, which finally passed Congress yesterday, as “underrated.” While there are a couple of huge issues that the bill barely deals with (or doesn’t really touch at all), like the problem of Fannie and Freddie and the undue power of rating agencies in our financial system, it actually does something that reform bills don’t always do: namely, reform the system.
The bill’s two biggest accomplishments, I think, are the creation of a consumer financial-protection agency and the institution of a resolution authority that will give the government the power to take over a failing bank holding company or investment bank (the F.D.I.C. already has this power when it comes to smaller banks, but until now the government didn’t actually have the legal authority to take over the country’s biggest financial institutions).