Dawei project in Myanmar

Huge industrial project in Myanmar to be done by Thais.

From the International Herald Tribune today:

"...But the Dawei Development Project, as it is known, could have as much of an impact on Myanmar’s future as the decades-old political chess games between the military and its opponents — and perhaps more.

The deal, signed Nov. 2, calls for what would be by far the largest industrial area in Myanmar, which is also known as Burma. In an impoverished, relatively cloistered country where malnourishment is widespread, the factories and refineries could provide jobs on an unprecedented scale, not unlike the special economic zones that China and Vietnam set up in recent decades..."

Click on title to full link. Worth a read.

Nice Op-Ed piece on Ireland

Good piece by Wolfgang Munchau,a Financial Times (FT) columnist who writes regularly on eurozone issues. You may need to register to get (free but temporary) access but it is worth doing. FT does a good job and is well worth reading.

Full report on GDP for 2010 Q3

If you are bored and don't have much else to do, click on the title to link to the full Quarterly report from the NESDB

Eurozone problems not over yet

Click on above title to link to article. Ireland gives in. Portugal probably not that far behind. Portugal looks worse than Ireland on a bunch of different metrics, e.g., much larger current account deficit as a share of GDP (what implications does this have?) and higher borrowing from the ECB or European central bank as a share of total bank assets (why does this matter?).

Eventually what will be needed at some point will be some debt restructuring. All that has been done so far has just been to address the immediate illiquidity problem. The fundamental problem of insolvency has not yet been resolved yet. That will require debt restructuring (read: default). But any guesses why that has not been done yet? (Hint: who do you think are Greece and Ireland's creditors?)