Poor infrastructure smothers Asia’s growth

By Tony Daltorio:Ask emerging market investors what is the biggest problem Brazil faces (besides politics) and you likely get the same answer from all of them ... woeful infrastructure which causes unnecessary bottlenecks in the economy.

Timothy B. Lee -- Writer with Ars Technica and the Cato InstituteIf you're driving through certain West African countries, you'll be stopped every few miles by armed men--often in police uniforms--who will demand payment in exchange for letting you pass.

(cc photo by moaksey)

In the Philippines, developers are putting up luxury condo towers bearing names such as Starck and Trump. Japanese firms, including Canon, are building new plants. Work crews are preparing to improve run-down airports and pour concrete for new highways.  

The Spanish hit parade keep right on rolling. Courtesy of Google Translate, please consider a trio of articles forwarded by my friend Bran who lives in Spain. Madrid Rejects Regional Budgets Representing 32.5% of GDP

Bill Gross's latest monthly letter is out, and the title is There Will Be Haircuts. Haircuts, of course, are a popular topic of discussion ever since Cyprus clipped the savings of large depositors in order to recap the banks. In his latest letter, Bill Gross points argues that there's no way that governments will ever be able to reduce total debt to GDP unless they find creative ways to clip bondholders.

The best conference panels, like the best blog posts, are the ones which change your mind. And while I haven’t done a U-turn on anything, after yesterday’s panel on smart cars I’m now thinking very differently about the relative merits of various ways of improving how we move around where we live and travel.

During the middle of the last decade, it seemed as though Chinese and Indian stocks were only heading higher. Between 2005 and 2008, China’s equity markets soared 219% while Indian markets rose 181%. However, from 2009 through 2011, impaired by a volatile global economy, Chinese equities floundered in negative territory and, over the same period, Indian equities were barely in the black.