Salient to Investors:
Unlike Greece, Spain and Britain, the US economy is fundamentally healthy. The US debt problem can be readily resolved as long as both parties compromise. Over the past 5 years, Republicans in the Senate have threatened or used a filibuster 385 times, or almost double the rate of the preceding five years and much more than the historic average. Unless we fix our utterly dysfunctional political system, it is only a matter of time before we fall off the next fiscal cliff and crash.
China’s growth rate is slowing, partly because it’s now a middle-income country and can’t grow at 10 percent forever, and partly because the nature of its economy is changing, The Economist reports China’s exports have steadily declined since 2005 as a share of growth in GDP, while domestic consumption has risen steadily, now accounting for more than half of overall growth. In 1980, the median age in China was 22, now it’s 35, and by 2050, it will be 50. There are 117 boys under 15 for every 100 girls under 15, a social tinderbox. Public anger is rising in China.
Kishore Mahbubani at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy said both Romney and Obama would be acceptable to the Asians because they are both careful, pragmatic souls, but there’s a clear preference for Obama because of his Asian connection and sensitivity. People expected the China transition to go much more smoothly than it has. The US-China relationship will come back and eventually stabilize because it’s the interest of both sides.
Dominique Moisi said in 2008, the French would have overwhelmingly voted for Obama out of hope, but now out of fear of a Romney victory and of a return of an America they used to dislike. Europeans support Obama because, intuitively, in terms of emotion and values, they feel much closer to him.
Ari Shavit at Haaretz said Israelis divided over Obama and Romney – Obama has become much more popular with the left and left-of-center while the right sees him in almost demonic terms.
Rula Jebreal said Europe is pro-Obama because they seeing how pragmatic he has been. Germanyhas become a very powerful player. Bernanke saved the US economy so now Europe is following the same formula.
Watch the video at http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/category/gps-episodes/or read the transcript at http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1211/04/fzgps.01.html