The world’s top central bankers began arriving in Australia for high-level talks as renewed fears about the strength of the global economic recovery gripped world share markets. Representatives from 24 central banks and monetary authorities, including the US Federal Reserve and European Central Bank, landed in Sydney to meet tomorrow at an undisclosed location. Organised by the Bank for International... 

By Alan Beattie at ft.com Put a jaguar, a bear, a tiger and a panda together and you might get a good show but you won’t get a quiet life. The Bric grouping – Brazil, Russia, India and China – has become a shorthand for the rise of emerging markets in the global economy. And after a rather stellar decade, the Brics mainly had a good crisis from which they are now rapidly exiting. Goldman Sachs,... 

Japan Airlines today filed for bankruptcy in an attempt to reverse the fortunes of a once-revered corporate icon now saddled with billions of dollars of debt and a reputation for mismanagement and inefficiency. The airline’s board decided to place the company at the mercy of a state-led restructuring plan that will require it to shed almost 15,700 jobs and cut more than 30 unprofitable routes. ... 

HONG KONG — For the first time, Chinese investment in U.S. companies has eclipsed U.S. purchases of Chinese entities, a trend analysts say is fueled partly by depressed American assets. In 2009, Chinese buyers snapped up $3.9 billion of U.S. assets, nearly four times the level in 2008, says Dealogic, a data-tracking firm. By comparison, U.S. buyers plowed $3 billion into Chinese entities last year,... 

The US Federal Reserve is no longer able, in reality, to continue its multi-decade combat against the « barbarous relic » in order to guarantee the supremacy of the US currency at the centre of the international monetary system. For LEAP/E2020 the decade which has just begun will be clearly marked by a complete collapse of the Dollar (and the fall of most major international currencies) by gold. ... 

The opening last week in Dubai of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building at 2,717 feet, is a physical reminder of an underappreciated risk for 2010: the possibility that countries that rode the debt issuance boom of the mid-2000s will have trouble paying their creditors. (The Philadelphia Inquirer and Britain’s The Independent have also documented the human cost of Dubai’s... 

The signs are everywhere that oil is headed for stratospheric highs – $200, $250 or even $300 a barrel. Some of these signs are just plain obvious. But even the subtle indicators are telling us that some very expensive energy costs headed our way. Let me tell you about one such indicator that I came across over the New Year holiday. A tiny news item said that Saudi Arabian oil concern Aramco is abandoning... 

It hasn’t been in the limelight recently, but it is coming. According to CNBC contributor John Kilduff of Round Earth Capital, we will soon see the price of reach $100 per barrel. On CNBC’s Jan. 11 “The Kudlow Report,” host Larry Kudlow asked Kilduff what it would take for the Obama’s administration to change its energy policy to allow for more oil exploration and drilling. “Oil is... 

Google is releasing information about a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack” on their corporate infrastructure that occurred last month. The attack originated in China and resulted in the “theft of intellectual property from Google.” In light of the attack Google is making sweeping changes to its Chinese operations. Google is releasing some information about these attacks to the public.... 

New numbers from China’s customs agency say the country’s exports for 2009 were more than $1.2 trillion, slightly ahead of Germany. Exports in December rose nearly 18 percent from a year earlier. At the same time, imports leapt nearly 56 percent. Asian Development Bank economist Zhuang Jian says strong performance in the last two months of 2009 helped China’s export surge. Zhuang...