February 5th, 2008

Super Tuesday, the hangover from the Superbowl loss. Back at work. C'est la fucking vie.

- Bush presented a $3.1trn budget, freeze domestic spending in '09 and a $410bn deficiti in FY08; sees 2.7% growth in '08, and 3.0% in '09

- ISM non-manufacturing dropped to 41.9, lowest since Oct 2001 whe the survey began
- RBA hiked rates by 25bps, room to hike rates higher with strong economy but inflation looming
- does not expect inflation to fall before 2009; may go even higher than 7%, domestic demand remains strong and high capacity usage + labour shortages persist
- BoE and ECB have meetings this week; BoE should cut rate by 25bp to 5.25% and ECB should hold at 4%
- Russian SWF to invest in Japanese stock market
- World Bank lowered growth forecast for China to 9.6% from 10.8% and raised '08 inflation forecast to 4.6% from 3.8%
- Unnamed official said India to raise fuel prices this week
- BI Gov said Indonesia inflation forecast has been raised to 6.0 - 6.5% from 5.0% in '08
- Singapore IPI and NODX for Jan should be somewhat weak, in which case government won't tolerate stronger SGD
- Singapore growth slwing as PMI fell to 50.5 from 51.0 in Dec and 53.8 in Nov
- Inflation in Thailand stepped up to 4.3% from 3.2% in Dec
- BoT notified on the ease in capital outflow limits on residents