Photo Credit: AFP/Getty Images HSBC’s China flash purchasing manager’s index for May should not have spooked investors as it did. The index gave its lowest reading in seven months, at 49.6 against’s April’s 50.4, suggesting that China’s economy had slipped back into contraction, reversing the modest expansion seen since last fall. Yet irregular indicators of China’s slowing economy — and the constraints on policymakers to address it — have been readily…Asia-Pacific,China,HSBC,Li Keqiang,monetary policy,Xi Jinping,Paul Maidment

Traces of a proton-proton collisions events measured by CERN on May 25, 2011. (AFP/Getty Images/Fabrice Coffrini) Physicists at the radioactive-beam facility ISOLDE at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) uncovered the ionization potential of the element astatine, the rarest element in nature, with less than a teaspoon estimated to exist in the Earth’s crust at any given time. Astatine was the last element for which the ionization potential – the energy needed…Medicine,Research,astatine,cancer,CERN,ionization potential,laser,Oncology,radiotherapy,research,Louiza Patsis

Photo Credit: Getty Images/Mark Wilson Multinationals based in the U.S. are fast approaching holding a $2 trillion cash pile around the world — everywhere but back home. Indefinitely reinvested foreign earnings, as the money is defined to avoid U.S. tax liabilities, at the constituent companies of the Russell 3000 index totaled 1.9 trillion last year, up 15% from the year before, according to a study by research firm, Audit Analytics. It…U.S.,Audit Analytics,Corporate tax,Indefinitely reinvested foreign earnings,Paul Maidment

Photo Credit: Getty Images/Alex Wong The economics commentariat and no small part of the political debate in recent weeks has been consumed with the controversy surrounding the work of my Harvard colleagues (and friends) Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff (RR). Their work had been widely interpreted as establishing that economic growth was likely to stagnate in a country once its government debt-to-GDP ratio exceeded 90 percent. Scholars at the University of Massachusetts have demonstrated and RR have…Global Economy,Austerity,Carmen Reinhart,Economic policy,Ken Rogoff,Reuters Comment

ECB head Mario Draghi. Photo Credit: AFP/Getty Images/Samuel Kubani Having last year said that he would do “what it takes” to backstop the euro, Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank (ECB), is again voicing the once unthinkable: he is open to the possibility of negative interest rates to drag the 17-member euro zone out of its deepening recession. Like the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan and the Bank…Europe,European Central Bank,Eurozone,Mario Draghi,monetary policy,Paul Maidment

Lies, damn lies and statistics. The advance reading of fourth-quarter U.S. GDP caused a shock when it was released on January 30. The reported contraction in the American economy of 0.1% at an annual rate caught almost every economist by surprise. And that, maybe, is because it never happened. The drop in the U.S. trade deficit in December reported today suggests that…U.S.,Paul Maidment

In an unprecedented move, the International Monetary Fund has censured Argentina for the quality of its official inflation and growth statistics. The reprimand, the harshest the IMF can hand out, won’t have any immediate practical impact–hardly anyone believed Argentina’s figures anyway–but it further chills relations and moves the country a step closer to the…Americas,Argentina,Cristina Fernández de Kirchner,Gross domestic product,IMF,Inflation,International Monetary Fund,Alex Erquicia