The first hike in US interest rates of President George W. Bush's presidency is a sign of the building strength of the economy after three years of recession, terrorism and war.
On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve made a long-awaited move to tighten monetary policy, raising its benchmark interest rate from a 46-year low of 1 percent to 1.25 percent.
With a hangover from the 1990s technology bubble, the US economy slipped into recession in January 2001. It was the same month that that Bush took office and the Fed began the first of 13 consecutive rate cuts to try to kindle the economy amid the terrorist strikes of Sept. 11, 2001.
The recession lasted only nine months, but the economy grew haltingly through 2002, and uncertainty over the war in Iraq suppressed investment into early last year. At one point, the net job losses during the Bush administration's tenure topped 2.5 million.
Finally, in the last four quarters, the US GDP has grown nearly 5 percent, the fastest pace of expansion in 20 years.
The US has now registered 11 straight quarters of GDP growth, and long-lagging hiring has also recovered, with the economy adding 1.5 million jobs in the last year.
Yet the economy remains a liability for Bush.
The campaign of US Senator John Kerry, Bush's major-party challenger for re-election on Nov. 2, has hammered away at the jobs issue.
The net loss under Bush continues to dwindle but remains about 1 million jobs. Kerry's campaign calls it "the worst jobs record of any president who has run for re-election in nearly sixty years."
Bush has touted his policies to cut income taxes on individuals for helping pull the economy out of the doldrums. A White House spokesman hailed this week's Federal Reserve interest rate hike as proof of the economy's vigor.
But an economic advisor to Kerry, the presumptive nominee of the centre-left Democratic Party, said that the low inflation allowing the Fed to raise rates slowly also reflects the poor rate of wage growth for American workers.
Kerry's own economic proposals would create tax credits to encourage small businesses and manufacturers to add workers.
Striking a pose of economic nationalism, he also promises to "enforce" trade agreements to gain a level playing field and "restore" US technology leadership.
He would also eliminate tax advantages for companies that hire workers overseas while cutting most corporate income tax rates.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts