UNITED STATES
Data point to Harvey shock
Retail sales unexpectedly fell last month as Hurricane Harvey disrupted activity, suggesting the storm could dent economic growth in the third quarter. The US Department of Commerce said retail sales dropped 0.2 percent last month from the previous month, the biggest decline in six months, as motor vehicle sales tumbled 1.6 percent. Sales of building materials, electronics and appliances as well as clothing also fell. Overall retail sales increased 3.2 percent on a year-on-year basis. In a separate report on Friday, the US Federal Reserve said industrial production declined 0.9 percent last month in the biggest drop since May 2009, following six straight monthly gains.
RUSSIA
Central bank cuts rate again
The Central Bank of the Russian Federation on Friday cut its key interest rate to 8.5 percent, the fourth reduction this year, as inflation hit a record low. The bank said it took the decision to slice 50 points off the rate after “inflation expectations resumed their decline.” In a statement, the bank said it would “continue to conduct a moderately tight monetary policy” in order to maintain inflation close to 4 percent. However, it also said that “during the next two quarters, the Bank of Russia deems it possible to cut the key rate further.” GDP is expected to grow by 1.7 percent to 2.2 percent after two years of recession, it said.
CHINA
Mortgages drive credit growth
Chinese bank loans rebounded last month to hit 1.09 trillion yuan (US$166 billion), beating analysts’ expectations as demand was buoyed by home buyers. The figure was up from 825.5 billion yuan in July, the People’s Bank of China said. It exceeded forecasts from analysts surveyed by Bloomberg, although it remains far below the 1.54 trillion yuan loaned by banks in in June. However, the broad M2 measure of money supply rose 8.9 percent from a year earlier, down from 9.2 percent recorded a month ago.
GREECE
Quick review of loans urged
Greece wants the next review of its European loan program to wrap up by the end of the year to pave the way for additional money to be disbursed next year, a senior member of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ government said. Greek Minister of Digital Policy, Telecommunications and Media Nikos Pappas, an economist who is considered a close adviser to Tsipras, said the Greek economy is rebounding, with output set to expand 2 percent this year and unemployment falling. “We hope to conclude before the end of the year. There is absolutely no reason to have any delays,” Pappas said on Friday. “If there are delays, it is not going to be because of Greece.”
ACCOUNTANCY
KPMG S Africa head quits
KPMG LLP on Friday said the head of its South African office and seven other senior executives quit, after an internal investigation found that work done for the politically connected Gupta family fell “considerably short” of the auditing firm’s standards. It is to give the equivalent of US$3 million, the fees it made from its work with the family since 2002, to education and anti-corruption charities. KPMG South Africa chief executive officer Trevor Hoole, chairman Ahmed Jaffer and chief operating officer Steven Louw were among those to have resigned, KPMG said.
CHIP RACE: Three years of overbroad export controls drove foreign competitors to pursue their own AI chips, and ‘cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,’ Nvidia said China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp’s H200s and is rejecting the artificial intelligence (AI) chip in favor of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI adviser David Sacks said, citing news reports. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) by bringing US competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signaled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work. “They’re rejecting our chips,” Sacks
Taiwan’s long-term economic competitiveness will hinge not only on national champions like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) but also on the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies, a US-based scholar has said. At a lecture in Taipei on Tuesday, Jeffrey Ding, assistant professor of political science at the George Washington University and author of "Technology and the Rise of Great Powers," argued that historical experience shows that general-purpose technologies (GPTs) — such as electricity, computers and now AI — shape long-term economic advantages through their diffusion across the broader economy. "What really matters is not who pioneers
BUBBLE? Only a handful of companies are seeing rapid revenue growth and higher valuations, and it is not enough to call the AI trend a transformation, an analyst said Artificial intelligence (AI) is entering a more challenging phase next year as companies move beyond experimentation and begin demanding clear financial returns from a technology that has delivered big gains to only a small group of early adopters, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Taiwan said yesterday. Most organizations have been able to justify AI investments through cost recovery or modest efficiency gains, but few have achieved meaningful revenue growth or long-term competitive advantage, the consultancy said in its 2026 AI Business Predictions report. This growing performance gap is forcing executives to reconsider how AI is deployed across their organizations, it said. “Many companies
China Vanke Co (萬科), China’s last major developer to have so far avoided default amid an unprecedented property crisis, has been left with little time to keep debt failure at bay after creditors spurned its proposal to push back a looming bond payment. Once China’s biggest homebuilder by sales, Vanke failed to obtain sufficient support for its plan to delay paying the 2 billion yuan (US$283.51 million) note due today, a filing to the National Association of Financial Market Institutional Investors showed late on Saturday. The proposal, along with two others on the ballot, would have allowed a one-year extension. All three
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