Changes in the Asian markets

CNN's Kaushal Patel talks to an economic expert about how long good news will last in the Asian economy.

We've heard about the government helping out Citigroup yesterday. Today the US Federal Reserve announced that they are going to help infuse 800 billion dollars, (Right. ) what else is going to be changing the markets in the coming weeks? Well, certainly the efforts that have been most recently announced are aimed at trying to get mortgage rates down. Because although we've seen interest rates cut significantly over the last year or so, mortgage rates stay stubbornly high, so the Fed s latest action is aimed at trying to get borrowing cost down for households. And as we get closer to short term interest rates getting to zero, you are gonna to see more and more, I guess, unorthodox measures being taken by the Fed. In addition, I think what analysts are looking for, what investment managers are looking for, are more fiscal stimulus and we are probably gonna see some sort of package announced in Europe, um, today or later this week and we expect to see fiscal stimulus in the US as well.

And another big headline is the big merger, they have been talking about it for months, BHP and Rio Tinto, obviously not going to merge, where the commodities stand right now? Well, certainly commodities had a fantastic run, and we ve seen a lot of heat taken out at that market. Partly as a result of investors believing that the economic slowdown is gonna lower the demand for commodities, but also because commodities have really emerged yet again as being a financial asset with a lot of speculation in that market, and a lot of the heat has been taken out has been a reaction to the deleverage in the financial system, which is not only affecting commodities but it's also affecting liquidity in the financial system.

And talking about forecast, IMF is cutting its GDP for Asia to 6%. And the International Monetary Fund basically has said, you know, it's pushing more countries to do push for economic stimulus plans, and you said, you know we might hear one for, uh , out of the European, (Yes. ) who else could we? Well, we have already seen a massive package in China which amounts to sort of 17, 18% of GDP. Whether or not the mainland can actually spend that amount of money, it takes time to transmit the money into projects, into fiscal stimulus programs, there remains to be seen, but we are gonna say need to see a more coordinated effort, particularly in the US and with Europe to try and stimulate demand, trying to get that money into the markets in terms of supporting the consumer, particularly in the US, before we are gonna see business confidence come back. And that's really what investors are looking at now. They are looking through next year's earnings really, at the macro numbers. Weak job data, you know, prices, CPI reducing, so you are looking at prospects of deflation, you know, weaker wage growth which is really not supportive of growth as we look out into 09 and 10.

Let s concentrate on the confidence, ah, you know, there are some companies that are doing well, (indeed) ah Gold miners, pharmaceuticals, (Yes. ) which are the companies? Well, there're plenty of companies with strong cash flows, particularly in this region, you ve got companies both here in Europe and selectively in the US on very high yields as a result of the strong cash flows, and it's pretty much across most sectors. You ve got to be pretty selective. Because in this financial downturn, there are / few analysts out there covering companies, because the investment banks are pulled back from some of their core activities, so you ve gotta get down and rescrub the data and understand what's going on. But there are opportunities, but at the moment it's basically, you know, one brush across the whole market. The markets are being derated. There are opportunities there, but until confidence returns, until we see some of these measures take hold, we are not gonna see markets move up in a substantial way.