January 19, 2024
United States:
China Is Buying Up US Farmland, But Just How Much Isn’t Clear
America is seeing more and more of its most fertile land snapped up by China and other foreign buyers, yet problems with how the US tracks such data means it’s difficult to know just how much.
Foreign ownership and investment in US farmland, pastures and forests jumped to about 40 million acres in 2021, up 40% from 2016, according to Department of Agriculture data. But an analysis conducted by the US Government Accountability Office — a non-partisan watchdog that reports to Congress — found mistakes in the data, including the largest land holding linked with China being counted twice. Other challenges include the USDA’s reliance on foreigners self-reporting their activity.
Europe:
ECB Leans on Banks Seen as Slow in Addressing Property Loan Risk
The European Central Bank is leaning on lenders after finding that they aren’t doing a good enough job of looking for signs of deterioration in their real estate loans.
Banks have been “slow” to re-asses their loans as being riskier, Elizabeth McCaul, a member of the ECB’s Supervisory Board, said at a conference in Frankfurt on Friday. “So we’ve put a lot of emphasis on that.”
Asia:
China’s $6.3 Trillion Stock Selloff Is Getting Uglier by the Day
Chinese stocks just capped another dismal week, with a gauge of mainland firms listed in Hong Kong languishing at the bottom of global equity index rankings for the year so far.
Grim milestones have kept piling up in recent days: Tokyo has overtaken Shanghai as Asia’s biggest equity market, while India’s valuation premium over China has hit a record. Locally, a meltdown in Chinese shares is wreaking havoc on the nation’s asset management industry, pushing mutual fund closures to a five-year high.
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