Featured · Markets
A little known US backed company has been handed 100 year concessions to 17 Venezuelan oilfields, several of them previously run by Chinese state firms. For Beijing, which has poured more than 100 billion dollars into Venezuela since 2000, the fields changing hands are the easy part to see. The debt left behind is the part that does not show up in a press release.
Infrastructure
Dubai has already put Dh13 billion in contracts to work on Al Maktoum International Airport this year, and it plans to award another Dh55 billion before the year is out. Between the piling numbers and the automated people mover contract alone, the scale here is hard to overstate.
Energy
The pipeline deal that has supplied Turkey with Iranian gas since 2001 lapsed at the end of July, right as the US Treasury turns up pressure on every country still trading with Tehran. Turkey has spent months quietly building the alternatives it would need if this exact moment arrived.
Markets
Goldman Sachs now puts Chinese growth at around 4 percent early in the third quarter, down from 4.3 percent and short of Beijing's own target. The bank reads the miss as a reason policymakers finally move, not a reason to worry, and the gap between those two reactions is the part investors are pricing.
