China made two announcements about its budget. One was that it has revised its growth forecast to 7.5% for 2012. For an economy that has grown at a rate of 10% over the last decade, the lower level is practically a recession. China says it will try to hedge its challenge with exports because of a slow global economy with a drive to increase consumption within its own borders. That decision may not make sense. China’s consumer activity relies on factory employment which relies on exports. China also said it would increase its defense budget by 10.5%. The total is only about a quarter of the US’s, but the People’s Republic believes it has to make the investment, to some extent because of America’s military presence in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Of course, one advantage to the spending is that it will create jobs. Perhaps that will help China’s other goal of increase consumer spending.
China Cuts Growth, Increases Military
Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
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