Chief Economist & Political Strategist, CrossASEAN Research

Prasenjit K. Basu

PK Basu has 34 years experience covering Asia's economies and markets (equities, fixed income and currencies), including 20 years covering the global economy. He was Chief Economist (SE Asia & India) at Credit Suisse First Boston for 5 years, and Chief Asia (x-Jpn) Economist at Daiwa Securities for a similar period. Among other roles, he was global head of research at Maybank Kim Eng, Malaysia equity research head and chief ASEAN economist at Macquarie, Chief Economist at ICICI Securities, ASEAN economist at UBS and the first chief economist at Khazanah Nasional (where he was co-head of research, and led all agri-business initiatives). PK Basu started his career in the Asia Service of WEFA (Wharton Econometrics) in Philadelphia in 1990, rising to be Director of their Asia Service in June 1994. 
PK's book, "Asia Reborn: A continent rises from the ravages of Colonialism and War to a New Dynamism" won the Tata Literature First Book Award (non-fiction) for 2018. It is the first single chronicle of the modern economic and political history of the whole of Asia (from Iraq and Turkey to Korea and Japan, and everything in between), told from an Asian perspective.

Chief Economist & Political Strategist

Korea Stock Market Monthly Recap #26 (June 2018)

China’s Financial Risks/Deleveraging/Technology Race/Housing Crackdown/Trade War/EU Talks/RRR Cut

Breakneck Monetary Expansion Needs to Stop or Reverse in Order to Brake the RMB's Fall

EMs: Where Are the Contagion Risks from Argentina?

China and the Secular Stagnation of the West -- The Eventual Blowback Isn't Far Away

REAL-Economics.com

Thematic (Sector/Industry)

With FAI (fixed asset investment) up just 6.1% YoY in Jan-May 2018 (the slowest in 22 years), China cut banks' RRR for the second time in 10 weeks. But that effective easing of monetary policy (via a boost to the money-multiplier through a 150bp cut in reserve requirements) failed. With the US (and key EMs like India, Indonesia and Turkey) raising interest rates, the RMB depreciated by 3.6% in the second half of June 2018, its biggest depreciation in any fortnight for 24 years. Even when the RMB…

With FAI (fixed asset investment) up just 6.1% YoY in Jan-May 2018 (the slowest in 22 years), China cut banks' RRR for the second time in 10 weeks. But that effective easing of monetary policy (via a boost to the money-multiplier through a 150bp cut in reserve requirements) failed. With the US (and key EMs like India, Indonesia and Turkey) raising interest rates, the RMB depreciated by 3.6% in the second half of June 2018, its biggest depreciation in any fortnight for 24 years. Even when the RMB…

China Can't Afford the Widening Conflict with the US: RMB's Fall Is Thin End of a Strategic Wedge