[Editor's Note: Money MorningInvestment Director Keith Fitz-Gerald is one of the world's leading experts on Asia, especially China. Right now, Fitz-Gerald is leading an investment tour of the Red Dragon, and he'll be sending along regular investment travelogues to update Money Morning readers on his latest observations. Fitz-Gerald previously wrote about China’s fast-growing auto market.] By Keith Fitz-Gerald Investment Director Money Morning/The Money Map Report BEIJING, The People’s Republic of China – For the debt-ridden West, the global financial crisis has been an unmitigated disaster, forcing the so-called developed economies to take on financial commitments that will serve as burdens for years, if not for generations. For cash-rich China, however, the financial crisis is shaping up to be a major opportunity, with payoffs that will last for decades. You want proof? The China Council ...

Berkshire’s Armor Cracks; JPMorgan Bags $5 Billion Selling Deriviates; Recordati Proposes Increased Divided; China May Double Stimulus This Week; Homes Sales Continue to Break Down

After recording its worst financial results ever last year, Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.A, BRK.B) announced it would cut manufacturing jobs and close facilities to buffer itself against the recession. “Berkshire’s operating companies have taken and will continue to take cost reduction actions in response to the current economic situation, including curtailing production, reducing capital expenditures, closing facilities and reducing employment to partially compensate for the declines in demand,” the firm said in a regulatory filing yesterday, Bloomberg reported. By trading over-the-counter fixed-income derivatives, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) ...

China’s once-rampant inflation has cooled to its slowest pace is 22 months, opening the door for aggressive interest rate cuts that could potentially kick-start its economy back into high gear.

China’s consumer price index for November climbed 2.4% for the year, a sharp drop from the 4.0% posted in October and the fourth consecutive month-to-month drop, its National Statistics Bureau said today (Thursday).

Though not ideal for China’s overall economic growth, the silver lining is that falling consumer prices open a window to take a hatchet to the 5.58% benchmark interest rate, which would pump billions back into the economy and encourage banks to boost lending.

“A worst-case scenario for deflation would see producers cutting prices, suffering lower margins and slashing wages, which would eventually damp consumption,” Li Wei, an economist at Standard Chartered Bank Plc in Shanghai, told Bloomberg.

Clothing prices fell 1.7%, and transportation

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The fact is that today’s stock markets were extraordinary in their strength. Emerging markets (proxy EEM) up about 20% and the S&P 500 (proxy SPY) up about 11%.

There are important positive facts to consider:

for the past couple of weeks SPY has been trading sideways — that’s good. SPY went up 11% today — that’s good (although going up 11% after going down about 41% in the past 52 weeks, puts the index at about 35% down from its starting point). according to Bloomberg, before today, the MSCI World Index was trading at about 10.5 times trailing earnings — an historically attractive multiple. according to a table published by dshort.com, today’s rise in the S&P 500 was the 7th largest percentage gain since 1928 — that’s good (although dshort.com points out that almost all of the really powerful one day rallies in the past were inside bear markets that continued after the rally). the Fed ...

China’s economic growth rate slipped into single digits in the third quarter for the first time in at least four years under the impact of the global credit crisis and weakness in the domestic property sector. Annual gross domestic product growth slowed more sharply than expected to 9.0 per cent from 10.1 per cent in the second quarter, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Monday. It was not immediately possible to pinpoint when growth was last weaker because China does not publish new quarterly data when it revises its annual GDP figures. nor was it possible to precisely calibrate the speed of the slowdown since we do not have seasonally adjusted quarter on quarter data. China's economic expansion was the weakest since at least the second quarter of 2003, when growth slumped because of the severe acute respiratory syndrome, ...