Changing Middle-East Dynamics a Game Changer for Oil.

In addition to Egypt and Syria, there were other sources of concern such as any renewed fighting between Israel and Hamas.

In a sign that growing concern about instability in the Middle East is now damaging sentiment more broadly, Alex Thursby, CEO, international and institutional banking at ANZ Bank, identified the Middle East as his biggest concern.

“Clearly if there is military action in the Middle East and it is aggressive, that puts the world in a difficult position and this would bring a lot of volatility and very quickly”.

Asia's Pension Plans Face a Big Black Hole.

Governments in Asia have been caught ill-prepared by their rapidly aging populations as they struggle to provide adequate pension cover for the elderly.

There is a yawning gap between what’s currently in state pension coffers in Asia and what’s needed to cover the elderly in retirement. And experts say if governments don’t step up pension reforms, they risk a massive funding shortfall.

“Older people already constitute a large proportion of the poor in Asia. And by the middle of this century, there will be more older people in the region than people of working age to support them. This presents a serious policy challenge for governments in the Asia and Pacific region,” said Sri Wening Handayani, principal social development specialist at the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said in a recent report that “many of the Asia-Pacific pension systems are unlikely to prove sustainable in the long term, and aging Asia needs to face up to its pension problems and needs to do so soon.”

Asian Seafood Raised on Pig Feces Approved for U.S Consumers.

At Ngoc Sinh Seafoods Trading & Processing Export Enterprise, a seafood exporter onVietnam’s southern coast, workers stand on a dirty floor sorting shrimp one hot September day. There’s trash on the floor, and flies crawl over baskets of processed shrimp stacked in an unchilled room in Ca Mau. Elsewhere in Ca Mau, Nguyen Van Hoang packs shrimp headed for the U.S. in dirty plastic tubs. He covers them in ice made with tap water that the Vietnamese Health Ministry says should be boiled before drinking because of the risk of contamination with bacteria. Vietnam ships 100 million pounds of shrimp a year to the U.S. That’s almost 8 percent of the shrimp Americans eat.

Chinese Minister says that China may better official 2012 growth target.

The minister's remarks on growth echo those made by an official from the National Bureau of Statistics in October when economic data for the third quarter revealed annual growth had dipped to 7.4 percent.

China's growth rate has slowed for seven successive quarters and is on course for its weakest full year of expansion since 1999, albeit at a pace that far outstrips the rest of the world's major economies.

China's exposure to the global trade cycle has seen growth crimped by a slow recovery in the United States and a lingering financial crisis in the European Union - the two biggest markets for goods from the country's factories.

China's $1.9 trillion of exports were worth about 31 percent of GDP in 2011, according to World Bank data and about 200 million Chinese jobs are estimated to be supported by the external sector.

Us Withholds Blame for China's Undervalued Yaun.

The U.S. Treasury on Tuesday said China's currency remained undervalued, but stopped short of labeling the world's second-biggest economy a currency manipulator.
Treasury official said China had allowed the yuan (also known as the renminbi) to appreciate 9.7 percent in nominal terms since June 2010, in the department's semi-annual currency report.

The Chinese government had also "substantially" reduced its intervention in exchange markets since the third quarter of 2011 and loosened capital controls, the Treasury said in its report, which examines the foreign exchange practices of major U.S. trading partners.