and have it survives. >> coming up this hour, x minus m may no longer be the formula for the growth that countries pursue at all costs. plus, the good, the bad, and the ugly. we are going to take a look at sustainable urban living in the 21st country. which asian cities would want it and which get the thumbs down? and hubert and cottage cheese go first class. find out why consumers on both sides of the pacific might have to pay a little more. all that and more in this monday edition of "asia edge." >> im keeping my eye on the markets as we kick off the new trading week. as you can see, most of the region in red for the first trading session. spooking some investors that the

fed rate hike might come as soon as june. that is what is pushing down the markets and weak data out of the chinese market. we are off about .25% there, basically erasing earlier losses. oil, let's take a look at that. when you look at brent futures, we are talking about higher compared to back then. as for what equity markets are doing, let me show you very quickly what currencies are -- dollar-yen, the yen strengthening against the dollar. the dollar surging on the back of the january jobs report. evening here in asia.

aussie dollar, $.77. that is a 5.5-year low. now more bearish options against the aussie than you do against the euro. that is something to watch. let me leave it there for now and i will be back later. back to you. >> prominent names alleged drug wars, and arms dealers are among people named in secret hsbc files on tax. the documents show the banks swiss unit may have helped wealthy clients pay less than there do. -- their due. >> a report by the international consortium of investigative journalists says that hsbc helped wealthy customers conceal assets, advised them on how to

get around tax authorities, and those clients including hollywood stars, royalty and an array of criminals. their report says hsbc engaged in activities such as allowing clients to withdraw bricks of cash aggressively-marketed schemes likely to help wealthy clients avoid european taxes also colluding with some clients to conceal accounts, and other things that would be frowned upon by the banking community. the files cover 2005 to 2007 and show thousands of of accounts host -- of accounts holding billions of dollars in assets. hsbc admitted to the wrongdoing. the swiss unit is saying that they acknowledge and are accountable for past compliance and that they have taken significant steps over the past several years to implement reforms as well as throw clients

who do not meet strict hsbc standards. what happened, basically, is that the swiss army was not fully integrated into hsbc when they purchased it back in 1999. they say that, since 2007, they cut their client base by 70% in order to adhere to this stricter regulation. >> thank you so much for that. >> headlines out of ubs. trouble with regulators again. investigators are determining whether the bank misled clients over one of its forex products. they have been speaking with several employees to find out if the bank misrepresented prices on currency transactions. the wall street journal saying that u.s. authorities are looking into the hiring of the son of a chinese commerce minister. reports that he was hired

despite poor performance in job interviews among other things. no one was accused of any wrongdoing by the newspaper. rallying in hong kong soon after returning to trading in hong kong. shares halted for more than one week after they announced plans to buy a troubled developer. it has said it will buy the rest -- shares do remain suspended. >> let's get back to the markets for you right now. david is watching the shanghai composite. investors reacting to the latest trade figures. >> we are watching what the chinese markets have been doing. in fact, you take a look at what is happening, what i can tell you -- let's leave it there.

the earlier loss, we are now up by .7%. falling the most in a week. helped guide the yuan weaker because of the collapsed in imports and really weak trade data. >> we are talking china with our guests all morning. they think the government should not focus on moving away too much from the growth numbers. >> china is a country that probably puts too much emphasis on gdp. a bunch of other countries worldwide tend to do the same thing. there is nothing wrong with generating a lot of income for your population. but again, we should be focusing on efficiency, making sure things are priced properly households are maximizing their

utility or getting the fruits of their labor and stop trying to target gdp as sort of a policy measure. >> we also spoke to a portfolio manager who is expecting more monetary easing from china this year. >> we will see more support from the pboc sometime this year. i would also expect china to go back to some sort of old recipes , helping infrastructure investment, providing further programs for support. so you need to spend more. we will see a revival in these old recipes. nothing new from a liquidity point of view because that will be supported to the old economies, the traditional stocks. >> australian dollar continues to take a hit. china data having your impact on the dollar than --

>> we have seen some decent weakness in the australian dollar. that is down to the fairly poor trade balance out of china having a bigger effect. a lot of people are shorting names like for to skew metals -- fortescue metals. we are just so used to political instability here in australia. it is a wonder we are attracting any foreign capital at all. >> that is the word on china. >> well, the putative report against tony abbott came to nothing. question do remain about his leadership. live pictures of question time taking place in parliament. this is in canberra as we have mp's asking him questions.

we already had him talking to the press a short while ago. he says a new government or the good government starts today. that is the theme of the moment and just trillion parliament. tony abbott defending his position after winning out that vote, 61-39. these are a few of the words he is actually saying. >> it is right that this party has extensively honored him. he will always be remembered as more than simply based on of his party -- simply a son of his party. he will be remembered as a great son of australia p on the half -- of australia. on behalf of everyone on this side of the house, i extend to his widow and to his family the deepest condolences of the government and of australia. thank you. >> tony abbott on the death of a

labour party official. >> still to come this hour, asian cities overtake their north american counterparts in terms of sustainable living. but it is not all great news for the region. we will tell you why a little later in the program. coming up next, weakening demand , falling commodity prices indicating a rocky path ahead for china's economy. what now after a record high trade surplus? we are going to be asking our guests that after a short break. ♪

>> take a look at some world news for you right now. the search continues for the final three people still unaccounted for from last week's transasia crash in taipei. 40 people are known to have perished while 15 survived. it has been revealed that

transasia managed to delay new safety rules that may have averted the disaster. the concern was minimum time required for preflight checks the latest private enterprise rocket launch has been postponed. spacex halted the countdown just minutes before liftoff because of a glitch in the radar tracking system. the delay is another blow to spacex after last month's failed attempt to land a rocket on a floating barge. they will try another launch later. in chile, they have found the wreckage of a plane that crashed 54 years ago. it came down in the andes april 3, 1961. all 24 people on board were killed including eight members of what was then one of chile's top football teams. they have refused to reveal exactly where the crash site is

saying they do not want it to become a tourist attraction. >> let's get some perspective on this. mark, let's start off with the china trade data, record surplus. i think ubs has done too much into it. >> anything has to do -- that has to do with china will be distorted by the year on year impacts. >> last year was no february, so we can slack on this one. >> a lot of noise. do not forget, the prices of the imports have come down significant leap. we have to be careful about volumes. the commodities themselves have come down significantly. >> even if you do take that into account, there is concern that with a precipitous fall of imports, it also indicates that

perhaps the domestic economy is not doing so well and we already know that. >> the most important thing about china is it is not about what the number is but how it is made up. what is the economy actually doing? the way i have been told to think about this when we look at equities, does this come from margin expansion or is it using stuff better and more efficiently? we know transition -- china is transitioning into an economy that uses things more efficiently. >> electricity being one of their keys. it is not apples and pears, is it? >> one of the things i have been talking about is that china has changed. parts of it are still developing, but it is a developed economy. they want different things.

they bought more iphones than in the u.s. all of our indicators need to look at the u.s., consumer expenditure surveys on how people are spending their money. the point is that what we cannot do is say, this data does not apply anymore. we have to try and find new measures, new ways of understanding. >> like what? if you were to take a look at the data sets right now power consumption trade -- >> electricity was one of them. let's look at things like travel , online expenditures, the data that is coming back from the likes of apple about where the demand is coming from.

we hear luxury goods are not doing quite so well. but the medium-price guys are doing well. we can get things from alibaba. we have to assemble a whole new toolkit. we have to change the way we think how china is going to interact with the rest of the world. not just sucking in imports and shoving out large amounts of small value-added -- they are changing. >> steve engle said china is building the hardware. the tougher job is building the software that goes with it. >> you have a developed economy now. it is still a developing market. the real story in china is going to be how you actually fit a

21st century financial market on top of that economy. >> and what type of monetary policy is put in place to assist that growth. >> what about making sure that the liquidity goes to the right place. there is a 70 billion trillion tracked behind the currency dam. dig some irrigation to let it flow through the economy. >> it is a great analogy, but it is very much harder to do it. >> allow the shadow banking system to emerge absorb it into the banking system. allow some of that pressure out. you built the infrastructure.

this is part of the hardware. you are building the hardware so that when you are ready, you can interact with the rest of the world. your portfolio is going to have things that do not even exist right now. that will be infrastructure bonds, the restructured s.o.e. convertible debt. you have got to be patient. there is always an amount of change coming down the line. we have to accept that the economy has already changed and is changing. the financial markets are going to change to match it. andy ferguson coined chimerica. china and america. >> we will take a break but there will be a group discussion coming up in about 20 time.

>> still to come, why shipment of yogurt cottage cheese, and potatoes are now traveling first class to asia. details coming up. ♪

>> time to get you ahead to some of the key events in the u.s. this week. shelby holiday with more from new york.

>> wall street is focused on europe next week as eurozone finance ministers gathered to discuss greece's debt in brussels. the meeting taking place a day before a full eu summit comes a week after the european central bank restricted loans to greece's financial system essentially cutting off a critical funding artery. angela merkel is set to visit washington d.c. on monday after a week of peace talks with francois hollande and vladimir putin. the german chancellor and president obama will discuss russia's military aggression in ukraine, climate change, and common -- and counterterrorism investigations. as americans continue to look into the source of the cyber attack on anthem, the white house is set to hold a cyber security summit at stanford university on sunday. the event will convene public and private leaders from a variety of industries. on the earnings front, the

latest numbers from major food and beverage companies including coca-cola, pepsi co. whole foods, and molson-coors. >> that was shelby holliday. >> the delay of the shipping industry on the west coast might be causing $2 billion a day. however another industry is benefiting as we have been discussing all morning today. it is how much people are prepared to pay to airlift their stuff instead. >> looked like a hefty price. if you look at the production line and the diverting of cargo on seafarer, some are saying, we have to do it. air transport, they said, could cost 15% -- 15 to 20 times more.

nearly $60 billion a month just for air transport. there you can see the video where you see the ships just grounded in the west coast ports over the weekend. again, we are talking about really helping the asian airlines here. it is a bigger business than what they see against their u.s. peers. 24% of its sales come from freight. compared to united, just under 3%. on the west coast, a lot of opportunity as well. san francisco, seattle, the largest gains in major u.s. airports in terms of growth. >> the question is how long this goes on for. that is the question. >> in terms of airlines, experts say they can benefit for up to three months. we will see how things look. that negotiation still going on. >> thank you.

>> we are looking forward to the afternoon business in tokyo. the morning session saw japanese equities rise after the yen fell against the u.s. dollar. there is a lot of optimism that that surge we saw in the jobs report is fueling a better economy. but also the federal reserve to raise interest rates sooner. japanese stocks rising, but asian stocks in the rest of the region falling be we will get the latest on japan's reopening after the break. ♪

>> crude maintains last week's gains. weak u.s. and chinese data depressed the equity markets. hsbc's swiss equity unit is accused of helping clients. tax -- clients dodge tax. and winners and losers. the great debate on urban living. aviation investigators in taipei are trying to pin down exactly what happened in the trans-asia plane crash last week. it has been revealed that the

airline managed to delay new safety regulations that may have averted the disaster. bloomberg news reporter tim is covering this story in taipei. what are these new rules and what was transasia's role? >> good morning. the key issue here, as you may remember in july of last year, the same type of aircraft from the same airline crash on approach. since that crash, there was a detailed investigation and the preliminary report was reads -- was released in december. after that, the regulator gave a list of items that they wanted transasia to look into and enact. among that list was the requirement that they wanted these planes to sit at the gate for at least 30 minutes before

-- as a minimum transit time. they want to the pilots to take their time to do normal things like take a bathroom break or have a quick meal or whatever. they also wanted to make sure they had enough time in the cockpit to go through the three -- the preflight check. what we found a day prior to the crash, they spend only 20 minutes at the gate. there is no evidence this would have necessarily prevented the crash. after further investigation, we found that they did not breach the law because when the aviation authorities asked them to implement this 30-minute minimum hazard time, trans-asia pushed back and said look we have already released our schedule for january and february. can we start it later? the regulators agreed and said they could start march 1. that does not necessarily mean that, had it been implemented, it would have prevented the

crash, but there are a lot of items that the administration wanted transasia to put into place. transasia was successful in implementing the delay. >> it does point to all of these preflight checks and safety. as you said, it was more of the engines that seemed to be an issue. what more do we know about the investigation us far? -- thus far? >> about 37 seconds after takeoff, still during the climbing phase of the fight -- of the flight, the pilot did get a warning for the number two engine, which is on the right side of the aircraft. that morning indicated that there may have been an engine flameout. what happened at the same time was that the propeller -- it is

a propeller aircraft, not a jet aircraft, the propeller went into a feathering mode. it goes on its side and the reason for that is to event drag. it is no longer creating thrust and it becomes a drag on the aircraft but it was still spinning. soon after the impact, the pilots of the aircraft actually started easing back the left engine. for the following few minutes, they had a discussion in the cockpit and at one point discussed an engine flameout. there was a made a call. as we know, the flight crashed into the river and cost at least 40 lies. >> it is incredible video that just keeps playing. hard to forget. thank you for that. >> david ingles, a day for the

bears. >> mostly. shanghai composite managing to turn around earlier losses. again below water given how volatile that market is. ansell started trading today. china 50 is the index it tracks. australia, the biggest movers here, ansell up over 4%. fairfax media dropping the most since 2012 on reports this morning that tina reinhardt might be selling most of her stake in the company. westfield, for the first time getting this rating of bbb+. onto japan. fairly simple one here. these three companies all reporting better-than-expected

results. for the full year, which ends about two months from now. southeast asia, the biggest movers here. lower dividend guidance. singapore air hsbc cutting to neutral. they say the stock has done well. universal robina up over 5%. special dividend declared this money. mtr, the subway system in hong kong, signing this concession agreement for this beijing metro line. we are talking 50 kilometers. three major districts, 29 stations. something to look forward to. china resuming trade today with

kaisa looking at an offer of 180 hong kong dollars per share in china. let me leave it there. back to you. >> thanks, david. shares of chinese property firms are among the standup performers today in hong kong following news of a deal to buy in battle rival kaisa. looks like they picked up kaisa and then confidence among investors. >> exactly. 4.5% on the markets. it may be better news for kaisa because it helps the cash-strap developer, it prevents them from being the first chinese real estate company to default on its dollar-denominated bonds. that is the big story.

they are continuing to one that chinese companies will default on debt. . it nearly missed a bond payment. warnings by the ratings agencies that this will happen again and in more industries. >> so we should be watching out for this. >> absolutely. and the warnings are specific. let's look at what some of them are saying. moody's predicting an increase in lpo's at property firms following kaisa nearly missing payment. s&p says nearly 10 developers have we cash positions and debt maturing in the coming months. fitch saying that the president of a chinese bank is under investigation, underscoring management and political risks. very interesting. >> these quick departures have been very indicative of concerns of the troubles there.

thank you. >> we are going to look at some corporate headlines so far today. >> alibaba is hosting -- hoping to boost the use of its mobile operating system by purchasing a state in a smartphone maker. the $590 million investment will see their os integrated onto meizu;''s hardware. in china, nine out of 10 mobile's run google's software. mtr is part of a consortium building a new subway line in beijing. there will be 29 stations across three major districts and is expected to open in two phases. it will be one of four to be constructed in beijing this year. jaguar land rover will recall of two 104,00 cars in north america after safety concerns.

u.s. regulators published notices highlighting brak issuese which could increase the risk of a crash. it affect range rover models of between 2005 and 2012 and is expected to begin next month. those are your top corporate headlines this hour. >> gdp gdp, gdp. should we be doing that? does it really represent the best measure of a country's economic health? david has been trying to find the answer for us and here he is. >> i think we do have to make a distinction between the welfare and the quality of life of the country's people. one measure -- let's get a background here. prior to the great depression policy makers did not have something to look at when it came to looking at the overall health of the economy.

as you see on your screen, such a measure was born. the idea was to have a measure that would capture activity individuals, firms, and the government. a couple decades later economists looked at the shortcomings of being dependent on this one concept. the king of bhutan declared his and is not to increase gdp but to increase gnh which is the gross national happiness. certainly a very good objective. despite that, in 1999, it was declared by -- it was declared as the greatest achievement of the century. 10 years later, the french government co-authored a report calling an end to this obsession

or what was then termed "gdp fetishism." that same year, on top of other measures, is they announced they would also survey happiness. in the process lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. local governments evaluated on delivering stellar gdp growth. of course, the unwanted byproducts of that are problems that china has only recently started to address, which is what you are looking at right now. record pollution, corruption, and traffic jams. two years ago, chinese president xi jinping said growth would no longer be the sole regiment of government performance. for all the benefits and advantages of gdp, measuring its growth what is unclear is how this increase in output is a

good measure of everyone's welfare, well-being, and quality of life. if you are driving that sparkling new ferrari it does not, help if you are stuck in traffic, breathing unreadable air and eating uneatable food. >> up next, what economic indicators should governments focus on? we will discuss all of that and more when "asia edge" returns. ♪

>> north korea has fired short-range missiles off its eastern coast a day after state television showed pictures of kim jong-un at tests of a new anti-ship rocket.

the tests come after south korea-u.s. military exercises. last week the north said it would no longer negotiate with the u.s. after president obama predicted the regime would eventually collapse. the weekend election in delhi may show that prime minister narendra modi is not invincible after all. a sweeping victory for the anticorruption party. official results are due on tuesday. surveys say that the anticorruption party is ahead. he ran daily for seven weeks last year before resigning when an anticorruption bill was rejected. the new greek prime minister has outlined his plan for recovery in a speech that puts him on collision course with the country's creditors. he for a bridge loan rather than

a bailout extension. the former fed chairman alan greenspan says the greek exit from the euro was simply a matter of time because no one will risk lending any more money. >> joining me, angie, steve, yvonne, and martin. this is about central banks greece whether greece stays in the road or not. alan greenspan said it is only a matter of time. we heard this three years ago. >> three years ago, it was whether the euro is self would break up. as a result, you had a currency -- all the liquidity came out of the periphery and back to the core. this time around, the euro will

be saved, whatever it takes, which was the great druggie -- great draghi statement from 2012. people are still talking a greek exit, but they do not think it will break up the euro. if you let greece leave, you might not get paid back in euros. >> what happens to greece if they do break away? >> they would get their own currency back and would have to go like any other weak currency. >> what about depreciation? >> it might drop slightly. they are in the crisis. the whole issue here is not liquid -- it is about liquidity as much as anything else. who is going to lend it to you? there is always a price. if you do not know what the rules are people are going to

stand back and say, are we going to wait to see what happens? >> barclays mentioned last week that they think there is a higher chance of a greek exit than 2012. do you see that? >> in 2012, they were risking breaking of the whole currency. everyone was behind. please don't go. you must stay. now they are saying, go if you want to go. the currency is not going to go. if you want out, you can, but we can only go so far with this whole charade. >>for tsipras, how can you pull back on security measures if you have nothing to pay with. >> the real concern is we are going to spend more money. then how do you actually do that question -- do that? there is no rationale behind the

austerity of you have got to undo so much history corruption, poor spending and a whole infrastructure where someone who is working in a factory in germany is paying for their retired man in greece. >> and they will not let them forget that, the german tabloid. german two-year bonds, negative yields. 20 basis points below zero. how does that work? what does that tell us? what is the story with these bond yields. they seem to be doing everything which is counterintuitive. >> a year ago, people forecasted strong economic growth and therefore bond yields were rising. there was stronger economic growth and bond yields went down. this year, people will realize that there are distortions introduced by q.e. >> just like equity markets do

not reflect what is going on in the real economy half the time. >> my point is that markets lost touch with reality in the way that equities did in 2000. and the way the japanese equities did in 1989, 1990. the money gets trapped in the asset class and then it rotates in the asset class and gets more expansion -- expensive. the whole asset class gets out of line with fundamentals. 25 years ago, 15 years ago and looking at these bond, the only people that are buying them are central banks, essentially governments. the governments come in and say, we are going to buy these bonds off you and you must now put that back into the real economy. they do not do that. we're going to give it to the americans, the u.s. market. it stays trapped. if you sat there in 1990, 2000 looked at the japanese market

everything was just fine. suddenly, it had all come undone very quickly. that is what makes me worry. >> can i go on a drastic tangent? we had some trade data in china. concerns about the imports. concern about the exports as well. do you think that there is -- that there should be global concern about austerity, corruption in the eurozone? the dampening effect there? >> two things. look at the data. the data is very different in terms of what china is doing. they have become a developed economy and we are building a new financial market on top a whole different set of data. you mentioned gdp before the break. we need to look at national income. for a lot of people exporting to china the output looks the same, but the income is

available. we have to look at a whole different set of data and recognize it is not whether the gdp is 7.1% or 7.5% in shanghai said they were not going to look at gdp, which is fantastic. we are coming from a period where, having set targets capital is allocated. that is all being unwound. that is not a problem unless you are the guy selling them the expensive stuff. >> mark tinker from axa. >> thanks, mark. still to come, where can you find the world's most sustainable living? some of the top places to live are right here in asia. we will talk about the winners and the losers. ♪

>> singapore, they have taken the honors in a new report about the worlds most sustainable cities. >> hold on with that for a second. asia is also home to the worst performers. we are taking a look at why hong kong wins applause while comes down for jakarta. >> jakarta has one of the fastest-growing urban populations in the world. according to consultants here the city is not keeping up. it ranks jakarta 45 out of 50 cities surveyed for sustainability. it did well on air quality, price of property, and literacy. the shortage for clean water especially in slums like these.

new the percent of households in jakarta to not have access to safe water for cooking and drinking. under the president the goal is to have access to clean water for all by 2019. nearly 58 billion u.s. dollars in the next five years. hong kong made it to the top 10 coming in at number eight. the city is often dismissed as an urban jungle. but it at -- it offers the greatest percentage of accessible green space of all the cities in asia. it also fared well on education and life expectancy. one of the best places to do business. however, there is more work-life balance work hours are about 20% longer than the global average. and the soaring price of property is a major factor making hong kong and expensive place to live. >> that is the thing.

you look outside today, the pollution is -- you can feel it in your lungs. >> that is it for us on this edition of "asia edge."

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