Quite a lot was happening last month. Here is the short summary of the 10 most important developments in June. The detailed links to all the articles are on a separate sheet.

• Sino Forest. Gazillions of articles. Reinforcing the discussion in the US and also in China about reverse merger listings.

• Chinese internet companies had a rough month although with a better ending. Especially noteworthy

• the developments at YOKU, RENN and SINA.

• The IPO market in doldrums.

• Jack Ma from Alibaba is making more noise than ever. Reopens the attention to VIE variable interest entities.

• Chinese leadership active in Europe and at home. They offered a state visit to Sudan´s president.

• The credit crunch continues. SME are in the front line. Real estate developers are next. Have a frequent check on the Shibor for the current level of short term interest rates.

• Inflation keeps making headlines. Noticed that pork prices rose 70 % yoy and the very generous help for poor people .5 Yuan a month.

• Environmental issues still keep coming. Flooding and more pertinent questions about the 3 gorges dam.

• Bulls and bears on China got more arguments for their case. The same for overbuilding.

• And finally the party prepared for the 90 year festivities. Retro   

EIA takes a closer look at US nuclear power generation.

Nuclear power plants in the United States were primarily built between 1970 and 1990. The average construction time increased from 7 years for plants with construction licenses issued between 1965 and 1970 to 11 years for licenses issued between 1973 and 1977. Construction costs for nuclear power plants also escalated sharply.There are 104 nuclear units currently operating in the United States, ranging in capacity from 478 to 1317 megawatts electric (MWe), and averaging 971 MWe in capacity.

About Greece.

→ Washington’s Blog

The best quote on the Greek parliament's vote of confidence for Prime Minister George Papandreou - and thus his austerity plan:

"This is not a program to salvage the economy, it's a program for pillage before bankruptcy," said Alexis Tsipras, head of the small opposition Left Coalition.

It's not just Greece.

As PhD economist Michael Hudson said in 2009::

• The giant financial institutions have already killed their host - the real American economy

• Since they realize that the American economy is dead, they are trying to suck as much blood out of America as possible while the corpse is still warm

• Because the American economy is dead, their plan is to soon jump to another host. They will ship all of their money overseas

And see this and this.

Not only Paulson struggled. Among the star names in negative territory are also Caxton Associates, whose main fund is down 3.38%, Tudor Investment’s main fund is down 2.25%, Moore Capital’s flagship is down 2.84% and Fortress has seen its macro fund dip 2.44%, according to the latest May and June figures from investors in the funds. (FT.com ) Add Anthony Bolton’s to that list .Here is his account of why his China Special Situations fund has tanked recently, contained in its first annual report. That contrasts with Ray Dalio´s Bridgewater’s Pure Alpha Up 11 Percent This Year [II]

Hedge Funds Increasingly Bullish on Equities

Hedge Funds are increasing their gross exposure to equities to a greater degree than institutional investors. The total market value disclosed and attributable to equities for the average hedge fund in AlphaClone's universe increased 8% to $3.2 billion in Q1 2011 vs Q4 2010. By comparison the total market value attributable to equities for the average institutional fund decreased by 6% over the same period. The S&P 500 returned 5.4% in Q1 2011.AlphaClone by Maz Jadallah

Steel stocks to watch:Quite an international list. Mittal (NYSE:MT) Steel Dynamics Inc. (NASDAQ:STLD), Haynes International Inc. (NASDAQ:HAYN), Kubota Corp. (NYSE:KUB), Mechel OAO (NYSE:MTL), United States Steel Corp. (NYSE:X), POSCO (NYSE:PKX), Allegheny Technologies Inc. (NYSE:ATI), Nucor Corp. (NYSE:NUE), and AK Steel Holding Corp. (NYSE:AKS) are all posting gains today. from Wall St. Cheat Sheet

After The US and China here is India http://www.economist.com/content/indian-summary If provinces would be countries.

Former Wall Street quants looking to start companies that apply the principles of high frequency trading to the emerging market for real-time bidding across online ads,” said Bryan Birsic, a senior associate at Village Ventures. 

Expansion and growth wherever you can find it. Google plunked down a $400 million offer for New York’s AdMeld, a lot of local venture folks were surprised at the price.

RBA sees no problem with financial investors in commodities.Not everybody agrees though

http://macrobusiness.com.au/2011/06/the-commodity-bubble/

China

From SCMP.com this morning some positive news on housing

Remember last year when the world was shocked by a survey supposedly from the State Grid Corporation of China which said that 65 million apartments were empty, fuelling concerns of a property bubble? Well, stockbroker CLSA has investigated these claims and says that the figure is bogus. After talking to 20 developers in 54 cities across China CLSA believes there are approximately 16 million empty apartments.

China preparing for a hedge fund invasion.A delegation of more than 20 hedge fund operators, government officials and representatives of business organizations spent much of Monday visiting area firms and at a reception at the Stamford branch of the University of Connecticut, discussing their desire to establish a hedge fund community in FengXian, one of 18 districts that comprise Shanghai .DealBreaker.com

At China Real Time Report, Stanley Lubman examines the “critical disconnect” between China’s national and local governments, its historical roots, and its consequences in areas from food safety tointellectual property protection

Law professor Wang Weiguo recently called for reform of land ownership in China, according to Caixin Online

The Atlantic’s Max Fisher asks whether the implicit pact between Party and people in China is unravelling

Forbes Asia editor Tim Ferguson, meanwhile, argues that serious imbalances are “choking” China’s economy and brewing social instability.

from China Digital Times (CDT)

The Atlantic  In Focus last month showed a great collection of photos from China titled "Scenes from China"

This collection is only a small glimpse of modern China over the past weeks. [48 photos]

Chinese real estate is crucial for the health of the entire global economy. This map shows how the price of property has risen across China from 2000 to 2010.

Interactive map.

FT published many stories about Chinese real estate the last few days.Below are the links to the stories.

China land price fall threatens local finances

Beijing’s efforts to cool the country’s sizzling residential property market may be working too well. Local authorities are struggling to find ways to fund infrastructure projects - Jun 1 2011

Index of 100 cities gains ground

After China’s statistics agency abandoned the 70-cities property index this year, SouFun, a leading property web portal, has started to fill the gap - Jun 1 2011

Fate of China property is global concern

While official figures show 89% home ownership in the cities analysts argue that Chinese property constitutes the single most important sector for the health of the global economy - May 31 2011

Beijing’s ‘new deal’: subsidised housing

Beijing is embarking on a subsidised housing programme that is being described as the country’s ‘new deal’, designed to both ease social unrest and also maintain the rapid investment and construction-led growth of the past decade - Jun 1 2011

City races to meet clamour for public housing

The 3,000 families that moved into new government-subsidised flats in a suburb of Chongqing in May are the first beneficiaries of China’s largest public housing programme - May 31 2011

New products are still coming into the markets at a rapid pace. ETF Usage Continues to Grow...are making ETFs part of their portfolio strategy, and that’s good news for retail investors. With many innovations, institutional investors are often the first in. Later the retail investors follow. ETFs, however, have shown a slightly different pattern. PowerShares Adds Convertibles ETF to Lineup...the second ETF targeting convertibles.  Convertible securities are bonds that the holder can convert into shares of common stock of the issuer.  This feature tends to make them more correlated than non-convertible bonds to stock market movements. CVRT will try to mimic the performance of the BofA Merrill Lynch All U.S. Convertibles Index Credit Suisse Considers Hedge Fund ETFs...its top ETF executive suggested. Russell Debuts Slew Of Factor ETFs...broadened its ETF footprint considerably on Friday, rolling out a suite of ten factor ETFs offering exposure to large cap and small cap domestic equities. The aggressive expansion comes just over a week after Russell made its long awaited debut in the ETF industry with the launch of six funds offering exposure to investment discipline sub-sets  For further news on ETF´s please click here