Bank of Italy governor Mario Draghi has been quoted as saying that Italy’s economy will take four years to grow back to its 2007 size, and that budget deficits and public debt will grow substantially over this period. That is bad news for Italy, but these problems are also pervading the world’s other major economies…. [Read more]
Your correspondent has just returned from an 18-day odyssey through China, with the aim of having an adventure, but also with an eye for economic developments. China did not disappoint on either front. Anecdotal observations should always be taken with a large grain of salt when it comes to confirming economic assumptions, and this is… [Read more]
As I write this, several key equity markets look set to fly. Regular readers of Business Monitor Online and BMI‘s weekly Emerging Markets Monitor magazine will know that my colleagues and I have been mentioning the 8,850 level for the Dow Jones. A break above this point could see global equities really fly, which of… [Read more]
Amid all the hullabaloo over massive second quarter profits at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase, I think it worthwhile to point out that it isn’t just US banks that are performing well. Turkish banks reported huge net profit gains in Q109, even as the domestic economy contracted by a whopping 13.8% y-o-y. To give… [Read more]
Nigeria’s main militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, has announced a 60-day ceasefire in a bid to kick start talks with the government. Albeit a fragile truce, the news should provide a boost for the government’s bolder stance on a host of political and economic policies, not least on the… [Read more]
One of the consequences of China’s crackdown on the Uighurs of Xinjiang Autonomous Region is that it could tarnish the country’s standing in the eyes of Muslim nations (and other countries for that matter, but the key point here is that Uighurs are Muslims). This would be a setback for Beijing’s hopes of emerging as… [Read more]
My colleagues and I have long viewed the spread of the Russian 5-year credit default swap (CDS) over its Turkish counterpart as a useful broad-based indicator for investor risk perceptions in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). While Russia’s relatively weaker macroeconomic profile has meant that its sovereign CDS has underperformed amid spikes in investor risk… [Read more]
