Let’s rewind two years, to a time before ‘credit crunch’, ‘quantitative easing’, ‘TARP’ or ‘staycation’ had entered the popular vocabulary. I’m talking about a time in which the term ‘currency manipulator’ was part of the zeitgeist of US-China economic relations. Today, G20 summits come and go without this phrase, which once seemed almost ubiquitous, being… [Read more]
YouGov has launched a major innovation in British political opinion polling, together with Sky News: a daily tracker poll during the UK party conference season. Normally, we can expect nine or ten polls to be issued every month by the various agencies, so this on first impression seems like a major development which more accurately… [Read more]
Germany’s general elections on Sunday produced a victory for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which now looks set to form a coalition with the centre-right Free Democrats (FDP). The two parties would have a parliamentary majority of 42. This will bring to an end four years of the ‘Grand Coalition’ between the CDU and the… [Read more]
With the return of ousted President Manuel Zelaya to Honduras following June’s military coup, we examine how the political stalemate is likely to unfold over the coming days and weeks, and why events in this small Central American country have taken on such regional importance.
There’s been renewed speculation about the 2012 Russian presidential election of late, with both incumbent Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin both hinting that they could run. If both do so, then there could be a genuinely competitive race for the first time since 1996. The Medvedev-Putin double-act was always a bit awkward. Putin… [Read more]
With the economic cycle having hit bottom and turning, thanks in no small part to massive fiscal and monetary stimulus, attention is now turning to when that stimulus is likely to be withdrawn. For me, the likelihood is that tighter policy is going to be put off as long as possible by the authorities in… [Read more]
One of the things that has been keeping me awake at night lately is Japan’s horrendous government debt burden. This is already more than 170% of GDP and will only keep rising as the budget deficit surges this year and GDP plummets. I forecast government debt reaching 250% of GDP by the end of 2018,… [Read more]
