One of the big questions of British politics in recent years (aside from who will win the 2010 general election, of course) is quite what former Prime Minister Tony Blair will do next. Still just 56, Blair has so far filled his time with a number of high-profile appointments and lucrative business deals. In the… [Read more]
With Halloween around the corner, we ask BMI’s Global Economic Strategist, Tim Cooper, if the latest Q3 GDP reading in the US is a ‘Trick’ or a ‘Treat’. For now, markets appear to be thinking the latter.
On Tuesday Risk Watchdog attended Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa’s exposition of the ‘The international economy, and the process of the citizen’s revolution in Ecuador’ at the London School of Economics. Or at least that was the title of his talk. Disappointingly there was very little description of how the citizen’s revolution is progressing in present… [Read more]
As the rally in the more common emerging market assets starts to look shaky, I see a number of reasons to like what’s on offer in frontier markets, Africa in particular. To my mind, the two assets that really stand out are Nigerian equities, and the Ugandan shilling. In the case of Nigerian stocks, I… [Read more]
As US President Barack Obama ponders whether to send an additional 40,000+ American troops to Afghanistan, the bigger question is whether the US really has enough troops to neutralise its enemies. The US has a demonstrable ability to defeat conventional military forces in places such as Iraq (1991, 2003), Serbia (1999) and Afghanistan (2001), but… [Read more]
Latin America will soon have a new currency, the Sistema Único de Compensación Regional, or Sucre, for short. It’s no coincidence that the currency’s acronym is also the name of 19th century regional independence leader, Antonio José de Sucre, close friend and ally of Simón Bolívar, in whose name the currency’s proponents (members of the… [Read more]
The release of Q3 real GDP data in China reaffirms Business Monitor’s view that the Chinese economy is already in the midst of a very strong recovery. However, Stuart Allsopp from BMI’s Asia team cautions that this does not constitute an end to the country’s economic woes and highlights that deep structural imbalances persist.
