Risk Watchdog has just returned from Greater Tokyo, where I spent a week trying to get a handle on what’s happening in Japan. Regular readers will recall that I have generally been bearish on Japan’s economy, so this was a good opportunity for a first-hand refresher.

I say ‘Greater Tokyo’, because I also visited Tokyo’s [Read more...]

Suggestions of a technical default on November 26 by UAE-based Dubai World have sent shockwaves through the financial world. Not only are creditworthiness concerns reaching boiling point, but global equity markets, too, seem to initially have gone into panic mode. Business Monitor’s Liz Martins and Terry Alexander discuss the implications of a debt default by [Read more...]

 

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The news that Dubai World, one of the stalwarts of the Dubai economy, is potentially defaulting on its debt is, quite simply, massive. It highlights the sheer scale of a financial crisis that Dubai has been doing its best to keep under wraps for more than a year. The situation is far from clear, but [Read more...]

The devaluation of the Vietnamese dong by 5% on November 25 comes as little surprise for anyone having observed Hanoi’s woes in trying to combine a fixed exchange-rate regime with strongly pro-growth fiscal and monetary policy in recent years. Previous devaluations (in December 2008 and March 2009 most recently) have done little more than to [Read more...]

Following the hullabaloo of US President Barack Obama’s whistle stop tour of Asia in November – the focus of which was primarily on China, Japan, the Koreas and South East Asia – it might be logical to assume that Washington-New Delhi relations have fallen down the pecking order of America’s list of foreign policy priorities. [Read more...]

“If you have a lot of what people want and can’t get, then you can supply the demand and shovel in the dough”. – Lucky Luciano
It’s a simple enough concept, and one that helped make the father of modern organised crime in the United States cited above ‘one of the most influential builders and titans [Read more...]

A region which traditionally received only little coverage is being considered an option by an increasing number of foreign investors. Richard Hamilton, BMI’s Latin America analyst, explains why interest in the region is growing, and whether Central America should be considered a viable option for foreign investors.

 

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