In case you didn’t notice, Sunday December 27 marked the 30th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which we now know was a pivotal event in world history. It was partly with this anniversary in mind that I recently read Artyom Borovik’s The Hidden War: A Russian Journalist’s Account of the Soviet War in… [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… [Read more]

My initial reaction at being handed the opportunity to review Riccardo Rebonato’s 2007 work on financial risk, Plight of the Fortune Tellers, was one of enthusiasm (the name’s not Risk Watchdog for nothing). However, while the book proved insightful, I realised early on that I was reading it two years too late. Prior to Lehman’s… [Read more]

Global politics and commerce have long been centred on major basins, starting with the Mediterranean, then shifting to the Atlantic and later the Pacific oceans. In recent years, the Indian Ocean has emerged as the focus of a new geopolitical competition and a realm for promoting ‘South-South’ trade and investment, especially between China-India and Africa…. [Read more]

At a time when the global financial crisis has brought the majority of economies around the world to their knees, Paul Collier’s The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It reminds us that for a significant portion of the world’s population, the events of the ongoing ‘Great… [Read more]

Books about the rise of China (and to a lesser degree India) are a dime a dozen these days, begging the question of why we should still pay attention to them. However, Martin Jacques’ When China Rules The World: The Rise Of The Middle Kingdom And The End Of The Western World does at least… [Read more]

Scenario planning is an essential element of risk analysis and management, and my colleagues and I at Business Monitor International constantly have to envisage potential chains of events in economies, financial markets, and the political arena. With this in mind, I thought I’d take the opportunity to comment on a book I read recently: 7… [Read more]