Earlier today, I attended a panel discussion on the political crisis in Syria at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Although the event had been planned in advance, today’s meeting took place with Russia’s and China’s weekend veto of a UN Security Council resolution on Syria fresh in everyone’s minds. Below, I summarise the main… [Read more]
Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos appointed Manuel Vicente as Minister for Economic Coordination on January 30, in a move which we believe gives some clarity over the country’s future leadership. In his new post, Vicente, the former CEO of state-owned oil giant Sonangol, is likely to have a wide range of policy-making powers and… [Read more]
Regular readers of this website will recall that we coined the acronym BLANKs in 2008 to refer to a group of extreme frontier market economies in Asia which have considerable development potential, but are being constrained by highly unusual or adverse political or geopolitical conditions. These are Burma (Myanmar), Laos, Afghanistan, and North Korea. All… [Read more]
Japan and Italy have quite a bit in common. Both have histories stretching back 2,700 years. More recently, both are underperforming economies that have accumulated colossal debt burdens which rapidly ageing (and in Japan’s case, already shrinking) populations will struggle to pay off. In addition, both countries have weak political systems characterised by dozens of… [Read more]
In Business Monitor Online today, we outline key risks in two economies. In the case of Croatia, we retain our view that the government will seek IMF backing of some sort this year, which will help avert a full-blown crisis in the economy. This is predicated on the increasingly difficult conditions for Croatian financial markets… [Read more]
After a volatile year and a seemingly robust start to 2012, Mark Schaltuper, Head of Europe Country Risk & Financial Markets, asked Business Monitor’s Commodities team what the outlook for commodities is for the remainder of the year. John Davies, Ed Coughlan and Ophelie Buchet share their views on the upside potential for the commodity… [Read more]
US Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on Wednesday, January 25, called for the United States to expand its space programme. In particular, he stated that the US would have a permanent base on the moon by the end of his putative second term, ie January 2021. This echoed former president George W. Bush’s goal of… [Read more]
