For all the doom and gloom surrounding European markets on the back of the Greek sovereign crisis and concomitant sell-off in euro and sterling, emerging market currencies in the region still look bid. Traditionally, when EUR/US$ has weakened, so too have benchmark central European cross rates such as PLN/EUR and CZK/EUR. However, this correlation has [Read more...]

There was a time when audio or video messages issued by Osama bin Laden would be front-page news, and we’d all wonder if a new al-Qaeda terror attack was imminent.

However, in recent years, a widespread belief has developed that bin Laden is irrelevant, and that the real terror threat to the West comes [Read more...]

Fiscal deficit management and debt sustainability are two vital economic themes right now, given that governments across the world have been boosting public spending to reinvigorate their economies. In this respect, two charts immediately grab my attention. These charts appeared in Business Monitor Online earlier today, and in BMI’s weekly Emerging Markets Monitor magazine.

The [Read more...]

We are now seeing the first major effects of the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. National governments have finally decided on the appointments for the new roles of president of the European Council and High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Both are going to be filled by politicians, who, to put it charitably, [Read more...]

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 [Read more...]

With the centre-right taking control in Germany and polls suggesting the same for the UK in 2010, we ask David Snowdon, Global Economic Strategist at BMI, to examine the potential policy repercussions for Western Europe and beyond. While the centre-left has lost ground electorally, David suggests that this may not necessarily herald a major ideological [Read more...]

 

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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...]