US President Barack Obama’s formal declaration of the end of US combat operations in Iraq on August 31 is a good a moment as any to reflect on the war, the United States’ global position, and Obama himself.

Iraq War: Have The Goals Been Achieved?

First, let me address the Iraq War itself. There were several publicly [Read more...]

On this week’s Business Monitor Podcast we assess the outlook for global treasury markets. 2010 has thus far been a gangbusters year for treasuries and the implications for interest rate and inflation expectations has heavily reinforced our core macroeconomic outlook for a major downturn in global demand growth. Key questions addressed in the podcast include: [Read more...]

 

 Global Treasury Markets: How Low Can Yields Go? [19:14m]
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For some years now, social scientists and some economic historians have spoken about how cities are displacing nation-states as the most important actors on the world stage. The latest edition of Foreign Policy magazine carries an article along these lines, with the tag ‘The age of nations is over. The new urban age has begun’. [Read more...]

Infrastructure has shown resilience in the face of the economic downturn, and investment in the sector was used to boost aggregate demand during the global recession of 2009. However, governments around the world are now moving from stimulus to austerity. As the dust settles on the new initiatives used to attract private (rather than public) [Read more...]

At long last, the Iraq War appears to be over.

The US has been winding down its troop presence in Iraq for many months now, and will have reduced this to 50,000 by the end of August from a peak of 170,000 at the height of the ‘surge’ against the insurgency there in 2007. Under a [Read more...]

On Friday, August 6, Business Monitor International’s Head of Research Terry Alexander guest hosted Closing Bell Europe. Key points of discussion included the latest Eurozone GDP releases and asset class strategies amid a rallying bond market.

Industrial commodities such as energy and base metals are highly correlated to risk appetite and hence equity markets. Below I highlight the monthly rolling correlation between Brent crude and the Dow Jones. The two main things to note are that first, on a monthly basis, the correlation stands at 0.9 (which implies a strong and [Read more...]