On this week’s podcast, we interview Business Monitor Chief Economist Tim Cooper, who gives his analysis on the global outlook for 2010. Highlighted themes include relative performance of emerging markets versus developed economies, the inflation outlook, potential for ‘double dips’ in the US and China, asset allocation strategies and the risks to recovery.

 

 Standard Podcast [11:36m]
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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...]

As we enter the fourth quarter, Terry Alexander returns with an outlook on near-term market dynamics, and why we are not yet ready to change our long-held bullish view. Stuart Allsopp joins this podcast to give a little more fundamental insight into what is driving the rally in Gold.

 

 Standard Podcast [10:48m]
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In light of recent economic data from the US, Tim Cooper - Global Economic Strategist at Business Monitor International - suggests that the US recession may now be over. However, he believes that there is little to cheer about at this stage, as the recovery process will be very prolonged and slow.

 

 End Of The US Recession [10:33m]
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Further to yesterday’s musings on the return of risk appetite, I thought it would be appropriate to elaborate on the progress of an older view of mine: that of a double dip recession, which I first pointed out in December 2008. The double-dip recession scenario relied on the following checklist:

A collapse in the economy. Check.
Deflationary [Read more...]

This week’s announcement that Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve would up the ante in its purchase of debt securities has certainly made things interesting.

The Federal Reserve’s plan is to buy up to an additional US$750bn of agency mortgage-backed securities, bringing the total to US$1.25trn; increase agency debt purchases by up to US$100bn, to US$200bn; and grease [Read more...]

The outperformance of gold since the credit bubble burst and global liquidity collapsed has been staggering. Just how impressive gold’s performance has been can be seen in the chart below, which shows the ratio of spot gold to the overall commodities basket. As you can see, the price of gold in terms of everyday commodities [Read more...]