What started as a peaceful protest in Tottenham (in the London Borough of Haringey) on August 6 over the police shooting of a local resident, has since erupted into spontaneous riots across the capital and elsewhere in England (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have so far been largely unaffected). Given the rapidity with which new… [Read more]

President-elect Dilma Rousseff has kicked off her cabinet appointments by announcing key figures in the economic team, reinforcing my view that the new administration will focus on continuing the economic policy mix started by the outgoing Lula government. Finance Minister Guido Mantega will remain in his post, while hawkish central bank president Henrique Meirelles is… [Read more]

A shock fall in UK house prices during September has sharpened concerns over the ailing property market. According to data from Halifax, house prices plunged 3.6% m-o-m, marking the largest fall on record (since 1983). While certainly a woeful figure, we do not believe that this necessarily portends a looming collapse in prices. The quarterly… [Read more]

We have previously highlighted on Risk Watchdog how the aftermath of the global financial crisis has exposed the structural imbalances in many developed economies, while also singling out those emerging markets which are in a fundamentally sound position to exploit the global economic recovery. Poland and Greece are certainly two prime examples at opposite ends… [Read more]

Wow, what a week. Not that markets ended up moving much, mind: as others have noticed, everything in the US closed pretty much where it opened the previous week (see Barry Ritholtz’s post on the subject). But even if those indicators indicate that nothing has changed, it is pretty clear that everything has changed. And… [Read more]