I’ve just come back from visiting Syria. The country is certainly on the tourist map these days judging by the busloads of European visitors. And economically, Syria has strong prospects: BMI is forecasting real GDP growth in the 3.5-5.0% range over the coming five years. Politically, however, I don’t see much prospect of change in [Read more...]

Upon her return from the United Arab Emirates, we ask Liz Martins from the Middle East desk at BMI to share some of her views on the country and its prospects of weathering the macroeconomic storm hitting the region.

 

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Eight years after the ‘9/11’ terror attacks, the outcome of the subsequent ‘War on Terror’ is still inconclusive.
Overall, I have not really changed my view from the blog post I wrote on the seventh anniversary.
Neither ‘the West’ and its allied governments nor al-Qaeda and its offshoots have scored a decisive blow. In any case, as [Read more...]

‘Islamic banks have withstood the recent turmoil in the global banking industry triggered by the subprime mortgage crisis because their rules do not allow dealings in products like derivatives, options or papers that caused the meltdown.’

At least that’s what I keep reading in the media. And it’s a fair point. If the credit crunch was [Read more...]

At a Wall Street Journal conference in California last week, billionaire Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens said: ‘If you don’t think we’ll see US$200 to US$300 oil in 10 years, you are kidding yourself. You think OPEC is a free market? We [Americans] have no control over what is going on.’ Sure, oil prices aren’t [Read more...]

President-Elect Barack Obama certainly has a strong political hand going into his inauguration on January 20. Not only did he secure an emphatic electoral college vote, and a six point lead in the popular vote, but the Democrats have secure majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as a majority [Read more...]