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...]

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...]

In any Country Risk analyst’s tool kit, opinion polls play a very important role. Finding a large enough data series for serious analysis though is often a problem. However, for the UK there is hardly a better treasure trove of information than Anthony Wells’ excellent website UK Polling Report, where he has collated polling data [Read more...]

The departure of the speaker of the UK’s House of Commons over his handling of the MPs’ expenses scandal is now yesterday’s news (but can still be seen here). His resignation speech may only have lasted 33 seconds, but the ramifications will be much more significant.

The key point to note is that Speaker Michael Martin [Read more...]

The BBC marked the 30th anniversary of the election of former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher by re-running its coverage of the 1979 election on its BBC Parliament television channel on Bank Holiday Monday (The coverage is still available to download for UK viewers over the next week at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0074yz8)

Watching the material helped [Read more...]