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...]

Tensions have been rising in the South China Sea of late, and these are threatening to put strains on China’s relations with South East Asia and the US.
Essentially, China has reiterated its long-standing claims over the whole of the South China Sea, including the Spratly and Paracel islands. Unsurprisingly, this sovereignty assertion is disputed by [Read more...]

One area of significant interest in the US energy market over the past eighteen months has been hydrocarbons extracted from shale. Strong industry interest in shale-derived gas may yet reverse the medium-term decline in US natural gas production. Shale deposits are widespread across the US, but concentrated in states such as Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania [Read more...]

Mexico’s Cemex, one of the top three cement producers in the world, has reported disappointing H1 2010 results, posting a net loss of US$642mn for the period. Although the results offer little in the way of optimism for the performance of the construction industry, they do align well with the BMI infrastructure team’s core views [Read more...]

June’s US trade statistics have shed doubt on the efficacy of President Barack Obama’s National Export Initiative (NEI) which, launched in February, aims to double US exports by 2015.
A series of marketing plans, aimed specifically at major emerging markets including India, China and Vietnam in Asia as well as Brazil and South Africa, are the [Read more...]

On a nonfarm payrolls day, and with equities looking awful on a long-term basis but well oversold on a short-term basis, Risk Watchdog is looking to the bond market for medium-term clues. Yields in the US and Germany have come down significantly over recent weeks, particularly at the long end. The immediate reason for this [Read more...]

In response to Iran’s non-compliance with the UN over its nuclear programme, and its continued support for terrorist organisations, the US Congress on June 24 passed the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act of 2010 – an amendment to the original Iran Sanctions Act of 1996.

As expected, the act tightened restrictions against Iranian commercial [Read more...]