In January 2016, Tsai Ing-wen made history after being elected as Taiwan’s first female president. Several women before her such as Park Geun-hye in South Korea, Ying-luck Shinawatra in Thailand and Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar have all risen to top political leadership in recent years. With these high-profile female politicians featured in the media, it may appear that the political glass ceiling has been shattered in East Asia.
The UK’s decision to leave the EU spurred a dramatic risk-off move through the capital markets. The dollar, yen, and gold soared. Equities and emerging market assets sold off hard. Core bond yields fell sharply.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is under siege, with presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle voicing increasingly protectionist positions. As the general election gets into full swing this fall, the anti-trade rhetoric promises to reach fever pitch, taking down TPP in the process.
It is a little known fact to many that Japan and Russia never formally entered into a peace treaty following World War II. The dispute has continued these many decades because the two countries still dispute the proper ownership of a chain of islands still held by Russia off Hokkaido.
We showed that younger age cohorts in the UK are more inclined to vote to stay in the EU than their elders. However, some suggested that this consideration is blunted by the fact that the younger people are less likely to vote.
That may have been the case, but as this Great Graphic of intention by the pollster ORB (h/t @joshTANoble) shows, the situation is more dynamic.
Looking at the varying patterns of the capital flows into Asia in the last decade, the period after the taper tantrum on 21 May 2013 until 31 October 2015 is of particular interest from both global and local perspectives.
Globally, the wave of capital flows became more volatile due to various international factors: (i) the pace of monetary policy normalization in the United States (US), (ii) the slowdown in the People’s Republic of China, (iii) the slide in oil prices, and (iv) higher political uncertainty and elevated geopolitical tensions.
Negative interest rates may be coming to America. A reality in Japan for years and a growing trend throughout Europe, negative interest rates on government bonds have wreaked havoc on financial markets and standard economic models of bond prices and monetary theory.
Negative interest rate policies, or NIRP, are intentional moves by Central Bankers to cause buyers of bonds to actually pay debtors for the privilege of lending them money.
There is a nervous calm in the capital markets today. The focus is squarely on tomorrow’s UK referendum. According to a BBC focus group, the leave camp won the debate 39%-34%. The last polls show a contest that it too close to calls in that the results are within the margin of error. The Financial Times poll of polls has it at 45%-44% in favor of Brexit.
Last year families of the Sandy Hook shooting filed a potentially precedent-setting lawsuit. They sued the manufacturer of the AR-15 rifle that Adam Lanza used to gun down 20 schoolchildren and their teachers in a small town in Connecticut in 2012.
On June 23, citizens of the United Kingdom will go to the polls to vote on whether their country will remain a member of the European Union. While the outcome will have the greatest impact on residents of Europe, it will also affect the U.S. as well.
