Markets

No one can feign surprise that the Bank of England kept policy steady.  Nor was the 9-0 vote truly surprising, though there had been some speculation that of a couple of dovish dissents.  Nevertheless, there are two important takeaways for...

There is a common ploy used by many analysts and reporters that often simply does not stand up to close scrutiny, and would in fact be mocked in the university.  The ploy is to take two time series and put...

Voters across 40 police force areas in England and Wales will go to the polls next month to choose their next police and crime commissioner (PCC). This is the second round of such elections. The first cohort of 41 PCCs...

General elections are around the corner for South Korea, scheduled for 13 April 2016. The road to the polls has been rocky, beginning with the delayed approval of electoral boundaries. The redrawn electoral map was finally passed on 2 March,...

South Korea goes to the polls on 13 April. Up for grabs are the 300 seats of the unicameral National Assembly. However, the election itself has been overshadowed by the declining popularity of President Park Geun-hye and intense infighting within...

The global energy situation is changing rapidly. The shale revolution has led to plunging oil prices that have remained around US$30 a barrel since OPEC’s failure to reach a consensus to cut oil production at its November 2014 meeting. This...

Some dovish signals from the Fed and a bounce in oil prices helped EM end last week on a firm note.  This week, the US retail sales report could be important, and the same goes for CPI and PPI data...

Recent developments in the South China Sea are a serious cause for concern for Southeast Asian states, which have a huge interest in ensuring the safety and security of these waters given their importance for international shipping. Ongoing militarisation in...

The Philippines will hold their presidential election on 9 May 2016. The dramatic campaign was until recently seen as fight between four major candidates, each gathering a roughly equal share of the vote. The Philippines will hold their presidential election...

In the EM local currency bond space, the Philippines (10-year yield -9 bp), Mexico (-5 bp), and Ukraine (-4 bp) have outperformed this week, while Peru (10-year yield +21 bp), Brazil (+18 bp), and Russia (+11 bp) have underperformed.  To...

The surging yen has been the main feature in the foreign exchange market in recent days, but its advancing streak has been stopped with today's setback.  The greenback traded briefly dipped below JPY107.70 in North America yesterday but has not...

Watch any tourism or branding campaign for an Australian city, and chances are you’ll see plenty of appealing imagery of amenities in and around the CBD – be it restaurants, nightclubs, parks or galleries. It is a common mantra in...

As the China boom passes into history and Australians are left to rethink their relationship with that vast country, politicians will seek to craft a new ‘Asia’ in the Australian imagination in response to new circumstances. That has, after all,...

The ‘China Dream’, a signature slogan of President Xi Jinping, has drawn worldwide attention. At a time when the growing assertiveness of China is being linked to the revival of the idea of Sino-centrism, the resurgence of a once ‘humiliated’...

Governments should open up their transport project funding decisions to greater scrutiny, including tabling an independent cost-benefit analysis in Parliament, recommends a new report from think-tank the Grattan Institute. Governments should open up their transport project funding decisions to greater...