Markets

Europe is always a heated topic at a Conservative party conference. This year much debate has focused on David Cameron’s ongoing renegotiation of terms for staying in the EU. By contrast, the terms on which a Brexit might happen have...

Hyperinflation during the 1970s and 1980s relegated fiscal policy as the macroeconomic policy of last resort, ushering in the golden age of monetary policy. With Paul Volcker’s spectacular use of monetary policy to tame hyperinflation, which saw policy interest rates...

China's markets re-opened after the extended national holiday today.  Policymakers hit the ground running with two new initiatives.  China's own reform efforts likely drive the initiatives, but they will also enhance the likelihood that the yuan is included in the...

China's markets closed at the end of September and re-open tomorrow. It is interesting to note what has happened in the global capital markets in the interim. The US dollar has fallen against all the major currencies, but the Japanese...

Malaysia’s manufacturing sector is reversing to a state reminiscent of its post-colonial stage of development. Regrettably, this situation was avoidable. When the Federation of Malaya gained independence from Britain in 1957, economic conditions were ripe for rapid and sustained growth....

Japan is almost fully dependent on energy imports. In March 2011, a devastating earthquake and tsunami hit eastern Japan and damaged the nuclear power plant in Fukushima. This disaster led to the shutdown of all nuclear power plants due to...

The decision of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to slash the repo rate (the rate at which the RBI lends to commercial banks) by 50 basis points (bps) has surprised many. The RBI governor, Raghuram Rajan, had previously taken...

According to United Nations World Population Prospects 2015, Singapore will become a super-aged society by 2026. By then, one in five people in the country (or 1.25 million) will be aged 65 or above. The median age will exceed 44.9,...

EM is starting the week on a positive footing.  Aside from the recovery in global risk appetite, the uptick in commodity prices and the broader weaker tone in the dollar, we think the price action in Brazil has helped EM...

According to the central Chinese government, solving rural poverty and environmental degradation problems will require resettling more than 10 million citizens by 2050. This number does not include the 7 million people that have already been resettled over the last...

The recent Washington summit took the US-China bilateral relations onto a new level, while President Xi’s UN visit gave a glimpse of China’s new global role. The current characterization of the U.S.-China bilateral relations are very different trajectories of power....

1) Colombia’s central bank unexpectedly hiked its policy rate 25 bp to 4.75%, 2) Mexico extended its FX auctions, 3) Petrobras raised prices for gasoline and diesel for the first time in almost a year, 4) China’s central bank cut...

At the end of every quarter, the IMF reports official reserve holdings.  It is the most comprehensive and authoritative source of such information.  This is especially true of the currency composition of the reserves, which some countries publish freely and...

There are 195 sovereign states, according to the United Nations, and two, “observer states” (Vatican and Palestine).  The high income countries in North America, Western Europe and Asia-Pacific account for about 15% of the sovereign states.  Most of the rest...

The cliché “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here” from Dante’s Inferno appears more appropriate to the current housing situation in India than anywhere else. India is facing a daunting housing shortage of 49 million units (Tiwari and Parikh 2012)....