Markets

Last week's drama was not the beginning of something as the pessimists and cynics would have it.  Our inclination that it was the end of something--that the pendulum had swung unreasonably far unreasonably quickly--is panning out    Last week's drama...

‘Womenomics’ is a key pillar of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s economic growth strategy. In 2013, just 64 per cent of Japanese women aged 15–64 were participating in the labour force — a low rate by OECD standards. As Japan’s labour...

Despite having won the president and vice-president posts respectively, Joko Widodo and Jusuf Kalla will possess little control, if at all, on the formulation of the next Indonesian budget for fiscal year 2015–16. One particular issue that concerns the new...

Emerging market assets have started off the week mixed, with few clear signals to follow. The major currencies also appear directionless at the moment; though eurozone flash PMIs on Thursday could help put the spotlight back on weakness there.As long...

Many have hailed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s maiden speech to the United Nations General Assembly as a historic shift away from the speeches of past Indian heads of government. But in reality, Modi’s speech is more a continuation of the...

For Vietnamese youth, a university degree is the entry ticket to the middle class and a promise (often unfulfilled) of an urban professional job. Enrolment in higher education has grown from 162,000 in 1992 to over two million last year,...

On 1 July 2014, the Abe government made a cabinet decision to reinterpret the Article 9 peace clause of Japan’s constitution to recognise the exercise of collective self-defence under limited circumstances. While the scope of the proposed changes are an...

When Xi Jinping ascended to the Chinese presidency, he, Premier Li Keqiang and their streamlined seven-person Politburo Standing Committee faced serious economic challenges at home as well as increasingly complex issues to manage abroad.Domestically, the Bo Xilai affair hovered over...

After wild swings at midweek (October 15), the US dollar spent the last two sessions of the week consolidating.   While we expect the Federal Reserve will not be distracted by the recent market turmoil, or the softening of some...

Under the leadership of Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) in March-April 2013 did a 180-degree turnaround: it declared that it had the monetary policy wherewithal to end Japan’s chronic, mild deflation and secure a rate of inflation...

1) OPEC members have started a price war even as their oil output climbed to the highest level in over a year2) Recent inflation data out of India came as a much welcomed relief, and a fuel subsidy reduction is...

The market is a fickle mistress.  At the end of September, and at the start of this month, we pushed against the hawkish read of the Fed’s dot-plots.  We resisted talk of a Fed hike in Q1 15.  We explained...

The Vietnamese economy has experienced a downturn in growth since 2008. In the past five years, the growth averaged about 5.5 per cent a year and is not expected to be much higher in the coming years. For a country...

The World Bank says the disease’s economic cost could be US$32 billion over two years, with the mining sectors badly hit. But many of the most damaging effects are on a microcosmic scale as citizens in Liberia, Sierra Leone and...

Launched as a political bloc and security pact in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, ASEAN has evolved to embrace an ambitious economic agenda. Its latest project is to establish the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by 31 December 2015. But...