Markets

An economy is simply an accumulation of transactions involving goods and services, mostly carried out by business enterprises. Their behaviour is what matters, and this can be adequately perceived only on the ground, where the behaviour occurs – where an...

The world has turned upside down. All of a sudden, “rich” countries were the ones running large deficits, while “poor” countries ran surpluses – accumulating large stocks of external assets, including financial claims on Western economies. At first glance, this...

The decade for emerging markets has come. It is not an understatement that there has been a major shift in global powers following the financial storm that started almost 5 years ago. Despite the storm, emerging markets have already captured...

  We’ve heard both sides of the debate of how China’s economy will land. Some have predicted a soft landing, others the contrary. At the same time, many others have said 2012 will be the year of the Europocalypse and...

2012 will be a bumpy year for the global economy: recession in Europe, anemic growth at best in the United States, and a sharp slowdown in China and in most emerging-market economies. To paraphrase Bette Davis in All About Eve,...

The recently concluded European Union Summit only proved one thing: that Europe’s leaders were still in denial about the true causes of the eurozone’s problems, and thus were unable to resolve them. The proposed fiscal stability union may indeed prevent...

  The UK’s financial regulatory bodies have shown a surprising "hear no evil" attitude to criminality in its banking and financial sector. At times, the financial regulators almost seemed to want to pretend that criminality and fraud didn't, or couldn't...

As the indebted eurozone countries scramble to find ways to raise liquidity or risk default, contagion threatens to spread across the continent and the globe – an unfortunate reality of globalization and the interdependency of economic and financial markets. However,...

Australia, like all modern economies, needs an assured supply of energy to function effectively. Presently, coal generates about 80 percent of Australia's electrical energy output; but as external sources of fossil fuels continue to decline, a shift to renewable energy...

It is increasingly evident that Europe’s political leaders, for all their commitment to the euro’s survival, do not have a good grasp of what is required to make the single currency work. Public-sector cutbacks today do not solve the problem...

Europe, it seems, is determined to resolve its problems using other people’s money. But there are at least three reasons why the IMF should resist this pressure, and abstain from increasing its (already extremely high) exposure to Europe. Europe, it...

Since China opened up its doors to the world a few decades ago, we’ve witnessed what has been a remarkable Chinese growth spurt. Today, China has the second largest economy in the world, the largest bank by market capitalization, and...

Even if China replaces the US as the world’s largest economy within a decade, a global anchor currency can be more resilient than the economic and geopolitical dominance of its country of origin. That is why the dollar will most...

The US’s and Europe’s woes should be ringing alarm bells across Asia. Although many believe that the region can shrug off almost anything that the rest of the world dishes out, the crises in both regions have intensified Asia’s vulnerability...

The European Union project is facing its biggest test. Regardless of whether the next immediate European crisis is focused on Spain or Italy, it follows that by mid-decade, Europe’s political landscape will have shifted dramatically, with new parties, personalities and...