Expanding the Legacy
Expanding the Legacy
The Russia of President Vladimir Putin is becoming more isolated by the day as outpourings of indignation reach a fever pitch over the apparently indiscriminate bombing of Ukrainian cities and towns.
In a matter of days, Russia was unceremoniously cut off from the global financial system. Credit and debit cards stopped working, as did Apple Pay and a host of other services. Both Visa and Mastercard blocked Russian financial institutions from accessing their network.
The rouble took a pounding of note, losing almost a third of its value as soon as forex markets opened Monday morning. Equity trading was suspended whilst Russian financial authorities pondered the extent of the sanctions imposed over the weekend.
In the early morning of Thursday, Russian missiles rained down on Ukrainian military installations as markets in the far East opened for business and promptly took a beating in a rolling barrage that soon swept Europe and beyond. Stocks went down across the board whilst bond yields expanded on investor...
Already jittery markets, largely without direction, are braced for a near-perfect storm as central banks taper their bond buying spree and shelling across the ‘line of separation’ in Ukraine intensifies – a possible presage to an all-out war on a scale not fought in Europe since World War II. Meanwhile,...
Before the shooting starts anew, let’s mention the war. Not the war we know, but the one that lives on in the often-indecipherable psyche of Russia, laced as it is with nostalgia and wounded pride. Widely recognised in the West as the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany, Operation...
Central bankers are caught between their natural inclination to get a grip on inflation and a fear of abruptly deflating asset prices. In other words: the temptation to avoid engineering a bust after the post-lockdown boom.
She called it a ‘beautiful sight to behold’ when student protesters stormed the building that houses the Hong Kong Legislative Council. Now Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi is at a loss to explain why the spectacle of a mob assaulting the Capitol did not meet her approval....
Earlier this week, the first lithium-ion battery cell rolled off the assembly line of Europe’s newest so-called gigafactory – a novel phenomenon usually defined as a manufacturing plant capable of churning out at least 15 gigawatt hours of cumulative battery storage. The facility, owned by the Volkswagen-backed startup Northvolt and...
The year now drawing to a close, began rather inauspiciously when, on 6 January, an unruly mob assaulted and ransacked the Capitol in Washington, shaking the world’s (arguably) most revered democracy to its very foundations and laying bare the fault lines of a political environment turned toxic. President Donald Trump...