Expanding the Legacy
Putin’s ‘Technical Operations’ Unsettle Markets
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...
Africa Seeks to Cash in on Energy Crunch
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,...
Russia: In Search of Lost Time
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...
Markets Facing a Multitude of Crises
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.
Misguided Republican Anger
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....
Billions Showered on EV Technology
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...
A Year to Forget
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...
Small Earthquake in Chile
A land of geographical and political extremes, Chile seems to have rejected moderation as the nation elevated a former student protest leader to the presidency. However, the electorate did so reluctantly. It faced an almost impossible choice between a right-wing apologist for authoritarian rule and a left-wing radical. Leading the...
Inflation Spike Puzzles ECB
For years on end, central bankers in Europe and the United States have implored providence to deliver a modicum of inflation. Over the past five years, the Eurozone slid twice into deflationary territory. As recently as August 2020, the consumer price index retracted by 0.2% (year-on-year), prompting President Christine Lagarde...
The Fallacy of ‘Chinese Characteristics’
Amongst political philosophers, it has of late become fashionable to hail China as a model of effective governance. The country’s rapid development – according to the World Bank the fastest sustained growth of a major economy ever in world history – seems to imply that it has found an alternative,...
