By Bill Witherell – The global economic recovery is strengthening and becoming more synchronized, according to updated projections for 2017 and 2018 by both the Organization for Economic Cooperation and...
The election in the UK is now less than two weeks ahead, on June 8th, followed three days later by the first round of the French parliamentary election on June 11th, with the second and final round on June 18th. An election in Italy, which many did not expect to occur until...
Markets in France, Europe, and globally are rallying as they breathe a sigh of relief following the first round of the French presidential election on Sunday. The pro-business centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron came in first, beating the far-right...
The recovery in the Eurozone economies is firming with respect to private consumption and investment, with higher employment and labor income, according to the European Central Bank (ECB). Yet financial markets are on...
On Sunday, Italian voters rejected by a wide margin a constitutional reform put forward by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. The result plunges Italy into a likely period of extended uncertainty and seriously threatens financial stability.
The decline in the British pound sterling that began in June when the UK voted to leave the European Union (EU) accelerated last week, culminating in a “flash crash” on Friday October 7th that wiped out a tenth of sterling’s value, briefly...
The European Central Bank (ECB) met on September 8. The US Federal Reserve Bank’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meets on September 21, and the Bank of Japan (BOJ) holds its next Monetary Policy Meeting on September 20–21.
The Bank of Japan decided at its July 28–29 meeting to boost its purchases of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to an annual rate of 6 trillion yen, almost double the previous rate of 3.3 trillion yen. The BOJ began its ETF purchasing in October 2010 at a much more modest...
Post-Brexit-vote pain is beginning, and it will get worse. Investors’ attitudes about Britain’s prospects are signaled by the tumbling currency. This week the pound plunged to three-decade lows. Confidence in Britain’s economy...
The Socialist president of France, François Hollande, elected some four years ago on an anti-finance, anti-wealth, pro-labor platform, has been trying over the past two years to move the nation’s economic policies and regulations more...
Last week, European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi, responding to market concerns that had battered the shares and bonds of Eurozone banks, insisted that “We have to acknowledge that the regulatory...
After two days of lengthy and intensive negotiations, UK Prime Minister David Cameron returned from Brussels with a new settlement, having secured “special status” for Britain within the European Union. This achievement should improve somewhat...
When the markets opened on the first market day of 2016, we were glad that we had not re-entered China's equity markets since we sold our China positions last August. We were also glad that we did not hold any emerging-market positions in our International and Global ETF Portfolios. We did consider participating in the fourth-quarter recovery in China's markets engineered by the...
Confirmation of slower growth in China in August triggered further tumbling of global stocks on September 1st. The first of the month is when we get the Purchasing Managers’ Indexes (PMI) from Markit...
Global financial markets have just gone through ten market days of high turbulence, blamed widely on developments in China. This note discusses (in increasing order of their importance for US investors) the bursting of China stock...
August 10th’s announcement by China that it would “devalue” the yuan (also called the renminbi), caught markets and us by surprise as China had been keeping its currency within a narrow 2% band against the US...
As the situation with respect to Greece developed in recent days, the euro fluctuated within a surprisingly narrow range versus the US dollar. During the second quarter, the euro actually strengthened as prospects for...
Having lived in France (where I was OECD’s Director for Financial and Enterprise Affairs in Paris) for some 28 years, I try to touch base there once a year. I have recently returned from three weeks visiting Paris and...
When both sides engage in brinkmanship in a power contest and find themselves at last genuinely at the brink, the chances for an "accident" which neither side wants have rise substantially. That is where Greece and its creditors...
Both sides in the Greek drama cling tenaciously to their dangerous but all-too-predictable brinkmanship tactics as the clock approaches midnight. In Berlin, a summit meeting of the leaders of the main creditors...
