Political risk has come home, and we must combat it

The past decade has upended my profession almost entirely. I work in political risk, and my job is to advise companies how to manage political and economic instability. A coup in Turkey, sanctions against Russia, unrest in Venezuela, debt default in Argentina – such...

The Greek crisis explained, in pictures

Between 2007 and 2012 several Eurozone countries — Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain — needed bailouts. In each case, the recipient countries threatened that they would leave the Eurozone if the bailout terms were too harsh. Germany and the other AAA-rated...

The Eurozone’s (and Japan’s) deflation problem

I tend to be bullish on Europe – partly as a corrective to the mass of commentators who too early wrote off the crisis in the Eurozone as irresolvable. This optimism has been justified by the recent run-up in European equities, with developed European countries...

The German Constitutional Court leads by example

The differences in interpretation of the recent German Constitutional Court ruling on the legality of “bailouts” by the ECB have been extraordinary. In part this is understandable: the court, in effect, ruled that bailouts via OMT are illegal under German law, but...