The IMF’s latest quarterly outlook is impressively upbeat with expectations that the US and other advanced economies, always together with China, will come roaring back this year and into next. Successful near universal adult vaccination...
The prospect of longer and warmer days in the Northern Hemisphere heralds the return of less favourable conditions for COVID-19 but instead we seem already to have entered a third wave of infections in Europe,...
Despite the current scary surge in the pandemic, the worst of the economic damage is done even if the pace and scale of the recovery around the globe are far from clear.The UK is one...
Here in London, it is tempting to resort to black humour with headlines such as ‘Fog in UK-rest of world isolated’ just as financial markets at last appear, after nine insouciant months, to be taking...
Last week I suggested that the key to ending the pandemic would be the willingness of younger people to be vaccinated. This week I want to go further and suggest that some priority should be given...
Only 3 business days to go, in what has been a challenging Q3! Take profits or put more money on the table? It could go either way, with a hangover in Q4. In July, I...
Economic Insights: It always makes one thoughtful when the main moves in financial markets are in sovereign bond yields. The 30-year US Treasury (‘long bond’ ) yield rose by 21ps to 1.44% in the week,...
Last week the IMF cut further its global (and national) forecasts for growth for this year (-4.9%) and next (+5.4%), which effectively means GDP will not return to its level in 2019 until 2022 globally...
Despite the efforts of all the medical and scientific experts, much remains to be discovered about COVID-19. It is not life-threatening to most of us and yet highly contagious, with dire consequences for those it...
Few countries and few governments are having a good crisis but some seem to be faring better than others as shown in the below figure, with the important caveat that the data is one week...
The (COVID-19) bell is tolling As COVID-19 wreaks its havoc, the end of John Donne’s poem ‘No man is an island’ (cited in the previous edition of Economic Insights) seems unhappily ever more appropriate. Alas,...
While it is impossible to predict when a panic will occur and how long it will last, I hope this week’s price movements have not come as a complete surprise to you. Some, however, are...
