Deutsche Bank & the Ballad of the Bumbling Germans

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in ,, at 9/28/2016 04:33:00 PM
You know, Deutsche Bank was really well-respected once upon a time. I am old enough to remember a time when the now-infamous Deutsche Bank had one of the highest credit ratings of European banks. But that was before the turn of the millennium--a long, long time ago in a political economy far, far away. What happened between then and now? The curse of (global) ambition, that's what. Just as American giants like Citigroup and European ones like HSBC thought that harnessing economies of scale represented the way of future, Deutsche too embarked on a multi-country expansion into different product lines. Today, of course, the...
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Turkey's Erdogan: Go Ahead, Junk Our Credit Rating

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 9/25/2016 11:35:00 AM
"Go ahead, make my day by junking Turkey's credit rating." Following the hateful rhetoric unleashed by Philippine President Duterte, it appears bashing the West is back in fashion as Turkey's Tayyip Erdogan does pretty much the same--to equally debatable economic consequences. There is a tendency for developing countries to blame destabilizing events on Western powers, and Erdogan is no exception in this regard when it comes to the coup attempt against him earlier in the year. On a related note, Erdogan sees a combined political-economic effort to knock Turkey down a peg as the dominant credit rating agencies--all Western,...
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Philippines' Duterte: Killer of Druggies...& Foreign Investment

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in ,, at 9/23/2016 03:51:00 PM
Damage control surpasses the realm of art into science when the person whose offensiveness you're trying to contain is the Philippine President Rodrigo "Digong" Duterte. Despite the woeful history of a zero tolerance approach to narcotics worldwide--nowhere has the "war on drugs" worked as intended--Duterte is intent on learning this the hard way. Being very think-skinned, Duterte takes any perceived slight very badly, hurling insults at any and all critics. As it so happens, those who have raised concern about human rights abuses as the body count piles up via extrajudicial killings in his "war on drugs" represent the...
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Correlation Between Mexican Peso, Trump Poll Numbers

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 9/18/2016 02:05:00 PM
The Mexican peso seemingly moves in the opposite direction to Trump's poll numbers these days. America's Mr. Nasty is apparently making his presence felt south of the border. With Mexico being on the receiving end of a lot of his isolationist (he suggests leaving NAFTA), protectionist (ditto) and racist (characterizing the Mexican people as "rapists") rhetoric, the political fallout of a Trump presidency (heaven forbid) have not gone unnoticed in the markets. The far right has well and truly established a presence in North America. Bloomberg offers the chart above in relation to the performance of the Mexican peso, whose...
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Do Saudis Dump '$750B' After US 9/11 Bill Passes?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 9/10/2016 06:03:00 PM
Saudi Arabia vowed to slash '$750 billion' worth of US assets if 9/11 victims' families were allowed to sue it. We'll see. Back to the realm of geopolitics: Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia warned that they stood ready to unload hundreds of billions worth of American assets were the US congress to pass a bill allowing families of victims of the 9/11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia for damages. Maintaining that their country had no direct involvement in the attacks, Saudi officials threatened to sell off up to "$750 billion" in American assets. From the NY Times in April: Saudi Arabia has told the Obama administration and members...
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Spain Beats EMU Growth Without a Government

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 9/05/2016 12:17:00 PM
Maybe Spain is outdoing its EMU peers because of--and not in spite of--having no government. Rational choice theory holds elected officials in disdain as self-interested in political and economic gain ahead of serving the public good. Today's Spain might be an appropriate test of rational choice theory insofar as the country has not formed a government in eight months and counting. With the current caretakers having failed to do so again, never-ending elections are set to be held once more in December. What's notable though is that government-less Spain has actually outdone its EMU peers' overall economic performance:...
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