Devaluation is the word of the day in oil exporting countries. Whether it is the Nigerian naira, the Venezuelan bolívar, or the Russian rouble, low oil prices are wreaking havoc in oil exporting economies and on their national currencies.
The recent Saudi-Iranian clash is unlikely to affect oil markets for now, but the redistribution of political power between Saudi Arabia and Iran, along with the US disengagement from the Middle East might have long-term consequences for the region’s stability and global oil supply trends.
The January-February issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, which is published by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), presents a special package on the new “Up-and-Coming Markets” in the global economy. The six markets featured in this special issue are Mexico, South Kroea, Poland, Turkey, Philippines, and the Mekong region. The latter is a region in […]
High frequency trading (HFT) of securities has become a high-profile target on both sides of the Atlantic in recent weeks. On September 2, Italy began imposing a tax of 0.02 percent on many order changes and cancellations that occur within 0.5 seconds of the original order. Later that month, the managers of the world’s largest […]
Singapore is the easiest place in the world for small- and medium-sized domestic companies to do business, with Hong Kong and New Zealand trailing immediately behind, and Malaysia and South Korea rounding out the Asia-Pacific region’s representation in the top 10, according to a World Bank study released late last month. The institution’s “Doing […]
As the Middle East continues to plunge in a multi-faceted and what appears to be an increasingly regional crisis, there are debates and even hope about the future of entrepreneurship in the region in the face of the Arab Spring. Corruption, the status of women, the Israeli Palestinian conflict, Iran’s nuclear program, and now the specter of […]
If a country had the most-restrictive regulations on foreign direct investment (FDI) of 55 nations studied, where do you think it would rank among those nations in terms of actually attracting investment from abroad? If you said “First,” you obviously would be flaunting conventional economic theory and engaging in highly counter-intuitive speculation. Further, […]
Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) have made progress in improving their accountability and transparency over the last five years, but more can and should be done. That’s the assessment of Dr. Edwin M. (Ted) Truman, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former senior Treasury and Federal Reserve official. Truman’s pioneering […]
This week the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged China-located affiliates of the big five U.S. accounting firms with breaking securities laws by failing to provide documents from their audits of nine U.S.-listed Chinese firms under scrutiny. The SEC and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) are demanding that the accounting companies, BDO […]
A decoupling of emerging markets from the struggling developed world is a myth, as we saw in 2011 when euro and US shocks caused a sell-off in EM currencies, including in Latin America. Next year could be rough as global growth slows. Countries from Brazil to China are rushing to reverse their earlier policy tightening. […]
The TARP covered banks across the nation The US government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was such a success that it not only saved America’s financial system, with the help of the Federal Reserve, it also saved the global economy AND turned a profit for the US taxpayer. It was almost three years ago, during […]
The Federal Reserve Board With right-wing Republican presidential candidates these days either calling for the Fed to be abolished (Ron Paul) or simply calling the nation’s central bank “treasonous” (Rick Perry), thinking citizens should at least be concerned about the Fed’s activities. I defended the Fed on this blog and still do. People who should […]
Popular from Press
