On Global Markets

“This can’t possibly be a serious question” is how Andrew Lo of MIT Sloan responded to a poll posed to the Clark Center’s Finance Expert Panel last week. Matteo Maggiori of Stanford GSB went a little further, noting, “This would strike me as one of the worst policy ideas ever”. It is then fair to […] 

German voters go to the polls this week following the collapse of the, sometimes chaotic, three-way coalition which has run the Federal government since late 2021. There is plenty for the electorate to consider. The economy is stuck in its first two-year recession since the early 2000s. More broadly, economic performance has been miserable since […] 

Whilst he may have died almost a century and a half ago, 2025 has seen a sudden revival of interest in William Stanley Jevons.  Jevons, born way back in 1835, was one of the great economists of the nineteenth century. And while he may not have quite the enduring fame of some of his contemporaries, […] 

Covering a Trump administration can be tricky at times, especially for those writing a weekly piece. Your columnist began writing this week’s note on Friday. In the 72 or so hours that followed the President: said he would announce ‘reciprocal tariffs’ in the coming week, announced 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports would be […] 

Europe’s economy is stuck in a rut. The latest figures, released this week, show Eurozone GDP flat in the fourth quarter and growth across the European Union as a whole up by just 0.1%. Nothing captures the gloom quite as well as Eurostat, the official statistics body, describing the Eurozone’s poor performance with the headline […] 

American cities have a long history when it comes to fire. As the historian Daniel Immerwahr noted in a fascinating and beautifully written (and also open access) journal paper last year, the great circus master P. T. Barnum listed five occasions in his memoirs when his circus, museum or home was destroyed by a blaze. […] 

It can be all too easy for both investors and those writing about finance and economics to get too caught up in the day-by-day and week-by-week moves of financial markets. The drama of sudden gyrations, rallies, and declines is sometimes irresistible and there is always a risk that too much significance will be attached to […] 

It is never a good sign for finance ministers when bond market moves make the front pages of the non-financial press. That is what has happened this week in Britain as the rising yield on gilts (as British sovereign bonds are rather quaintly sometimes dubbed) rose to multi-year highs. The yield on ten year British […] 

Despite a wobble at the very end of the year, American investors remain in an exuberant mood.  The results of Bank of America’s closely watched survey of fund managers found them in a mood best described as near-euphoric or “super bullish” in the words of the firm’s investment strategist. Allocations to cash fell to record […] 

Almost 20 years ago, back in 2006, at a summit meeting In Riga, NATO members pledged to commit 2% of GDP to defense spending. This year 23 of the alliance, 32 members look set to hit that target, up from just 6 as recently as 2018. But that target now looks grossly out of date. […]