On Global Markets

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 But that target now looks grossly out of date. […] 

Economics is a broad subject, certainly one of the broadest of all the social sciences. Indeed, over the last year, the polls of the Clark Center’s various panels of experts have covered everything from education funding to tariffs to climate change to concert ticket pricing. And yet whenever your columnist mentions what he does for […] 

Is the world on track to meet its climate targets? The answer depends upon who one asks. A poll of climate scientists earlier this year was not especially optimistic. As the Guardian reported in May: Hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists expect global temperatures to rise to at least 2.5C (4.5F) above preindustrial levels […] 

Voters, for entirely understandable reasons, dislike both inflation and unemployment. They are not wrong to do so, both are things that economic policymakers generally try to avoid or at least minimize. The problem is that, to a greater or lesser degree, the two macroeconomic failings tend to represent a trade-off. The tighter monetary policy usually […] 

If readers of On Global Markets were hoping not to read the word “election” again, at least for a few months, then your columnist can only apologize and note that he too hoped that this would be the case. But whilst American voters headed to the polls, Germany’s fractious three-way coalition government collapsed and a […] 

Until relatively recently, political risk – the notion that an election’s result might have a meaningful impact on asset market returns – was not really something those investing in American markets were especially concerned with. Few investors really believed that, say, the outcome of 1996’s Clinton-Dole race would have a lasting impact on the value […]