On Global Markets

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 But that target now looks grossly out of date.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

A rather unpleasant theme of recent columns has been the Clark Center’s various Expert Panels not exactly being overjoyed with much of the policy prospectuses emerging from the ongoing American presidential campaign. This was both predictable and, indeed, predicted by the first On Global Markets column back in February. Working in a subject close to […] 

Last week the Nobel Prize for Economics (or, for the truly pedantic the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economics in Memory of Alfred Nobel) was awarded to Daron Acemoglu, (a member of the Clark Center US Experts Panel) Simon Johnson, and James Robinson for work on the most important topic on economics – why are some […] 

Florida has had the misfortune to be hit by two hurricanes just weeks apart. Alongside the tragic death toll, comes billions of dollars’ worth of economic damage. Hurricanes, and other extreme weather events, are increasingly economic events too. According to insurance modelers, Hurricane Milton is likely to result in claims worth around $36B whilst the […]