Italy

The meltdown in Brazil is not exactly unexpected since one of my ten surprises for 2014 was that Brazil goes into recession. But I find the pace of the currency reaction alarming and we should be prepared for a crisis as a result. In the…

Despite, the high cost of gasoline/petrol in Europe due to tax, the fact that Europe is a large net importer of oil means the decline in oil price will be more of a boost for that continent than it is to North America where concerns about…

It’s currently very trendy in Italy to blame Angela Merkel, Mario Monti, and austerity measures for the current recession. This column argues that while the severity of the downturn is clearly a cyclical phenomenon, the inability of the…

I have long warned that the euro crisis was going to return. But recently my concern was more concrete i.e. that the renewed recession fears in Europe would force a decoupling between the periphery and the core in the Eurozone. This seems…

The German economic miracle is coming unstuck. And while a German recession this year would merely be a technical recession, it would highlight the underlying flaw in German economic policy, both domestically and for the eurozone as a…

The conclusion of the recently released Geneva report is that debt is the Achilles heel of this cyclical recovery. The Geneva economists warn that, despite the widespread belief that a general deleveraging has occurred due to the Great…

Yesterday, I did a broad overview of four markets of interest to global investors. And I wanted to continue my thoughts on this here with a few more markets and with a deeper dive into some of my thinking about the UK. Britain, Part 2: I…

I am back from my summer holiday. There has been a lot of news in the time since I last posted. And the news flow is coming from a lot of different places. So, let me start up again with a post highlighting what I think are some of the key…

By Edward Hugh There has been lot’s of debate in the press and in academic circles over the last week or so about whether Italy’s latest contraction constitutes a triple dip recession or simply a continuation of what’s been going on over…

The Chamber of Deputies approved the electoral reform bill that Renzi and Berlusconi had negotiated before Renzi squeezed out Letta to become Prime Minister of Italy. The bill goes to the Senate now.