Category: Europe

Prime Minister Boris Johnson delayed plans to lift the remaining covid-19 restrictions by a month last week with the infectious delta variant rapidly spreading throughout the country. Now, the full reopening of pubs and restaurants among other places will have to wait AGAIN. The British (and the rest of the world) are stuck speculating on whether and when London and the country will return to some sense of normalcy. Today, absent packed streets and offices both with locals and non-locals, the UK’s exit from the EU somehow feels like a permanent exit from the world’s ecosystem (at least for now)…

If governments cannot avoid stoking further worry and sidestep validating conspiracy theories while also showing empathy and concern for its citizens, then vaccine rollout, which clearly is an issue of both an individual’s perspective on the vaccine’s necessity and its safety, will remain in doubt and the economic fall-out will accordingly be palpable in some parts of Europe…

As the assembly to write a new Chilean constitution is elected and Chileans ponder the new social contract for the country, many in the socialist camp should be more honest with their followers: Chile cannot be a Latin American version of a Nordic country, but it can be a better version of itself…

France’s discussion on the transformation of state loans to grants signifies a greater problem for European economies. Many governments underwrote their economies with increased liquidity either through loans or deferment of debt. But the wall of insolvency cannot be avoided…

The distribution of vaccines is changing the economic outlook in 2021 with most politicians and investors forecasting a continued recovery. Yet the political and economic risks that preceded the covid-19 pandemic remain alongside the lockdown measures necessary to combat the virus. The year will be turbulent for some countries as public confidence and investor sentiment vacillates with optimism and skepticism on vaccine acceptance rates and economic output numbers. Several countries are likely to be bellwethers for the markets, or at least, provide some directional insight on the global economy’s recovery…

The month of November was positive. Markets trended upward with justification in some situations and bet on pure hope in other situations. December may provide a reversion to the mean. That said, Uzbekistan, Turkey, and Ukraine will be three markets to watch…

The U.S. will have to engage European countries on where their relations are on January 20, 2021 (inauguration day) versus where U.S. relations were with each country back in 2016. And, as expected, relations with some countries are warmer than with others after the past four years. With that in mind, Biden will have to assess U.S. relations with the three biggest European economies (UK, France, and Germany) and push those relationships forward as a signal to other European countries on what a Biden administration represents to (and expects from) the larger European region…

As the second wave of cases hits Europe, including Italy, there is not much convincing required on the seriousness of the virus. The same cannot be said about the growing challenges in the Italian economy. Debt is flowing into an economy that already has its share of bad loans in the financial ecosystem but there is little concern. It is the covid-19 pandemic thus why worry about a European financial crisis, right?

Like a prized fighter, Turkey and President Erdoğan fight on…