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Two reports published in early 2020 shed new light on this challenge. The European Central Bank’s (ECB) risk report on less-significant institutions is the first of what is intended to be an annual series. The impact assessment study on the most important differences between...
With the second monumental bailout of wealthy corporations in a little over a decade, the public is beginning to discover both the shabby reality and the hyperreal absurdity of a financial practice termed “stock buybacks.” It sounds innocent, as if it described a process by which conscientious...
As the COVID-19 pandemic and policy reactions have disrupted markets, bankers on both sides of the Atlantic have called for the relaxation of accounting standards introduced in the wake of the 2007-08 global financial crisis. This set of standards is known as expected credit loss...
The major political news in the US from last week concerned the coronavirus bailout bill eventually agreed by both parties and submitted for signing by President Donald Trump. One controversial part of the law focusing on helping businesses in distress drew the ire of Democrats, who worried that...
Many Western governments are willing to climb any mountain and pay any price to save lives. In the process, many of them are also politicizing their response to the coronavirus pandemic while acting too late and too meekly, setting the stage for what is yet to come. The West can learn a lot from...
Goldman Sachs has every reason to reassure its clients in the face of a crisis that nobody but its economists are capable of understanding. They are the world-renowned experts and the guides of those who have money to invest. Goldman Sachs’ track record speaks for itself. Nobody is closer to...
*Author’s note: This article was written on March 13, 2020. Some issues and data may have changed since then. I am writing this column in a state of a latent denial. Having worked from home for much of the past week, I’ve been trying to juggle work duties with kid’s entertainment as...
America has been living on hubris and borrowed time, mired in an orgy of debt, delusion and dogma. Its stock traders have, for a decade now, chosen to believe that events which ordinarily would have resulted in losses are in fact causes for celebration in a marketplace that has defied logic and...
The dawn of a new decade always comes alongside predictions of how the stock market will perform over the next 10 years. The start of the 2020s has not been an exception, with analysts predicting everything from a roaring bull market to a global recession, in some cases sequentially. This...
As COVID-19 continues to impact markets and national and global economies, it is worthwhile noting that Gulf economies were already slowing before the virus hit the region. A comprehensive assessment by London-based Capital Economics, released on February 25 but based on statistics up to...
At a time when commodity markets are slowing down, when China and the United States are quarreling to reshape global supply chains to their benefit, with climate change adversely affecting emerging markets and the coronavirus outbreak threatening business continuity worldwide, Latin American...
