An Alternative Perspective
August 2011
Inflation: a Blip or a Systemic Change?
Prof. Dieter Helm, University of Oxford
Some commentators view this resurgence of inflation as just a blip, caused by changes in the relative prices of energy and food. Others see something much more threatening and regard this inflation as the inevitable consequence of loose monetary policy.
May 2011
Nuclear Power after the Japanese Crisis
Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group
A steady stream of worrisome headlines following the nuclear accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and the 25th anniversary of the disaster at Chernobyl have forced governments around the world to comment publicly on their nuclear policies
May 2011
Where Will The Energy Come From?
Prof. Dieter Helm, University of Oxford
With the North African and Middle Eastern political turmoil, oil prices having exceeded $120 a barrel, and with the Japanese nuclear disaster; it is not surprising that energy security is again at the top of political and economic agendas
February 2011
Top Global Risks for 2011
Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group
Which political risks are likely to be an issue this year?
February 2011
Europe’s Crisis of Confidence
Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group
The Eurozone’s crisis of confidence has only just begun. Even if core EU countries and institutions can manage market pressures long enough to find a durable long-term solution to Europe’s crisis of confidence, elected leaders of the continent’s most vulnerable countries will repeatedly be forced to make politically unpopular choices.
February 2011
Debt Default and the Euro
Prof. Dieter Helm, University of Oxford
After the irrational exuberance came the irrational panic. During 2010, the headlines were full of predictions of the demise of the euro and collapse of the European economy. The key feature of the debate has been a lack of proportionality. What mattered was less what the economic fundamentals might be indicating, but rather what the average person thought the average person might be expecting.
September 2010
Brazil Post-Lula
Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group
Rousseff’s economic advisers agree that a robust economic outlook demands a curb on the growth of government spending and her government will begin by signaling a tighter fiscal policy.
September 2010
The return of the Euro: German growth, fiscal discipline and recovery
Prof. Dieter Helm, University of Oxford
The euro has clawed its way back and it is the dollar and sterling that have fallen back. The threat of the ‘double dip’ haunts policy makers in Britain and America and both are considering reaching for the printing press again. How has it come to this? How could the conventional Keynesians have got it so wrong?
June 2010
The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill: its Impact on the Energy Politics in Other Oil-Producing Countries
Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group
Energy production remains a domestic political football in both the developed and developing worlds. A look at energy politics in Canada, Mexico, Australia, and Brazil illustrates these realities.
June 2010
The Coming of Shale Gas: the Implications for Oil and Energy
Prof. Dieter Helm, University of Oxford
A spate of articles, reports and books predict that oil production is either about to or has already peaked, and that as demand from China continues to rise, there is a crisis just around the corner. Social unrest and economic dislocation have been forecast, and ministers talk of severe oil price shocks to come.
March 2010
The Future of US – China Relations
Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group
A relationship until recently shaped mainly by shared interests must now adapt to accommodate the two sides‘ increasingly divergent views of capitalism and a substantial shift in its balance of confidence
March 2010
Europe and the Euro: Is Fiscal Integration Inevitable?
Prof. Dieter Helm, University of Oxford
Whether Europe is forced towards further fiscal integration quickly depends upon how the economic crisis plays out. But the underlying trend towards gradually expanding the notion of European citizenship has enormous momentum. That, in the end, is what will make fiscal integration much more likely
December 2009
Top Global Risks for 2010
Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group
Concerns will shift towards challenges created by the emergence of a new global order
December 2009
After the Fall: The Ongoing Challenge of Resource Nationalism
Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group
Resource nationalism, a tool that governments use to bolster their political and economic leverage via control of a country’s natural wealth, has had its ups and downs over the past seven years. In November 2003, crude oil sold for $29 per barrel. A variety of supply and demand factors sent the price surging to $147 in July 2008. But over the next five months, the financial crisis pushed the price to less than $36. Recovery has returned us to between $75 and $80, but no one can be sure where the global economy is headed next
December 2009
Britain’s Economic Problems: Can it Recover?
Prof. Dieter Helm, University of Oxford
It was all meant to be very different. Boom and bust had been abolished by the prudent Chancellor, inflation had been tamed and the proceeds of growth would pay for the increase in public expenditure. Indeed the circle was a virtuous one: more spending on health and education would improve the quality of the labour force, causing more (endogenous) growth, which would pay for the higher spending
September 2009
The Rise of State Capitalism
Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group
Emerging market states are undergoing a necessary maturation process. Today, political choices, not economic fundamentals, determine how (and how quickly) waking giants like China, India, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Turkey and many others can grow. But as their political and market institutions develop, governments of these states will slowly, but irreversibly, withdraw from direct interference in their domestic markets. This is the narrative that, until recently, many Western investors and corporate decision-makers accepted as inevitable.
September 2009
The Implications of all the Debt
Prof. Dieter Helm, University of Oxford
There really is no way out. If we have been living beyond our means, then there comes a point when standards of living have to fall
May 2009
Which Countries Should Emerge Earliest (and Strongest) from the Global Recession and Why?
Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group
The still developing international financial crisis and the global recession it triggered are now up-ending assumptions about capitalism and reordering relations among the world’s established and rising powers. Much scrutiny has been devoted to those countries at greatest risk of social and political upheaval as a direct consequence of the economic slowdown. But what of the states best positioned to weather today’s stresses? They deserve attention as well, because those that emerge earliest from the current crisis will reap longterm political and economic benefits – with lasting implications for international politics and the future of global markets.
May 2009
Quantitative Easing, Public Finances and the Recession: What Follows Next?
PROF. DIETER HELM, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
In the UK and the US, the deficits are breathtaking, with neither country having much chance of repairing the damage for at least a decade
February 2009
Washington in the Eye of the Storm
Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group
When we think of large-scale state intervention in a domestic economy, it’s usually China, Russia, India or some other emerging market that we have in mind. But given the importance of the economy for global trade and investment flows, the eye of this financial storm is centred in Washington, where lawmakers are now injecting political calculation into decisions on which companies and financial institutions must have a seat in the lifeboat, which should be left to drown and how to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to refloat the entire economy.
February 2009
The State and the Market: a New Settlement?
PROF. DIETER HELM, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
In the last two decades of the twentieth century, a political revolution took place. Led by Thatcher in the UK and Reagan in the US, the economic borders of the State were rolled back. But the new conventional wisdom—like all economic faiths—led its supporters to overstate what the market could deliver.
January 2009
Top Global Risks for 2009
IAN BREMMER, PRESIDENT, EURASIA GROUP
It’s not hard to paint a negative outlook for the coming year, given the political instabilities that such a serious global economic downturn inevitably creates. But beneath the market turbulence that will dominate the headlines in coming months will be two very important structural factors: around the world, we’ll see more state intervention in the global economy and much of that intervention will be reactive and badly coordinated. In part, that’s because many policymakers driving this trend will be worrying more about local politics than about the global economy as they make key decisions. That’s why politics will drive the global economy more directly (and less efficiently) in 2009 than at any point since the end of World War II.
November 2008
Post-Election US Foreign Policy: an Outlook for the Obama Administration
Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group
As Barack Obama sets up shop in the White House, observers in America and around the world await signs of a substantial strategic shift in US foreign policy.
November 2008
The Return of the State
Prof. Dieter Helm, University of Oxford
The credit crunch – and the recession – have provided a sharp reminder that, contrary to Gordon Brown’s assertion, ‘boom-and-bust’ has not been abolished. The business cycle is back with a vengeance.
August 2008
The Geopolitics of Oil
Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group
The sharp spike in global oil prices over the past six years has shifted the balance of power in international politics. At the same time, the expanding political and market influence now enjoyed by the governments of many emerging market states has helped fuel a further rise in energy prices.
August 2008
From Financial Markets to the Real Economy – Now the Downturn Starts to Bite
Prof. Dieter Helm, University of Oxford
One year on from the breaking of the credit crisis, any lingering naivety about the scale of the impacts on the global economy has long since dissipated. After a series of false dawns of recovery – after the initial lowering of interest rates, the quasi-nationalisation of failing banks and mortgage lenders on both sides of the Atlantic, and the injection of huge sums into the financial markets on a wholly unprecedented scale – the reality of the economic downturn and its deep structural characteristics are finally being recognised.
May 2008
Agflation: the Political Risk Implications of Rising Global Food Prices
Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group
Soaring prices for wheat, rice, corn and soybeans have already generated acute food shortages and political turmoil in several countries. Beyond the obvious stakes for the hundreds of thousands who may starve and the 100 million more who risk sliding deeper into poverty across the developing world, the World Bank warns that food shortages place as many as 33 countries at risk of civil unrest.
May 2008
Getting Real about the Credit Crunch: De-leveraging the State, Companies and Consumer Balance Sheets
Prof. Dieter Helm, University of Oxford
The credit crunch has now been in full swing for nearly a year. At each stage, the end has been confidently predicted and politicians and policy-makers have forecast at worst a growth pause before a return to the good times of the last two decades. ... The optimists have had to downgrade their expectations at each twist of the credit screw: now recession is widely expected in the US, the UK looks very exposed and Europe is beginning to feel the effects of its rising (and increasingly reserve) currency
February 2008
Emerging Risks from Protectionism in the United States
Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group
There is a significant election-year risk in 2008 that America will scale back its engagement with the world; construct new barriers to trade, immigration and foreign investment; and renounce its leadership on a range of international issues from trade liberalisation to international security.
February 2008
Five Other Top Global Risks for 2008
Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group
Which other political risks are likely to be an issue this year?
February 2008
After the Credit Crunch – the Real Economic Effects
Prof. Dieter Helm, University of Oxford
It started quietly in the US housing market. Over-optimistic bankers had lent to people who could not really afford to borrow. Financial authorities and politicians were quick to point out that this was a little local difficulty. But it wasn’t: it turned out that the mortgages had a pyramid of sub-prime debt on top of them. ... Now it is finally widely acknowledged that we have the real prospect of recession.
November 2007
Growing risk in Turkey
Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group
Just as Turkey seemed to be emerging from a winter of political discontent, a pair of international provocations has drawn its government into new conflicts ... However, I was surprised to discover during a recent visit to Istanbul that the real emerging risks in Turkey have more to do with domestic politics than with all this foreign-policy turmoil. These risks are not going away.
November 2007
It’s not over yet: The implications of the credit crunch
Prof. Dieter Helm, University Of Oxford
2007 will go down in economic history as a rollercoaster – it’s not often that we see a global credit crunch which requires over $0.5 trillion to stabilise, and a run on a major London bank ... What is at least as surprising is that many in the financial markets appear to believe that these are events that can happen without wider economic consequences.
August 2007
The Fast-Deteriorating US-Chinese Relationship, its Causes and Broader Implications
Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group
Most US and Chinese policymakers well understand that their two countries’ economies have become increasingly interdependent. That's why each side has committed considerable domestic political capital to a “Strategic Economic Dialogue”...
August 2007
Real Interest Rates and the Return to Normalcy
Prof. Dieter Helm, University of Oxford
What drives markets in the end are fundamentals, and few variables are as important as the real interest rate... For the first half of this decade, real rates have been close to zero... Now that era appears to be coming to an end - with major implications for financial markets...
May 2007
Emerging markets: some will emerge, others may not
Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group
“Emerging market” as it is commonly used conceals crucial differences in how the governments of these states govern - and what these differences mean for the development of their economies.
May 2007
Europe takes the lead on climate change
Prof. Dieter Helm, University of Oxford
In March this year, the European Council of Ministers took an historic step forward in tackling the great challenge of our times – climate change. The Council agreed a unilateral target for a 20% reduction in emissions by 2020 from the 1990 level.
February 2007
America’s Protectionist Politics
Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group
In the United States, heightened anxiety over national security, job losses in the manufacturing sector, and the polarisation of domestic politics have intensified debates over policy on foreign investment in US assets, trade, and illegal immigration.
February 2007
Europe’s Energy Crunch
Prof. Dieter Helm, University of Oxford
Europe is now facing a massive investment requirement to replace its ageing energy assets.
February 2007
Top 7 Global Risks for 2007
Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group
Which political risks are likely to be an issue this year?
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