Confidence, or rather a lack thereof, is reflected throughout the economy: in retail sales (up 5.5% year on year in February, falling short of the consensus), private investment, imports (down 8.2% in February) and, above all, real estate indicators. Real estate is the main focus of concern: far from improving, key variables like housing starts, square footage sold and new…

It was as though the country was hitting back after Fitch Ratings downgraded its sovereign rating from “stable” to “negative” as a result of concerns over its medium-term growth outlook, the impact of the real estate crisis and the sustainability of its public finances. Moody’s came to the same conclusion last December. Standard & Poor’s is the only agency to…

Before reaching its turning point in the 1990s, Japan had gone through a period of strong growth driven by exports and efforts to move up the value chain (known as the “flying geese” model), high investment and savings rates, and bank-led rather than market-led financing. At its peak in 1988, Japan accounted for 9.8% of global exports. Apart from a…

Li Qiang, appointed to the premiership in 2023, thus had the daunting task of delivering the general policy speech and presenting the government’s most recent priorities as well as announcing key economic objectives for 2024. Unsurprisingly, an ambitious growth target of 5% was set The first announcement was no small thing: just like in 2023, the official growth target has…

The consensus is clear: there will be no energy transition without strategic metals. Batteries, wind turbines and solar cells require large amounts of lithium, nickel, rare earths and other exotic elements. More broadly, strategic sectors like aerospace and defence are also dependent on critical resources whose suppliers have de facto life-or-death control over the relevant production chains. As per the…

This is precisely why the US has quickly moved its aircraft carriers into position close to the Israeli theatre of war to prevent the conflict from spreading. It’s also why Poland is rearming and acting as if it were one of NATO’s leading powers. Lastly, it’s the lesson that many Asian countries, chief among them Japan and the Philippines, have…

Thanks to the proliferation of APIs1 and the advent of Open Banking2, these FinTechs have specialised first and foremost in collecting, refining and structuring business data, notably banking and financial data.  They mass process information such as bank statements, customer and supplier billing histories and activity data from e-commerce and advertising platforms. All this data is then fed into proprietary…

The US economy has been resilient but is starting to crack, and these cracks get deeper as the repressive effects of monetary and financial tightening make themselves known. Housing investment has already experienced a sharp adjustment, and real investment in turn should fall substantially. After dipping into their savings and relying on credit, the consumers who underpinned such resilient growth…

Economic activity indicators in May suggest that China is having a tough time shaking off the multitude of crises it's facing – consumer spending, real estate, a shrinking population – and now growing concerns over the prospect of a debt crisis for local governments. The story according to May figures First and foremost, growth is becoming balanced again, but that's…

“I wouldn’t exclude the possibility that Poland would engage even stronger in this context on a national basis and be followed by the Baltic states, maybe including the possibility of troops on the ground. […] We shouldn’t underestimate the Polish feelings, the Poles feel that for too long western Europe did not listen to their warnings against the true Russian…