Few countries in the world can lay claim to having more experience with sovereign defaults than Argentina. Having first failed to pay its debts back in 1827, South America’s second-largest nation has gone on to achieve the undesirable feat on a further seven occasions, with the most recent episode occurring in 2014.
Some puzzles are fun, while others are not. The sovereign-bank diabolic loop puzzle is definitely not fun for the European governments and banks victimized by it. Trapped in the loop, banks hurt sovereigns, while sovereigns return the favor by hurting banks. Is there a way to break free of this deadly embrace? New research shines a light on a possible channel to freedom that strangely enough originates in the US.
January 13 of this year marked the 10th anniversary of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, a devastating episode that levelled much of the Caribbean nation, leaving 300,000 dead and displacing a further 1.6 million (more than 10 percent of the total population).
It’s been an eventful last few months for Bolivia, especially since October, when then-President Evo Morales, the country’s leader for more than 13 years, was forced from his position on the back of a disputed election. One of the most economically successful of Latin America’s new crop of leftist leaders who emerged in the new millennium, Morales, a member of the Aymara indigenous group, presided over more than a decade of robust economic growth.
On the surface, the United States is soaring economically when compared to some of its rivals. But turbulence lurks under the nation’s wings. To a large extent, the Federal Reserve is underwriting this growth through monetary and fiscal channels, leading to instability in money markets. What transpires in the world’s largest economy and reserve-currency holder is guaranteed to impact the welfare of economies elsewhere, so what can we expect next?
On January 20, reports emerged that the Caribbean nation of Guyana had officially exported its first-ever shipment of crude oil. The one million barrels of sweet crude that were sent to the United States had been produced at the Stabroek Block’s Liza oil field, which thanks to operator ExxonMobil had made history in December by producing the first crude oil in Guyana’s history.
Problems have continued to mount for the German banking sector in 2019. According to Ronit Ghose, the global head of banks research at Citibank, German lenders are in a much worse position than their European counterparts—and that even includes Italy when it comes to profitability.
In mid-June, Cambria Africa announced that its Zimbabwe-based subsidiary—the payment-services provider Payserv—had suspended its service to its bank customers in Zimbabwe. According to Cambria, the suspension was due to a “collective refusal to pay historical and contracted pricing to Payserv Africa in US dollars
Though there are serious threats to global trade from potential trade wars, it continues to flow. Like clean drinking water, trade and the trade finance that secures it, are crucial to the health of the global economy and to that of individual nations. How can trade and trade finance be nurtured, especially in the face of costs and tensions that threaten to turn off the tap?
The sub-Saharan Africa business boom has lost a lot of its momentum in recent years, but mergers and acquisitions have picked up the slack. All across the area, banks are merging as an avenue to improve their balance sheets and gain market share in the lackluster-growth environment. Although this approach may work to achieve some goals, there are downside factors that banks should consider before jumping into the M&A lifeboat.