Search results for

Thailand is at growing risk of another debt crisis because of an unsustainable consumption-led credit boom, which has seen lending surge by more than 50% in six years.

This quarter it is Latin America and the Caribbean that have taken the biggest hit to their average ECR scores, seemingly in response to the anticipated impact of Fed monetary policy tapering – deferred perhaps, but still on the cards for January – amid weakened commodity prices due to China coming down from its breakneck expansion and the threatened slowdown in US growth spreading south. This has taken place in a quarter in which the LatAm risk dispersion, dividing high-flying Chile from low-ranking Nicaragua, has reached a record 48.6 points.

Middle East scores continue to flounder – doubly so with North Africa included – in light of attenuated risk profiles for low-scoring Syria and Yemen, both riven by instabilities, and with confidence in Bahrain slipping, to highlight the effects of political and social instabilities.

Reverse repo to influence non-bank interest rates; money-market funds and GSEs swap cash for collateral.

The US factor might be more fear than substance. Within the G10 group of leading industrialized nations, the US is not considered a particularly riskier prospect in spite of its latest political troubles. The world’s biggest economy has slipped to 17th in the rankings, but its score is still higher than at the start of the year.

Experts’ scores also depict a mixed picture for Sub-Saharan African borrowers during Q3, with Angola, Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Tanzania among those countries whose scores have fallen as economic worries connected to global economic prospects dominate parts of the region.

Other European scores have fallen as the political and economic problems across the region mutate. During the year to date, most parts of Europe – including the eurozone, the high-risk former Soviet Republics (the CIS), led by Moldova, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, and other central and eastern parts of the region, several with governance issues – have witnessed the largest average score declines of any regions of the world.

Across the rest of Asia, Indonesia – one of the worst affected by the currency sell-off along with India – Thailand, Vietnam and one or two other sovereigns are languishing, highlighting the region’s financial imbalances, including its growth and banking-sector vulnerabilities.

Is Bank of America on an upward trajectory? Am I the only person to notice that Bank of America’s economists were a lone voice insisting that the Federal Reserve would not taper in September? Nice call BAML!

As September draws to a close, I am starting to wonder if I am living in a parallel universe. Ben Bernanke seems to have gone barmy. And I wouldn’t blame him. Saving the financial world from itself has been a Herculean task.

And talking of Lehman’s bankruptcy, I was intrigued to read an opinion editorial in the Financial Times written by Bob Diamond, the former chief executive of Barclays Bank. Bob of course pounced on the corpse of Lehman Brothers as it was drowning and made off with a succulent limb: the US broker-dealer operations.

More than five years on from the credit crunch that shook the world to its core, tail risks continue to undermine investor returns, according to the latest quarterly results of Euromoney’s Country Risk Survey.