Archive for Mexico

Mexican Ambassador Kidnapped In Caracas

By Brian Hasbrouck · Comments (0)
Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

Centro de Caracas

Cara­cas.  Photo via (cc) author resmanovich3.

  • Although already released, the Mex­i­can ambas­sador was kid­napped over the week­end in Cara­cas. I’m sure the color in Chavez’s cheeks matched his beret, for once. (Finan­cial Times)
  • A new pro­posal likely to pass through Brus­sels will see bond­hold­ers given pri­or­ity over other cred­i­tors of the Greek state. I wish I could believe this will be the last act in this Greek drama (yes, I’m aware of how hor­ri­ble that was). (Finan­cial Times)
  • Romania’s PM has resigned over protests against aus­ter­ity mea­sures. The bas­ket of politi­cians’ heads who have been gath­ered due to aus­ter­ity seems to grow ever heav­ier. (Finan­cial Times)
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Brussels & Moody’s Fire Shots At One Another

By Brian Hasbrouck · Comments (0)
Thursday, July 7th, 2011
  • Brus­sels is indig­nant with Moody’s after they low­ered Portugal’s rat­ing to junk sta­tus.  To a cer­tain degree I agree with the EU.  It seems that their sov­er­eign risk rat­ings are in hyper-sensitive mode after the col­lapse of their cred­i­bil­ity dur­ing the finan­cial cri­sis and that’s hav­ing a dele­te­ri­ous effect on the euro­zone.  On the other hand, sov­er­eign risk rat­ings are dif­fer­ent from cor­po­rate credit risk rat­ings and I think that Moody’s may just be doing its job.  (Finan­cial Times)
  • The US and Mex­ico have hope­fully come to the suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion of US intran­si­gence over Mex­i­can dri­vers in the US.  (Finan­cial Times)
  • The biggest prob­lem fac­ing Thailand’s tri­umphant PT party is when it launches an inves­ti­ga­tion into the deaths of pro­tes­tors by the army.  Can­not see that going any­where good.  Read the whole arti­cle if you can, I love their break­down of the col­ors.  Water­melon was my favorite.  (Finan­cial Times)
  • Italy has passed an aus­ter­ity bud­get.  Only prob­lem is, the usu­ally stern and eas­ily under­stood finance min­is­ter, Giulio Tremonti, made about 30 caveats about the bud­get and, hon­estly, it seems like part I of ?  See if you do bet­ter from this arti­cle.  (Finan­cial Times)
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Finland Eyes The Acropolis As Greek Debt Talks Continue

By Brian Hasbrouck · Comments (0)
Wednesday, July 6th, 2011
 Finland’s new Greek embassy.  I kid!  (Destination360.com)
  • The EU is get­ting together today (read: Ger­many & France) to fig­ure out a way to save the Greek debt deal.  (Finan­cial Times) Oh, and Fin­land wants col­lat­eral (the Acrop­o­lis?) to sup­port a sec­ond bailout.  (Finan­cial Times)
  • Por­tu­gal may need a sec­ond bailout.  The good news from Europe just doesn’t end! (Finan­cial Times)
  • One of the top sto­ries in today’s FT explored how Brazil’s finance min­istry will be step­ping up efforts to bring down the real. 
    • “Speak­ing to the Finan­cial Times in Lon­don, Mr Man­tega said the Group of 20 lead­ing economies was still a long way from achiev­ing its goal of agree­ing new guide­lines for man­ag­ing cur­ren­cies, there were ‘strug­gles between coun­tries’ such as the US and China, and the global cur­rency war was ‘absolutely not over.’”  Interesting.
    • What’s also inter­est­ing is that when asked about Brazil’s sup­port for Lagarde over Mexico’s Carstens it was revealed that Brasilia believed Lagarde “would be more effec­tive at advanc­ing the cause of devel­op­ing nations.”  Really?  Sounds like a regional rivalry to me.  (Finan­cial Times)
  • Temasek, the Sin­ga­pore–owned invest­ment author­ity, has sold its stake in two Chi­nese banks.  In divest­ing out of the Bank of China and China Con­struc­tion Bank Temasek may be sig­nalling its unease about local debt lev­els in the Mid­dle King­dom.  Yes­ter­day, Moody’s reported that China may have under­stated their debt oblig­a­tions by a not insignif­i­cant $541bn.  Oops.  (Finan­cial Times)
  • The Econ­o­mist reviews pol­i­tics in Venezuela after rev­e­la­tions about Pres­i­dent Chavez’s med­ical con­di­tion.  (The Econ­o­mist)
  • An arti­cle on polit­i­cal risk insur­ance on Afrikasource’s blog is pretty inter­est­ing.  It was posted in Feb­ru­ary so I’m a bit late to the game, but still worth read­ing.  (Afrika­sources)
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Thailand Hears The People’s Voice, Will They Ignore Them?

By Brian Hasbrouck · Comments (0)
Tuesday, July 5th, 2011
  • The biggest polit­i­cal risk news from the week­end brings us to Bangkok.  Yingluck Shi­nawa­tra, for­mer PM Thaksin Shinawatra’s sis­ter, who ran as the head of Puea Thai Party (PTP) has lead her party to a resound­ing vic­tory.  PTP earned 265 seats out of 500.  (Finan­cial Times)  Accord­ing to BMI PTP will try to push through an amnesty bill allow­ing for for­mer party mem­bers, includ­ing Thaksin, nat­u­rally, to return to Thai­land and eli­gi­bil­ity for office.  (BMI)
  • The Greek debt cri­sis is get­ting more and more com­pli­cated with the ECB now say­ing it’ll accept Greek bonds as long as 1 of the 3 major credit agen­cies doesn’t cat­e­go­rize the rollover as “selec­tive default.”.  Any­one who thinks it’ll result in any­thing but more com­pli­ca­tion may need to put the bot­tle down for a bit.  (Finan­cial Times)
  • Mex­ico has given the green light for the for­mer party to make an aggres­sive play at next year’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.  The Insti­tu­tional Rev­o­lu­tion­ary party (PRI) has won 3 guber­na­to­r­ial elec­tions.  (Finan­cial Times)
  • ATI (African Trade Insur­ance) can now start under­writ­ing poli­cies in Ghana and Benin.  (Ghana Busi­ness News)
  • Top polit­i­cal risks to watch in Zam­bia:
    • Elec­tions
    • Polit­i­cal violence
    • Fis­cal discipline
    • Eco­nomic nationalism
    • Cor­rup­tion
    • Elec­tric­ity (Reuters)
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    Wanted: An Application To Join Pro-Assad Demonstrations

    By Brian Hasbrouck · Comments (0)
    Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011
    • Greek PM George Papandreo’s gov­ern­ment sur­vived a vote of con­fi­dence yes­ter­day.  One step down.  
      • “The prime minister’s gov­ern­ment must now rapidly pass two more tests – enact­ing a €28bn aus­ter­ity plan and the laws needed to imple­ment it – to win a new bail-out to avert the eurozone’s first sov­er­eign default and pos­si­ble global eco­nomic dis­as­ter.” (Finan­cial Times)  I guess the goal is to thwart any threat of con­ta­gion then let for a real restruc­tur­ing of Greece’s debt.
    • Now on to some­thing even more delu­sional than the Greek restruc­tur­ing plan — Syria’s Bashar al-Assad’s world­view.  Appar­ently mil­lions of peo­ple gath­ered to cel­e­brate their pres­i­dent through­out the coun­try, well that’s accord­ing to the state media agency at least.  (Finan­cial Times)  To put that in per­spec­tive, if even just 2mm peo­ple showed up that would equal approx­i­mately 10% of the 21mm peo­ple liv­ing in Syria.
    • Mexico’s Agustin Carstens has lev­eled some pretty cogent crit­i­cisms at the IMF.  A shame he will not be elected the new head, even with the back­ing of Polit­i­cal Risk Explored.  (Finan­cial Times)
    • Ital­ian PM Berlus­coni has labeled spec­u­la­tors “locusts” in his ever typ­i­cal under­stated ways.  (Finan­cial Times)
    • FT Alphav­ille looks at the risks global investors are wary of.  Really inter­est­ing graph.  (FT Alphav­ille)
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