Tag: sovereign debt
Could a Russian default trigger an EM crisis?
Russia is inching towards a debt default. We look at which emerging markets might be most at risk of contagion and whether investors should be concerned. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to have a devastating human impact.
Red flags that signal a country’s pending fiscal doom
Lebanon is facing a financial meltdown so severe that the World Bank has branded it as one of the worst since the mid-19th century. The country is fast spiralling into a dangerous situation of state failure, marked by violent riots, escalating blackouts and spiking fuel price increases.
Leadership in a time of COVID-19
Much has been written about the uniqueness of 2020 and all the changes and uncertainties that have come with it. What started as a localised and isolated health scare, very soon spread to a global pandemic. Despite fatality numbers being relatively modest as pandemics go, the uncertainty about the disease, and its transmission and propagation, caused an extreme leadership response.
Shocking GDP contraction – has the economy been irrevocably damaged?
On Tuesday Stats SA announced that SA’s GDP had contracted 51% between April and June (using annualised quarter on quarter numbers – in other words, this is a 17% decrease for the quarter) as a result of the lockdown imposed in response to Covid-19. The contraction was shocking – but not unexpected. Given that government took the decision to implement one of the harshest and longest lockdowns globally, the severity of the economic contraction should not come as a surprise.
