With the Year of the Dragon around the corner, will the renminbi be unshackled? Will there be a surge in domestic consumption, or will a housing bust weigh on the economy, dragging down global economic growth? To understand how dynamics may play out in China, try to put yourself into

EUR/USD: Eurozone money market rates are expected to fall further and as a result we have opted to lower our 3M EUR/USD forecast to 1.26 from 1.28. We still look for improved global macro data to weaken the dollar during 2012, but elevated eurozone debt risks and the outlook for

U.S. Dollar & Currencies: Review and Outlook
In 2012, policy makers around the world may be driven by the realization that the theme of 2011 was not a Euro-specific crisis, but simply another stage in a global financial crisis. Central bankers may ramp up their printing presses in an effort to

Following a fairly quiet beginning of the year, the second half of 2011 saw wide fluctuations and jittery markets. The predominant theme was the European debt crisis, which despite several ‘ultimate’ solutions has still not been solved. Hence, the politicians have still not managed to convince the financial

As we enter 2012, we expect investor risk sentiment to remain the principal driver of key markets’ direction. Global growth in Q1 2012 is likely to remain fragile and uneven. The Eurozone debt crisis is about to enter its third year and the crisis seems to be snowballing. Going into

According to the popular narrative, the European sovereign debt crisis was caused by runaway government spending in peripheral European countries. However, this narrative is somewhat of an oversimplification. Although Greece, Portugal and Italy all entered the current crisis with budget deficits and elevated debt-to-GDP ratios, Spain and Ireland had exemplary

The euro area economy faces significant headwinds and is most likely in recession currently. We expect the economy to shrink in both Q4 2011 and Q1 2012.
However, we do expect the recession to be fairly short as headwinds ease and some of them even turn into tailwinds. In particular stronger

Generating this year’s Outrageous Predictions has been even more of a pleasure than usual, as it seems that never before have there been so many path uncertainties for the future, so we have had an infinite variety of scenarios to draw on. As usual, we try to keep at least

Our currency markets continue to be racked by volatility, driven by uncertainty in Europe and tepid attempts at a rebounding economic recovery on a global scale. For countries like Japan that have had both weak fundamentals and a major natural disaster on its plate, a strong national currency is no

In our outlook for 2011 we highlighted that the level of uncertainty going forward was unusually high. If anything, in retrospect, this proved to be something of an understatement. Our stance was broadly a positive one for fixed income, a better USD story and for equities to look somewhat at