Ten years on from the collapse of mortgage markets in the United States and Britain and ensuing ‘Global Financial Crisis', this article examines the price dynamics of energy commodities, focusing on speculative bubbles, looking more particularly for clues as to when asset-price bubbles are...

The 2017 Spring Meetings coincided with the surprise calling of snap general elections in the UK and military tensions in the Yellow Sea. Our postwar social contract has to cope with unprecedented shocks: Britain's thorny withdrawal from the EU, worsening Migrant Crisis, rise in populist...

Rising tensions in the Yellow Sea, a festering ‘Migrant Crisis' in Europe and Africa and resurgent antagonisms in the Persian Gulf are further threatening the Post-War social contract bequeathed by President Truman, Gen. Marshall and Gen. Eisenhower: praetorian Midwestern pragmatists whose...

English Abstract: Following the COP21 Summit, we've reached a point in economic history where real change can be expected – even if policy makers are unable or unwilling to curb the activities of oil companies in the United States… It's likely oil companies won't be in a position to reverse...

The year 2017 saw the unravelling of the prevailing order that had dominated the French political scene since the late 1950s (the end of the Fourth Republic). For nearly sixty years (1958 – 2017), the authoritarian centre-right Gaullists shared France's ‘fromage' (cushy public jobs,...

The ‘COVID Crisis' has accelerated the mainstreaming of SDG-driven investment, with pension board members (trustees) playing an increasingly active role across all asset classes, from Sacramento to Sydney: governments (debt) and CEOs (equity) are having to commit more seriously to pressing...

The rapid rise of private asset markets has been one of the most remarkable phenomena in the institutional investment space since the start of the Great Recession (2008 – 2014). This trend is contributing to a pro-found transformation of the financial ecosystem as a whole. This unprecedented...

The co-authors of this article, M. Nicolas J. Firzli, the Hon. Nick Sherry and Dr. Guan Seng Khoo, are amongst the original coiners of terms such as “infrastructure as a new asset class” , the “SDG driven world economy”, and “building back better”. They were asked to comment on the...

The 8th World Pensions Forum was held 23-24 May: 130 pension executives and supranational experts representing $12 trillion in combined assets convened in Brussels to discuss “Effective Asset Ownership”. The Forum was pleased to note that some of our ideas were taken up by the Finnish...

This short paper is an executive summary of our interview (20 Oct. 2022) with Abdallah al-Yahya on Asharq News with Bloomberg (MENA & Western Asia audience).Looking at GDP and population terms, Abu Dhabi, Australia, Canada, Holland, Norway, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore appear to be midsize...