Galileo Galilei and the €-crisis

Just a few days it ago was the 450th anniversary of the birth of Galileo Galilei and this suggested me a comparison with the €-crisis.

Legend says that when Galileo Galilei exited, on the 22nd of June of 1633, from Santa Maria sopra Minerva, in Rome, where the Catholic church held a process against him, he pronounced the famous sentence: “And yet, it moves”, referring to the fact that, contrary to the view of the then majority of people, it was the earth that moves around the sun and not the opposite.  Since that day, the case of Galileo Galilei has become the archetypal case to demonstrate that the majority, even when supported by a strong institution such as the catholic church, is not always necessarily right.

When will it be "1989" in China?

Many market commentators are trying to assess whether China will manage to fully implement the decisions of the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China Central Committee, held from 9th to 12th of November 2013. The top of the Communist Party seems to be convinced that, as former Premier Wen Jiabao said, the Chinese economy is fundamentally unbalanced and needs a significant redirection [1].

Emerging Market turmoil and the canary in the coal mine

There was a time when developments in Emerging Markets (EM) mattered a lot for them, but much less for the rest of the world, as they were too small and too isolated to really influence the global economy. These days are long gone: Chart 1 shows that in the eighties the share of EM in the global economy was still only a half of that of Developed Markets (DM), now the EM are slightly bigger than the DM economies in aggregate terms and the trend is forecast to continue.