The problem with Pakistan is that few internationalists take the time to understand the place. They tend to see it as some sort of evil twin to India.
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Archive for January, 2011Foreign Policy magazine’s list of the “Top 100 Global Thinkers” includes eleven luminaries from the Islamic Crescent. We take a closer look at their causes, goals, and accomplishments. Friends call me a magazine junkie. I once arrived at my airplane seat and dropped a stack of magazines on the armrest. The man next to me said, “Are you a speed reader? It’s only a 50-minute flight.” My stack often includes Foreign Policy, a Washington-based publication serving the international affairs community. The December issue was devoted to the “Top 100 Global Thinkers.” (See www.foreignpolicy.com/2010globalthinkers.) The list starts with the names you’d expect in a US-published magazine: Gates and Buffet paired as the most influential. President Obama is in the top tier; so is Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, as we wrestle with the aftermath of what could have been a financial apocalypse. Then, after the usual suspects, the list gets interesting. Any belief that the Chinese will allow the yuan to appreciate meaningfully beyond their pre-determined framework belies a certain naiveté, in our view. Export growth stoked by a weak yuan helps soothe two sources of serious internal pressure. Pomp and circumstance was in high gear in Washington last week. Amid the ongoing frustrations of jump-starting the US economy and sorting out the mortgage mess, President Hu Jintao’s state visit was a public relations victory for the Obama administration. The awkwardness of the Free Tibet demonstrators in Lafayette Park was a distant sideshow. I’ve fielded several queries over the past week about how the devastating floods in Queensland may impact the Australian economy. About 200,000 people—in an area roughly the size of France and Germany—have been affected by torrential rains. Deaths have been reported. |
Egypt: Standing in the Middle of Nowhere and Everywhere
by Douglas Clark Johnson
30 January 2011
We’ll likely recommend Egyptian equities once the current uncertainty diminishes. However skittish the political backdrop, Egypt should be a mainstay of a well structured emerging-market allocation.
My email correspondence to Cairo from New York was returned as undeliverable. Somehow I doubted that everyone I knew in Cairo had suddenly changed jobs. As the international media soon reported, the government had simply flipped the switch on the internet.
That’s not the sort of thing that typically builds investor confidence. But we’ll likely recommend Egyptian equities once the current uncertainty diminishes. However skittish the political backdrop, Egypt should be a mainstay of a well structured emerging-market allocation. We see little prospect of regressive economic-policy implementation down the road. Our view might be different if current protests shift to an Islamist-led revolt, but so far that does not seem to be happening. We’re seeing grassroots discontent expressed by young Egyptians. More than half the population is under 35 years of age.
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Tags: economic policy, Egypt, investment banking firm, investor confidence, islamic finance, revolt
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