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THOUGH many outside America are dismayed at the prospect of Donald Trump as president, not everyone is despondent. When the news of Mr Trump’s victory reached the floor of the Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, the assembled politicians burst into applause. Such enthusiasm in Russia is in part a reflection of the bromance between Mr Trump and Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president. But it is also because Russia may be one of the few economies that might benefit from—or at least, be indifferent to—a Trump presidency.  

It helps that Russia’s economy has endured a rough time recently and that some kind of rebound is probably due. Its GDP fell by 3.7% last year and will shrink again this year, according to the IMF. Russia has one of the cheapest currencies in The Economist’s Big Mac Index, which compares the relative cost of burgers across the globe. By this measure, the rouble is around 60% undervalued against the dollar. Inflation, which rose to over 16% in early 2015 after a big fall in the rouble, has fallen to around 6%. That has allowed Russia’s central bank gradually to reduce interest rates from a peak of 17% to…Continue reading

IT IS not clear precisely how Donald Trump will govern, the extent to which he will carry out some of his scarier promises on trade and immigration, and who will be his economics top brass at the Treasury and in the White House. But a decent first guess is that President Trump will be bad for the world economy in aggregate; and a second is that his actions are likely to do more harm, in the short term at least, to economies outside America.

When America has in the past stepped aside from its role at the centre of the global economic system, the damage has spread well beyond its borders. In 1971, when Richard Nixon ended the post-war system of fixed exchange-rates that had America at its centre, his Treasury secretary, John Connally, told European leaders, “The dollar is our currency, but your problem.” This election result, to paraphrase Connally, belongs to America but is potentially a bigger economic problem for everyone else.

The scale and nature of that problem depend on the interplay of the two main elements of Mr Trump’s economic populism. The first is action to boost aggregate demand. Mr Trump favours tax cuts and extra public…Continue reading

La aseguradora no espera un impacto significativo en su negocio estadounidense, centrado en seguros de particulares de automóviles y hogar. Leer

CONVENTIONAL wisdom gets turned on its head pretty quickly in the financial markets. Although many on Wall Street were gloomy about the prospects under a Trump presidency, the markets have switched round pretty quickly after the overnight decline on election day.

So many people (including us) had warned of the crazy policies of Mr Trump that there was always going to be a market for contrarians to say that he won’t be that bad after all. Especially among white, prosperous financial commentators there is a willingness to «normalise» Trump – to tell the groups he has insulted and threatened to get over their fears. What Trump does in office will be different from what he says on the campaign, they think.

What investors clearly hope is that Trump will get to implement some of his policies but not all – in particular the tax cuts for the wealthy and for business, increased military spending and financial deregulation. An early sign that this may not be that «revolt against the elite» that some commentators are claiming is a surge in bank…Continue reading

CONVENTIONAL wisdom gets turned on its head quickly in the financial markets. Although many on Wall Street were gloomy about the prospects under a Trump presidency, the markets have performed a sharp U-turn after the overnight decline on election day.

So many people (including The Economist) had warned of the crazy policies of Donald Trump that there was always going to be a market for contrarians to say that he won’t be that bad after all. Especially among white, prosperous financial commentators there is a willingness to “normalise” Mr Trump—to tell the groups he has insulted and threatened to get over their fears. What Mr Trump does in office will be different from what he said on the campaign, they think. (If you want to see what minority groups have to put up with from Mr Trump’s supporters, look here.) 

What investors clearly hope is that Mr Trump will get to implement some of his policies but not all—in particular the tax cuts for the wealthy and for business, increased military spending and financial…Continue reading

La compañía atribuye el recorte a la venta del negocio conjunto con Catalunya Caixa y al coste extraordinario de las tormentas de nieve en EE UU

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El Ibex avanza cerca del 1%. Los mercados asiáticos ya han cerrado con fuertes alzas