Posts tagged 'elections'

10 questions on the Greek election answered

Paul Murphy is the founding editor of FT Alphaville.

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| Jun 15 2012 11:10 | Comment |

From Martin Lueck and team at UBS:

Who’s winning? Read more

Greek elections: Be afraid, be very afraid

Masa joined the FT in 2009 and has worked on a number of desks across the paper, including Companies, Markets and Comment. She spent much of 2010 in New York covering the US equity markets. But earlier this year she finally saw the light and moved to Alphaville.

She started her career in the investment banking division at Lehman Brothers in the summer of 2007, timing it perfectly with the beginning of the credit crunch.

She studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University.

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| May 03 2012 17:37 | Comment |

Greece goes to the polls this weekend. And it looks like it’s going to be messy. The potential for the “wrong” result to wreak havoc in the markets on Monday morning is real.

The outcome is very difficult to predict due to the incredible fragmentation of political support within the country and the rise of marginal parties. Many of these are deeply opposed to the austerity measures, the euro and the EU/IMF programme. As a result, mainstream parties have been dragged away from the centre. Read more

On austerity and political suicide

David joined the FT in 2011 as a Marjorie Deane fellow. He covered emerging markets, equities and currencies before making the jump over to FT Alphaville in May 2012.

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| Jan 30 2012 20:05 | Comment |

Governments across Europe can breathe a deep sigh of relief. Even the unlucky few who can’t convince Ms. Merkel to carry their standard on the campaign trail may not be brutalised at the polls by vengeful electorates beaten down by austerity.

Why? Read more

Political risk, elections edition

Tracy Alloway used to be deputy editor of FT Alphaville. Here she learned the details of derivatives, the absurdities of accounting and the various structures of ... erm ... structured finance. She now covers big US banks for the FT paper, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. She pops up on FT Alphaville every once in a while.

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| Apr 21 2011 10:55 | Comment |

We saw some ‘political risk’ last weekend — when Finnish voters elected a number of politicians from the euro-skeptic True Finns party into office. It is feared that any resulting political coalition with the True Finns included could threaten to throw the eurozone’s bailout plans out of whack.

So don’t expect political risk to go away. Read more

Obama acknowledges voter frustration

Cardiff writes mostly about US macroeconomic issues, with daily excursions into other topics about which he claim no expertise. Before Alphaville, Cardiff spent a little more than two years as a reporter at Dow Jones Financial News covering investment banking, asset management, and private equity. Along the way he has written freelance pieces on a variety of other topics from behavioural psychology to Muay Thai, the latter also being a personal interest that involves frequently getting kicked in the shins (and torso, and head).

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| Nov 03 2010 21:44 | Comment |

President Barack Obama on Wednesday challenged victorious Republicans to work with him on new initiatives to boost the economy and create jobs, in the wake of the largest Congressional defeat in more than half a century, the FT reports. The president took “direct responsibility” for his administration’s lack of progress on the economy, striking a sombre tone after American voters delivered what he called a “shellacking”’ at the polls halfway through his first term. Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives in midterm elections on Tuesday and saw their majority in the Senate sharply curtailed, leading the president to vow to work with Republicans to find ways to boost the US’s spluttering recovery. “I think that there is no doubt that people’s number one concern is the economy, and what they were expressing great frustration about is the fact that we haven’t made enough progress,” Mr Obama said at a press conference. Read more

Elections and the markets, avoid silly data-mining charts edition

Cardiff writes mostly about US macroeconomic issues, with daily excursions into other topics about which he claim no expertise. Before Alphaville, Cardiff spent a little more than two years as a reporter at Dow Jones Financial News covering investment banking, asset management, and private equity. Along the way he has written freelance pieces on a variety of other topics from behavioural psychology to Muay Thai, the latter also being a personal interest that involves frequently getting kicked in the shins (and torso, and head).

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| Nov 01 2010 18:42 | Comment |

Every time there’s an election in the US, analysts and pundits start data-mining through previous political cycles to predict what could happen next to the markets.

This kind of thing is more prevalent before presidential elections, but congressional elections aren’t completely immune. Read more

Obama finds patience thinning

Cardiff writes mostly about US macroeconomic issues, with daily excursions into other topics about which he claim no expertise. Before Alphaville, Cardiff spent a little more than two years as a reporter at Dow Jones Financial News covering investment banking, asset management, and private equity. Along the way he has written freelance pieces on a variety of other topics from behavioural psychology to Muay Thai, the latter also being a personal interest that involves frequently getting kicked in the shins (and torso, and head).

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| Sep 06 2010 22:09 | Comment |

Declaring an end to US combat operations in Iraq last week, Barack Obama told his country he would from now on devote his attention to the ailing economy, saying that restoring growth and jobs was his “central responsibility as president”, reports the FT. Some listeners may have felt they had heard this somewhere before. Mr Obama said the economy would be his top priority four months earlier  – and in January be­fore that . . . and last November. Opinion polls show that voters are also growing fed up with hearing him saying the economy is on the right track when their daily lives do not bear this out. Even as the unemployment rate ticked up to 9.6 per cent last week, Mr Obama said his administration had taken steps to “break the back of this recession”. Read more

UK exit polls make Tories largest party

| May 06 2010 22:18 | Comment |

Exit polls indicate the Conservatives will win 307 seats in the new Commons, with Labour on 255 and the Lib Dems 59. That would leave all the major parties short of the 326 needed to form a majority administration after the general election, the FT said. If the polls prove accurate, Conservative leader David Cameron will almost certainly become UK prime minister, taking his party back into power for the first time in 13 years. The prospect of a hung parliament sent sterling more than a cent lower against the dollar, trading around 1.4747 at pixel time. Read more

Clarke unleashed to attack Lib Dems

| Apr 22 2010 03:18 | Comment |

Ken Clarke, shadow business secretary, warned that Britain faces economic “disaster” if voters continue their flirtation with Nick Clegg, the FT reported. The pound will “wobble”, the markets could take fright and the IMF could be forced to intervene if the Lib Dem advance leads to a hung parliament, Clarke argued in an FT op-ed. Read more