After a few blog-free weeks over the summer I am picking up my pen again. Thank you to all of my colleagues who have stepped into the breach with great pieces on China, Russia, Brazil, the trans-Siberian railway and more. In fact, the quality of writing has been dangerously high which is why I am rushing back into print before too many of you notice the quality differential.

If this blog has a theme it is probably about trying to shed some light on what a weird world we live in. Well, it does not get much weirder than what has been going on in the past two weeks.

A few days ago the Syrians were bracing themselves for a military attack from the United States with possible walk-on parts from France and Britain. The region was preparing itself for the repercussions. And then democracy happened. [Read more…]

Postulating about the elements that link the most recent wave of social unrest in such varied places as São Paulo, Istanbul, Stockholm, Cairo and Santiago is the latest pastime of the world’s armchair Metternichs. Citing the prevalence of the urban middle classes in many of the movements rattling governments from Anatolia to the Amazon, as well as the role of social media platforms as an accelerant, these sages have cast current protest movements as the logical, even predictable successors to the Arab Spring, or the Occupy Movement, or 1989, 1968 and, inevitably, the Parisian barricades of 1832 and 1848, so recently popularized in Hollywood’s blockbuster version of Les Miserables.

We don’t entirely disagree – the centrality of teeming emerging market megacities to each of these episodes is no coincidence –but one must be careful not to lump protests over rising bus fares in Brazil to anger in Egypt about efforts to impose a strict interpretation of Islam on a country with decidedly mixed opinions on the matter. Indeed, roll back a year to 2012, and a similar list might be comprised of Moscow, Lagos, London, Bangkok and Madrid, all sharing some characteristics, but also vastly different with regard to the catalysts and goals of the mass movements. Sometimes, we risk missing the trees for the forest. [Read more…]

Last week the leaders of the BRIC nations – Brazil, Russia, India and China – held a summit meeting in Durban. The addition of their host, South African President Jacob Zuma, turned BRIC to BRICS and at last gave Africa a deserved inclusion in the now famous Goldman Sachs acronym that has become not only an established part of the investment lexicon but is synonymous with the growing power and influence of emerging markets.

More recently, Jim O’Neill of Goldmans who coined the phrase over a decade ago has suggested that the acronym be re-ordered to reflect what he now regards as the relative investment potential of the original four. BRIC has become CRBI. This not only overstates the prospects for Russia it is also wholly forgettable. BRIC resonated because it sounded like something that is used to build new structures. Had Kazakhstan not South Africa made the grade then it would have had the added potency of being correctly spelt. [Read more…]