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Dec 25, 2024 | 
fairobserver.com | Alex Gloy
A gaping hole, large enough to allow an arm to reach through, offered a glimpse into the bathroom. The door had earlier been replaced by a particle board, and someone had apparently taken out his displeasure on that board. My mother had snagged a room at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel for $99 a night. What a steal! Who cared about the wallpaper peeling off, who cared about the unconventional bathroom door.
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Dec 6, 2024 | 
fairobserver.com | Peter Isackson |Alex Gloy |Edward Quince
Events this year have helped to clarify thinking about how the Global South and more particularly, BRICS+ as its spokesperson, expects to position itself with regard to the US dollar. A consensus seems to be developing that rather than going to war against the dollar’s established position as the world’s premium reserve currency, nations across the globe are looking at diversifying the means and methods of payment so as not to be subject to every change of political mood coming from Washington.
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Nov 22, 2024 | 
fairobserver.com | Peter Isackson |Alex Gloy |Edward Quince
Earlier this month, Edward offered his perspective on how the media in the West covered BRICS nations’ position concerning the US dollar. To better understand the intentions, he proposes rethinking the vocabulary we and the media have been using. “It’s important to note that the narrative ‘BRICS countries target the USD’ seems just a propaganda topic that the so-called mainstream media is pushing.
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Nov 16, 2024 | 
fairobserver.com | Alex Gloy
Germany’s ruling coalition has crumbled, sending shockwaves through Berlin and beyond. The so-called traffic light coalition, named for its three member parties — the Social Democrats (SPD; red), the Free Democrats (FDP; yellow) and the Greens — has ended in acrimony. Chancellor Olaf Scholz, head of the SPD, dismissed his Finance Minister Christian Lindner, a member of the FDP, over irreconcilable policy disputes.
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Nov 15, 2024 | 
fairobserver.com | Peter Isackson |Alex Gloy
In the months since our last installment of Money Matters, alongside continuing wars, we have seen two troubling political developments, troubling in the sense that they have thrown the art of political and economic forecasting into total confusion. The first concerns Europe, which has been left floundering both economically and politically ever since the Russian invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago.
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Aug 15, 2024 | 
fairobserver.com | Sebastian Schäffer |Alex Gloy |Peter Isackson |Atul Singh
In this edition of FO° Talks, Peter Isackson, Fair Observer Chief Strategy Officer, discusses the 2024 European Union Parliament elections with Fair Observer Editor at Large Alex Gloy and Institute of the Danube and Central Europe Director Sebastian Schaffer. Politics in France have been coming to a boil. The past elections symbolize the lessons people have drawn from the fact that there is a more substantial influence of the extreme right, including Germany and Austria.
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Aug 8, 2024 | 
fairobserver.com | Alex Gloy
On Monday, August 5, the Japanese Nikkei stock market index dropped 12.4%, marking the worst day since the worldwide “Black Monday” crash of October 1987. This Monday, the US S&P 500 index lost 3%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 3.4%. The VIX index, a measure of volatility, reached 65, its third-highest reading in history. Only in 2008, after the demise of Lehman Brothers, and in 2020, during the onslaught of COVID-19, did the index top that number. A reading of 65 on the VIX is very high.
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Aug 2, 2024 | 
fairobserver.com | Peter Isackson |Alex Gloy |Edward Quince
In early July, Edward informed us that “the BRICS have allegedly already advanced to practical implementation of an alternative non-dollar financial system based on gold derivatives, smart contracts, permissionless and trustless blockchains.”He also reported some of what he learned from his conversations with people who attended the recent summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
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Jul 26, 2024 | 
fairobserver.com | Peter Isackson |Alex Gloy |Edward Quince
As someone with a non-specialist’s interest in how the media covers the great geopolitical question of how the system of payments of the global economy is evolving, I raised the following question to our collaborators. How significant is this headline from Watcher.guru, which could look to some people like a turning point?
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Jul 12, 2024 | 
fairobserver.com | Peter Isackson |Alex Gloy |Edward Quince
There can be little doubt that everything that is happening at the intersection of financial matters and geopolitics has become marked by a growing trend towards ambiguity and instability. The events of this past June radically increased the degree of both ambiguity and instability especially for Europe, but also the rest of the world.
