COMMENT: Dear Martin, In Portugal, we have since Q42015 a left government. The first 4 years were a Socialist government with a kind of explicit support of Communist and Extreme Left. Since last year’s elections, the Socialists are again in power but now with an implicit support from the other two left parties. Portugal enjoyed […]

COMMENT: Dear Martin, your public and private blog is the first I read every morning, it is my briefing. I received this email today (31.03.2020) from a friend living in Switzerland about sending me a package via normal mail … “this morning, I wanted to ship xxxxx and xxxxx to Greece, and as long as […]

ASIA: India’s policy makers are preparing a plan to carefully analyze a tough trade-off. They are considering a continued lockdown post-April 14, 2020, at the cost of longer-term economic devastation, or a rational “unlocking,” allowing India to return to work. Based on pre-COVID-19 projections of India’s GDP, the average daily GDP value for FY2021 was […]

ASIA India’s markets witnessed the biggest sell-off by foreign investors in a single month in March. The 21-day nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus raised fears of a devastating impact on an already-slowing economy. Foreign institutional investors sold nearly $16 billion worth of equity and debt as of Monday, according to depository […]

ASIA: In India, coronavirus cases continue to rise despite a complete lockdown and crossed 1,100-mark yesterday. India reported the biggest single-day spike in new COVID-19 cases at 200 today. As of Tuesday, the number of infected cases in India has increased to 1,300, with 102 recovered cases. The death toll from coronavirus in India has […]

ASIA: Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought forgiveness from the nation’s poor for his 21-day nationwide lockdown. During his address on national radio on Sunday, PM Modi said there was no other option to control this pandemic. The nation-wide lockdown has resulted in the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of migrant laborers working in the […]

ASIA:  The Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Policy Committee met today and announced a series of measures to counter the economic slowdown caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic. The repo rate and reverse repo rate have been cut by 74 bps and 90 bps respectively. All commercial banks and lending institutions can allow a three-month […]

COMMENT #1: Mr. Armstrong; I want to say thank you so much. I am not sure you are even aware of how right you have been during this entire debacle and I am not referring to just your forecast of the decline in the stock market which saved my future. While everyone was regurgitating the […]

ASIA: India announced an economic stimulus package worth $22.5 billion on Thursday to help millions of low-income households cope with a 21-day lockdown due to the coronavirus outbreak. The package will be disbursed through food security measures for poor households and through direct cash transfers to the beneficiaries’ bank accounts directly. India banned exports of […]

ASIA: India’s informal sector which comprises of approx. 1 million daily wage workers (mainly working in the construction sector) may face a big problem after the country went into a complete lockdown for 21 days. Many Indian states have announced packages ranging from 1K INR to 5k INR to support the daily wage workers but […]