Research & News
Weekly Geopolitical Report – Greek Games: An Update (July 13, 2015)
by Bill O’Grady On Sunday, July 5th, Greeks voted in a special referendum to decide whether to accept the troika’s most recent proposal to end the current debt and financial crisis. Voters in Greece overwhelmingly rejected the EU’s offer. Since the vote, EU and Greek officials have been meeting, trying to determine the path forward. … Read More »
Keller Quarterly (July 2015)
Letter to Investors I once had a seventh grade teacher tell my class how lucky we were to be citizens of the United States. Of course, we all took it for granted. We didn’t know anything different…but she did. You see, Mrs. Danishevsky, who taught us Russian, had emigrated from the Soviet Union and knew… Read More »
Weekly Geopolitical Report – The 2015 Mid-Year Geopolitical Outlook (June 29, 2015)
by Bill O’Grady As is our custom, at mid-year, we update our geopolitical outlook for the rest of the year. This report is less a series of predictions as it is a list of potential geopolitical issues that we believe will dominate the international situation into year’s end. It is not designed to be exhaustive;… Read More »
Weekly Geopolitical Report – Cyber Security and Terrorism: Case Studies (June 22, 2015)
by Kaisa Stucke, CFA In April 2007, Estonian government workers found their internet connectivity interrupted and e-mail access compromised. In hindsight, this marked the beginning of a three-week cyber attack on the country’s government and private servers. The attacks forced many servers to block international connections. At the same time, street riots by ethnic Russians were… Read More »
Weekly Geopolitical Report – An Alternative to Gandhi (June 15, 2015)
by Kaisa Stucke, CFA Shortly after being elected into office last year, the new Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, visited a memorial for Veer Savarkar, an Indian independence fighter, praising his lifetime of “tireless efforts toward the regeneration of our motherland.” On its surface the move seems to be nothing out of the ordinary; however, the… Read More »
6/11/15 Confluence News
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into… Read More »
Weekly Geopolitical Report – The Importance of FIFA (June 8, 2015)
by Bill O’Grady On May 27th, Swiss authorities arrested several top officials affiliated with Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) on various charges, mostly related to corruption. Later that day, the U.S. Attorney General and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) unveiled indictments against FIFA officials, indicating that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had… Read More »
Weekly Geopolitical Report – Greece: An Update (June 1, 2015)
by Bill O’Grady In February, we reported on the situation in Greece. Over the past few months, there has been no resolution to Greece’s debt problem, despite numerous deadlines and meetings. In our earlier report, we framed the conflict between Greece and the EU in terms of game theory. In this report, we will begin… Read More »
Weekly Geopolitical Report – The U.K. Elections (May 18, 2015)
by Bill O’Grady The May 7th elections in the U.K. shocked pollsters, who had predicted a hung parliament. Instead, the Conservatives (Tories) won an outright majority of seats in the legislature, allowing the party, led by David Cameron, to form a government without a coalition. In this report, we will begin by recapping the election… Read More »
Weekly Geopolitical Report – The Next Generation (May 11, 2015)
by Bill O’Grady On April 29th, Saudi King Salman announced a set of changes to his cabinet and to the order of royal succession. We believe these changes are very significant, perhaps the most critical since the first royal succession in 1953. In this report, we will detail the changes announced by King Salman. To… Read More »