Bi-Weekly Geopolitical Report
Weekly Geopolitical Report – The Qatar Situation: Part I (August 7, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady On June 6th, several members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)[1] announced a sweeping blockade of Qatar, also a member of the GCC. The GCC members enforcing the blockade, led by Saudi Arabia, issued a list of 13 demands which Qatar rejected. Since the blockade was implemented, Qatar has managed to replenish basic… Read More »
Weekly Geopolitical Report – A Coup in Riyadh (July 31, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady On June 20th, King Salman of Saudi Arabia announced that his son, Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS, as he is affectionately known), would be the new crown prince, replacing Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. Although the move was momentous, it was not necessarily unexpected. MbS’s stature in the kingdom had been rising since he… Read More »
Weekly Geopolitical Report – A Productivity Boom: A Response to Robert Gordon, Part II (July 24, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady Last week, we began an analysis of Michael Mandel and Bret Swanson’s paper[1] which is a response to Robert Gordon’s argument that the West is doomed to a prolonged period of slow productivity growth. In Part I of this report, we examined the productivity issue and discussed Mandel and Swanson’s analysis of the… Read More »
Weekly Geopolitical Report – A Productivity Boom: A Response to Robert Gordon, Part I (July 17, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady Robert J. Gordon is a well-known economist and a professor at Northwestern University. A member of the National Bureau of Economic Research, his most notable work is in the area of productivity. His 2016 book[1] argued that the best years of American productivity are behind us—highlighted by the introduction of steam power to… Read More »
Weekly Geopolitical Report – The Mid-Year Geopolitical Outlook (July 10, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady As is our custom, we update our geopolitical outlook for the remainder of the year as the first half comes to a close. This report is less a series of predictions as it is a list of potential geopolitical issues that we believe will dominate the international landscape for the rest of the… Read More »
Weekly Geopolitical Report – The Second Korean War: Part II (June 26, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady (N.B. Due to the Independence Day holiday, our next report will be published on July 10th. That edition will be our Mid-Year Geopolitical Update.) Last week, we offered background on the situation with North Korea. We presented a short history of the Korean War with a concentration on the lessons learned by the… Read More »
Weekly Geopolitical Report – The Second Korean War: Part I (June 19, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady Tensions with North Korea have been escalating in recent months. The regime has tested numerous missiles and claims to be capable of building nuclear warheads, which, combined with an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), would make the Hermit Kingdom a direct threat to the U.S. Such a situation is intolerable to the U.S., and… Read More »
Weekly Geopolitical Report – South Korea’s Too Big to Fail (June 12, 2017)
by Thomas K. Wash On March 10, Park Geun-hye was removed from her position as president of South Korea. Her ouster came on the heels of a scandal involving her close confidant who is accused of seeking bribes from chaebols, a group of family-owned multinational conglomerates that dominate the South Korean economy, to curry favor with… Read More »
Weekly Geopolitical Report – Are the Germans Bad? (June 5, 2017)
by Bill O’Grady At the NATO meetings late last month, the German media reported that President Trump had called the Germans “bad” for running trade surpluses with the U.S. The president threatened trade restrictions, focusing on German automobiles. Needless to say, this comment caused a minor international incident. Although such incidents come and go, it did… Read More »