Senior economists also presented a special series of webinars to discuss the themes raised in these reports:
De-globalization
A discussion about how the pandemic will – and won’t – permanently change global flows of trade, capital, people and ideas, with particular focus on the breach in US-China relations.
Commodities after COVID
We will discuss how the sector will be changed by the pandemic, including the impact of a structural Chinese economic slowdown and the approach of peak oil demand.
Impacts on the financial markets
How will financial asset classes perform after the pandemic, for instance how would outlook for bonds will change especially if inflation remains permanent, not temporary, why equities could continue to do relatively well.
Private sector balance sheets
Will businesses as well as their creditors be self sufficient to pick up the COVID-19 bill as governments gradually withdraw their support?
Will inflation be a permanent phenomenon? Are we back to 1970’s?
Evaluation if the policy response to COVID-19 will have an inflationary impact will governments would tolerate or not higher inflation figures to address the Debt Mountains created through their response to the pandemic.
The State Role in the post-pandemic world
Is the pandemic resulting in a new age of large governments it used to be post WW2 until the Oil Crisis.
Why having a research budget?
Independence has always been crucial when conducting research. Nowadays, though, bearing in mind recent history and the pressures on investment banks, it became even more important. The importance of the accurate research has been officially recognized by regulators around the world and increasingly appreciated by institutions and individual investors.
Research in-house is always an option. Nevertheless, it is extremely costly and it is rarely possible to resource internal research departments fully at the requisite quality. Furthermore, an internal research department is always subject to fall into re-affirming the views of senior executives thereby defeating the object of the exercise.
Logical solution is to subscribe into an independent research from outside—either to supplement in-house resources or as a substitute for them. That’s our solution, for such an independent service, which crucially helps to make better assessments and decisions, the cost will remain a small price to pay.
In addition for many financial organizations, as individual investors increasingly realize the importance of the recent years. They are nevertheless able to demonstrate that they take into account some strong independent research for a better decision making.