Exchanges and stocks
Hello from Paris,
Japan’s stock market crash – the biggest since 1987 – is already spreading across Asia and beyond tech, with Korea and Taiwan hit particularly hard.
While early days, as we wrote today, it appears traders are waking up to the relationship between politics, economics, credit and value. Today’s correction has been compounded, among other things, by worries about geopolitics, with some expecting Iran to retaliate against Israel today. And whatever the geopolitical drivers, ongoing financial market losses will likely harm incumbent political leaders – and could affect Kamala Harris’ fortunes.
Speaking of Kamala Harris, my personal favourite photo of the week was the Vice President greeting my friend Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent wrongfully imprisoned in Russia for over a year on trumped-up espionage charges.
Evan, along with another twenty-five political prisoners was released after the United States, Russia and four European governments agreed to the biggest prisoner swap since the Cold War in talks mediated by Turkey. A huge relief to all the prisoners' families and friends and a rare moment of diplomacy and humanity trumping realpolitik. Welcome home, Evan!
Sadly, however, hostage diplomacy has become a frequent tool of statecraft not just in Russia, but China, Iran and elsewhere - and if you would like to learn more about the practice, check out our in-depth briefing on hostage diplomacy. And, as Evan noted in his first comments to the media upon his release, "I just spent a month in prison in Yekaterinburg where basically everyone I sat with was a political prisoner": those released last week were lucky, but there are many more who are not.
Otherwise, around the world this past week our core assessments covered:
Asia
领英推荐
Middle East
Europe
Americas
Africa
All the best