Saudi Arabia is not immune to the debt crisis in the European Union.

“A default that involved Spain and Italy would almost certainly lead to a seizing up of eurozone — and quite possibly global — interbank markets,” says Saudi-based Samba bank.

“Even if the financial shock was confined to the zone itself, European demand for raw materials and manufactured products (mainly from emerging markets) and services (mainly from North America) would shrink dramatically and this would be enough to imperil the global economic recovery.”
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U.S. Federal Chairman Ben Bernanke says interest rates will remain low and dampened enthusiasm for QE3. But one heavyweight thinks QE3 could come in August.
Forget about a U.S. rate hike and the third tranche of quantitative easing, also known as QE3, say analysts after hearing U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’ speech after its periodic federal open market committee meeting. READ MORE HERE

Worried about ‘peak oil’? How about ‘peak everything’? A GMO analyst crunches the numbers to show why the structural shifts in the world’s consumption patterns will alter the way we view and invest in commodities.

The world is using up its natural resources at an alarming rate, and this has caused a permanent shift in their value and we all need to adjust our behaviour to this new environment. It would help if we did it quickly, says Jeremy Grantham, co-founder of GMO, a global investment firm managing $107-billion in client assets.
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Ratings agencies have an uncanny knack of turning up at morgues and pronouncing the death of the deceased, so it should have been no surprise that Standard & Poor’s did the ‘unthinkable’ and downgraded the United States’ long-term outlook to negative from stable. Read More Here