The industry comment letter was submitted to the BCBS on March 14.

Eking out the late-cycle rally; Sustained improvement in external funding conditions would be a boon for highly indebted EMs; After debt relief, many low-income countries have seen debt/GDP ratios rise sharply in recent years; Rising pension obligations burden mature economies—and some emerging markets as well

The February/March edition of the Insurance Update provides targeted updates on IIF insurance activities and events, and highlights relevant IIF publications or related regulatory developments in other fields. 

Trade tensions raised fears of slowing global trade. We develop a model to track US trade in real time, based on detailed weekly customs information. The picture is more positive than in Asian data, as US trade stabilized in real terms in early 2019. We think that global trade fears are overblown.

EM Growth Tracker at 2.8% 3m/3m sa ar in February. Strong improvements in financial variables insufficient to halt decline. Trade volumes and industrial production still weakening. EM Asia and Latam weaken, EM Europe & Africa with marginal gains.

Declining equity risk premia mirror the Fed’s dovish turn in 2019—but how much further can risk-on run?; Angels falling: more U.S. issuers are at the lower end of investment grade (BBB)—and taking on more debt; More vulnerable: small unrated U.S. non-financial corporates have racked up a hefty $1.13 trillion in debt; To call or not to call: $110 billion in CoCos are redeemable through 2020

We backtest our valuation signals by looking at subsequent REER moves. We find substantial predictive power in Brazil, India and South Africa,which is where our model currently signals material misalignments.

We present estimates of Venezuela’s external debt, which more than doubled in the last decade. Nearly half of Venezuela’s debt sits with PDVSA. Non-bonded debt, especially bilateral loans, is high. External debt rose sharply relative to exports, and, on this metric, is very high relative to peers.