Betting on Ukraine

Betting on the Tortoise in Japan

The Year of Betting Conservatively

The Global Stake in China s Anti Corruption Reform

So it had been a huge gamble, but it had paid off.

The stakes of geo technological competition are higher than ever.

Of the two approaches, Germany s is the more unusual bet.

Upping the ante could turn the tables.

The last and perhaps most difficult part of the wager is Europeanizing the alliance.

Thus, the stakes for both the US and Iran are very high.

In 1996, betting on Shiller s regression analyses was a reasonable and perhaps intelligent thing to do.

China s new leadership has not just lowered its growth target it has upped the ante on the economy s rebalancing imperatives.

So the stakes in Washington are high for President Hu.

Certainly, this seems to be the prevailing bet in the spin on global warming.

Nevertheless, the West appears to be hedging its bets by sustaining contacts with the opposition.

The division of opinion on this question is natural the stakes are too high, and it is one of the clear signs of the health of democracy that opinion can be diverse.

Today, there are many more players involved, and the stakes energy security, above all are far higher now.

But, rather than folding their cards, European leaders doubled down. They understand that their gamble will be immensely costly if it proves wrong.

Confuse the voters enough, and eventually more will be likely to stay with the horse they know.

If interest rate spreads on Spanish and Italian government bonds are any guide, bondholders are no longer betting on a eurozone breakup.

The Obama administration has staked significant political capital on the wager that Myanmar s promise may finally bear fruit.

The problem is that in an election with high stakes and deep polarization, who, exactly, can voters trust?

The first concerns building European defense in harmony with NATO, rather than in opposition to it.

Many will no doubt argue about which alternative France s bet on nuclear power or Germany s solar pathway is wiser.

That raises the stakes of political survival considerably, especially given the absence of any credible guarantor of constitutional norms and behavior.

The presence of so many armed civilians in Chávez s beloved militias will raise the stakes even higher.

The letters addressed by President Mbeki to the King of Morocco showed that the Saharan people had never ceased to trust in peace and a peaceful solution, notwithstanding the ever more violent and aggressive statements by various Moroccans in positions of authority.

So how can this one way betting be stopped? The scary answer may be that it does not end until governments run out of money (as in Ireland) or the public runs out of sympathy (as in Germany vis à vis the rest of Europe).

These markets needed the big banks to act as stabilizers and take the other side of bets.

And, if the bets don t pay off, the cost to the American taxpayer will be even larger.

But, even as Europe s leaders promised that help was on the way, they doubled down on the belief that non crisis countries must cut spending.

In other words, a China centric Asian supply chain has made a big bet on the grand European experiment a bet that now appears to be backfiring.

In the game, players may choose to place bets on either a single number or a range of numbers, the colors red or black, or whether the number is odd or even.

Finally, currency chaos is the safest bet of all, with sharp and unpredictable swings in floating exchange rates around the world.

Now, with the use of chemical weapons, probably by the Syrian government (and possibly by both sides), the US has again ratcheted up the stakes.

Although investors believe that the backstop is unlikely to be used, its mere presence dissuades them from betting against Italy.

Although much of the G 20 debate has concerned issues such as global fiscal stimulus, the real high stakes poker involves choosing a new philosophy for the international financial system and its regulation.

But overall, betting against big government financial institutions proved to be a richly rewarding business.

For Erdoğan, the stakes could not be higher. Erdoğan envisions putting the constitutional changes and the terms of peace to a national referendum, a linkage that would transform Turkish politics.

Since security is a key element of many other domains of human life and development, the stakes are much higher than those visible at first sight.

The Obama administration has staked significant political capital on the wager that Myanmar s promise may finally bear fruit. And, indeed, the rate of change in Myanmar over the last two years has been nothing short of remarkable.

His basic strategy was a standard one bet against any central bank that tries to defend an inconsistent macroeconomic policy.

Not only did China feel secure in placing such a large bet on the once relatively riskless components of the world s reserve currency, but its exchange rate policy left it little choice.

Nevertheless, a dispassionate observer might point out that for someone with limited resources and opportunities for policy reform to keep betting double or nothing on neo liberalism is a strategy that has a well deserved name Gambler s Ruin.

They accepted the risk implied by ultra thin capitalizations when it was mainly US government money on the line they would be more reluctant to do so if it was mostly their own money that they were wagering.