Economics

Chinese firms control more than 80 percent of Zimbabwe's lithium and virtually all of it ships to one destination. The February 2026 export freeze tripled revenue — and institutionalised the dependency it claimed to end. Three scenarios to January 2027 and beyond, with compliance calendars, fiscal thresholds and the succession clock priced in.

Sovereignty in Laos is not eroding — it is being liquidated asset by asset. This assessment maps how Chinese debt deferrals, a 25-year grid concession, the Ban Keun airbase and the Mekong dam cascade converted a state's core functions into a schedule of collateral, and what that means for board-level exposure.

Six days separate Trump's "massive" Greenland exploration pledge from the EU's renewed Arctic drilling ban. Two allied doctrines now claim the same subsurface — and only one controls the market that would price the other's claim.

China Q3 2026 GDP growth of 4.5% is real but rented: exports replaced the domestic engines Beijing cannot repair, and the resulting $938 billion surplus is now the country's principal geopolitical exposure.

The FIMA repo facility is barely used, and that is exactly the point. By demanding a review of Hong Kong's access to it, Congress has turned a dormant crisis instrument into a political permit — and the Hong Kong dollar peg's crisis assumptions are now on Washington's clock. Effective exclusion within the quarter is unlikely (20-40%); the repricing by counterparties is highly likely (80-95%).

Updated 19 Oct 2026 — Indonesia was not destabilised in 2026; it was sedated: a monopoly announced in May, diluted by August, relaunched as a monitoring grid in September. Our August wager stands, but its mechanics have changed — $105 oil has broken the subsidy math and MSCI has proposed ejecting the market from the emerging universe. This updated Indonesia 2026 geopolitical risk assessment runs three scenarios for Q1–Q3 2027.

Milei's Argentina 2027 budget is an electoral instrument disguised as a fiscal document — its assumptions will be arbitrated by a sovereign market that has stopped pricing past October 2027.

Updated 13 Oct 2026 — South Africa was not rescued in 2026; it was repriced: coalition intact but fraying, impeachment frozen not dead, a tariff wall rebuilt on three legal instruments. Our managed-decline baseline holds at 40–45%; the updated assessment runs three scenarios through Q2 2027.