Country Risk Datapoints of the Day

Here's the kind of table most of us never thought we'd see, taken from Merrill Lynch's latest economics note:

The rankings are constructed by considering the biggest risk factors affecting countries today: current account financing gap, FX reserves/short-term external debt ratio, exports to-GDP ratio, private credit-to-GDP ratio, private credit growth, loans-to deposits ratio, and banks capital-to-assets ratio. And as you can see, the results seem to make Nigeria the safest country in the world, with Colombia, Egypt, and Russia also in the low-risk top 10. Meanwhile, Switzerland is the second-riskiest country in the world.

Which doesn't mean that you should move your private-banking assets to Nigeria, of course. But it does mean that the Swiss franc is no longer the safe-haven currency that it was for most of the 20th Century.

Comments

[Smarty_Pants:]

Sadly, they just built a wall blocking our escape to Mexico.

Ay Chihuahua!

Implicit in that list of lowest risk is physical gold. It has no liabilities, is accepted world wide, and despite its low price in US dollars it is near all time highs priced in other currencies.

2008 Nov 06 11:45 AM

[dr.doolittle:]

class dismissed.

2008 Nov 06 12:29 PM

[jepittman:]

This from people buried in toxic mortgages. I am not impressed.

2008 Nov 09 01:43 PM