Tag Archives: political risk

Narco-security in Mexico – Fat Tail Downside Risk to Financial Markets

Potential changes in Mexico’s internal security situation pose both upside and downside risks to corporates, each with relatively equal, medium likelihood and medium-to-high impact. With relatively lower probability, an extreme deterioration poses substantial broad-based downside risks for currency, credit and equity markets. Continue reading

My Take on Mexican Politics

Formally, Mexico is structured as a federal constitutional republic, consisting of 31 States plus a Federal District, not dissimilar from the US. It has several distinguishing characteristics, however: 1) it combines constitutional separation of powers with a civil law system, 2) consecutive re-election for the same public office is prohibited (although running for an alternative office is both permitted and common), 3) having been dominated by a single-party, PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) for 71 years until Vincente Fox of PAN (National Action Party) won the Presidency in 2000, transition to genuine democracy is still incipient. Continue reading