Evolving Military Strategies: Insights from the Middle East and Ukraine
The Decisive Podcast: Insights and analysis to empower confident decision-making.
Release Date: 09/27/2025
Governance Stress Tests: Key Elections in 2026
The Decisive Podcast: Insights and analysis to empower confident decision-making.
As pivotal elections approach in the United States, Brazil, and Ethiopia, global businesses are navigating a rapidly evolving landscape of risks and opportunities. In this episode of The Decisive Podcast, host Kristen Hallam is joined by S&P Global Market Intelligence experts John Raines (Head of North America Country Risk), Rafael Amiel (Head of Latin America Economics), and Jordan Anderson (Principal Analyst, Sub-Saharan Africa Country Risk) to examine how political outcomes through 2026 will influence government stability, economic policy, and geopolitical risk well into 2027 and...
info_outline
How Supply Constraints Are Defining Electronics Pricing
The Decisive Podcast: Insights and analysis to empower confident decision-making.
In this episode of The Decisive Podcast, host Kristen Hallam is joined by S&P Global Market Intelligence economist Yan Hoong for an outlook on the electronics and semiconductor landscape through 2026—taken from a March 12 client webinar. Yan explains why memory remains a big source of procurement and pricing anxiety, with tightness persisting in both advanced and conventional memory as suppliers shift capacity toward higher-end products. Yan unpacks how this constraint is already spilling into downstream categories like computers and communications equipment, and why price pressure...
info_outline
Risk On: The Macro Environment for Moving Metals Prices
The Decisive Podcast: Insights and analysis to empower confident decision-making.
In the first episode of season 6 of The Decisive podcast, S&P Global Market Intelligence's Jason Kaplan unpacks why 2026 is shaping up as a “risk-on” commodities environment—with steady but subdued global growth, rising volatility, and a deepening flight to safety that’s pushing risk premiums across key markets. Jason, a senior economist in the Pricing and Purchasing team, connects macroeconomic signals to real-world pricing and trade flows, including how tariffs and regionalization are re-splitting markets after years of prices moving in lockstep. With a year of tariff data now...
info_outline
Logistics Finds a Way: Lessons in Supply Chain Resilience
The Decisive Podcast: Insights and analysis to empower confident decision-making.
In our last episode of Season 5, host Kristen Hallam sits down with Chris Rogers, S&P Global Market Intelligence's head of supply chain research, to analyze the moments when supply chains gets stressed—and the playbooks that keep goods moving anyway. From ongoing Red Sea security disruptions that forced ocean carriers to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope, reshaping transit times, capacity, and cost, to the more everyday shocks that ripple through transportation networks, this episode explores what resilience looks like when it’s operational—not aspirational. Chris discusses how...
info_outline
Critical Minerals at a Crossroads: Navigating Supply, Demand, and Geopolitics
The Decisive Podcast: Insights and analysis to empower confident decision-making.
As the global transition to clean energy, advanced technology, and artificial intelligence accelerates, the demand for critical minerals—including copper, lithium, and rare earth elements—is reshaping supply chains and intensifying geopolitical competition. In this episode of The Decisive Podcast, host Kristen Hallam leads a discussion with S&P Global Market Intelligence experts to examine the evolving landscape of critical minerals. The panel explores how changing definitions, trade flows, and strategic stockpiling are influencing both businesses and governments worldwide. Senior...
info_outline
PMI in Focus: Turning Timely Economic Signals Into Strategy
The Decisive Podcast: Insights and analysis to empower confident decision-making.
In this episode of The Decisive Podcast from S&P Global Market Intelligence, host Paul Smith, Economics Director, is joined by fellow economists Sian Jones and Andrew Harker to unpack the role of Purchasing Managers’ Indices (PMI) in tracking economic trends across more than 40 countries and multiple sectors. They explore how PMI data offers a timely alternative to official statistics, helping organizations monitor conditions in output, prices, inventories, and supply chains when events are moving quickly. The discussion looks at how PMI data is used to understand the impact of...
info_outline
Cooling, Not Crashing: Analyzing the US Labor Market
The Decisive Podcast: Insights and analysis to empower confident decision-making.
The US labor market is no longer running hot — but it isn’t freezing up, either. In this episode of The Decisive, S&P Global Market Intelligence economist Juan Turcios unpacks what a “softening” labor market really looks like in late 2025 and into 2026, and why the headline numbers don’t tell the whole story. We dig into the sharp slowdown in payroll growth since the post-pandemic boom, the steady rise in the unemployment rate from its 2023 cyclical low, and the increasing concentration of job gains in a handful of sectors — especially healthcare. Juan also explores what’s...
info_outline
Ballots and Balance: Asia's Shifting Political Map
The Decisive Podcast: Insights and analysis to empower confident decision-making.
A wave of landmark elections across Japan, Thailand, and Bangladesh is reshaping the political map of Asia—and creating new signals for investors, multinationals, and supply-chain decision-makers. In this episode, we break down what the results mean for regional security, economic strategy, and the business operating environment over the next 12–24 months. We start in Japan, where Prime Minister Sanai Takaichi’s LDP delivers a sweeping lower-house win, strengthening policy stability while enabling more ambitious moves on defense spending, industrial policy, and potential constitutional...
info_outline
Resilience in the Global Economy: Growth Amid Volatility
The Decisive Podcast: Insights and analysis to empower confident decision-making.
In this episode of The Decisive, Ken Wattret, Vice President of Global Economics at S&P Global Market Intelligence, assesses the global macroeconomic landscape, highlighting that the world economy is proving more resilient than markets might suggest, even as volatility remains elevated. Ken unpacks how geopolitical flashpoints and trade-policy uncertainty are rippling through financial and commodity markets—often with sharper price action than real-economy fallout so far—while underscoring that further disruptions, higher tariffs, or supply shocks could still dent global growth....
info_outline
Mapping Geopolitical Volatility: Global Impacts From Venezuela and Iran
The Decisive Podcast: Insights and analysis to empower confident decision-making.
In this episode, taken from a Feb. 4 client webinar, host Kristen Hallam, along with experts John Raines, Jack Kennedy, and Jeffery McElroy, dive into the complexities of geopolitical volatility around the globe. As tensions rise over Iran's nuclear ambitions and the U.S. military strategy, the discussion explores potential pathways to escalation and their global implications. Discover how military and diplomatic maneuvers could impact critical sectors like energy and infrastructure, with disruptions potentially affecting global oil prices and economic stability. The conversation...
info_outlineIn this episode of the Decisive Podcast, host Kristen Hallam engages with S&P Global Market Intelligence experts Jack A. Kennedy and Sascha Ostanina to explore the evolving military strategies in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict.
They discuss the shift from conventional warfare to more interventionist and attritional strategies, the role of technology in modern conflict, and the implications for regional and global security. The conversation highlights the interconnectedness of geopolitical developments, the impact on alliances, and the importance of data-driven analysis in navigating current uncertainties.
Tune in for insights that empower confident decision-making in an increasingly complex world.
More S&P Global Market Intelligence Content:
- Country Risk Month Ahead: September 2025
- Red Sea ‘revival’ taking place as regional carriers lead the way
- Picture This: Houthis Renew Vessel Attacks, Making Shipping Route Changes Unlikely
Credits:
- Hosts: Kristen Hallam
- Guests: Jack A. Kennedy, Sascha Ostanina
- Produced By: Kristen Hallam
- Edited By: Marz Marcello
- Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Feranmi Adeoshun