Iraqi Market: General Economic Overview by Mark DeWeaver

Mark DeWeaver, co-founder of Quantrarian Capital Management – a DC-based emerging markets hedge fund – and author of Animal Spirits with Chinese Characteristics: Investment Booms and Busts in the World’s Emerging Economic Giant, discusses Iraq’s economic outlook.

According to DeWeaver, “it’s inconceivable that a country that has enormous untapped, low-cost oil reserves, is recovering from a civil war, is in the midst of a transition from a state-controlled economy to a market economy, and where there is excess demand for just about everything, would not experience rapid economic growth.”

“I think that the Iraq story is uniquely compelling among all of the economies of the world today. I suppose that there may be equivalent stories in parts of sub-Saharan Africa but I can’t really imagine anything quite as good as this, anything that combines all of these things in one place at one time, or any place that has such an enormous amount of untapped oil wealth and such a low starting point,” adds DeWeaver.