In The News

China’s Future Challenge for the World Economy

Martin Wolf March 30, 2016
Economic policies in the world’s most populous nations, soon to be the world’s largest economy, affect the rest of the world. China’s rising corporate indebtedness could slow investment and lead to rapid depreciation, suggests Martin Wolf for Financial Times. China has a range of responses: following the West’s lead with increased borrowing to stimulate the economy, weakening the currency or...

With Belgian Terrorist Attacks, Strains on a Battered Europe Grow

Griff Witte March 25, 2016
After World War II ended, the nations of Europe were determined to cooperate on making their continent a model of peace and civilization. Terrorist attacks waged by its own citizens as well as millions of refugees from the Middle East, an economy struggling with debt threaten, worries about trade and jobs threaten that model. “A union that has for decades been seen around the world as a beacon...

Central Banks Are Already Doing the Unthinkable - You Just Don't Know It

Mehreen Khan March 21, 2016
International Monetary Fund staff have called the past eight years an “era of extraordinary monetary policy,” with central banks applying more than 600 interest-rate cuts since 2008. “But the new wave of policy accommodation has ushered in fresh panic that monetary policy is suddenly subject to dwindling returns,” explains Mehreen Khan for the Telegraph. The focus on debt and limited spending...

The World Is Stuck With Persistent Stagnation

Stephen Roach March 3, 2016
Economists expect the world economy to be more resilient than any of its parts, with recessions typically affecting only a few of the 200 economies at a time. Yet the world is gradually following the pattern of Japan, the world’s third largest economy, in struggling with persistent stagnation, explains economist and Yale faculty member Stephen Roach. For economists, the term “secular” describes...

Putin Is No Ally Against ISIS

George Soros February 12, 2016
Russia’s indiscriminate bombing of population centers in Syria by Russia may temporarily save the Assad regime, but is threatening the region and Europe, too, argues George Soros, financier and philanthropist, in an essay for Project Syndicate. “There is no reason to believe [Russian President Vladimir Putin] intervened in Syria in order to aggravate the European refugee crisis," he writes...

A Towering Chinese Debt Mountain Looms Over Markets

Enda Curran January 15, 2016
Slowed growth in the world’s second largest economy, combined with heavy debt and currency volatility, is dragging down global markets. Since 2007, China and other countries responded to the global financial crisis with loose monetary policy. China’s “government is constrained by a credit bubble that has ballooned to $28 trillion in an economy growing at its slowest pace in 25 years,” reports...

Irredeemable?

January 8, 2016
By the end of 2016, Brazil’s economy may be 8 percent smaller than it was during the first quarter of 2014, reports the Economist. Commodity prices are slumping, and GDP could shrink by a fifth. Some call for the president’s impeachment; legislators are under investigation for accepting bribes related to contracts with the state-controlled oil-and-gas company, Petrobras. The Economist describes...