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The global economy is on course to record its worst half decade of growth in 30 years, according to the World Bank. Global growth is forecast to slow for the third year in a row in 2024, dipping to 2.4% from 2.6% in 2023, the bank said in its latest “Global Economic Prospects” report. “Without a major course correction, the 2020s will go down as a decade of wasted opportunity,” Indermit Gill, the World Bank Group’s chief economist and senior vice president, said. The global economy is on course to record its worst half decade of growth in 30 years,...

Thus, total global financial centralization would be achieved. And once you have a one-world currency, a completely centralized and micro-managed global economy and the most vital trade systems in the world controlled by a tiny handful of faceless unelected bureaucracies, why then have nations at all? Global government would be the next and final step.

With only weeks until South Africa hosts the annual two-day summit of BRICS nations in June, one official revealed that many countries requested membership to join the bloc of emerging-market states. BRICS comprises five countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—with prominent emerging market economies. Anil Sooklal, South Africa’s ambassador to the organization, confirmed to Bloomberg on April 24 that 19 nations have expressed interest. “What will be discussed is the expansion of BRICS and the modalities of how this will happen,” Sooklal. “Thirteen countries have formally asked to join, and another six have asked informally. We are getting applications...

The International Monetary Fund warned on Tuesday that global financial stability risks have increased, raising the risk of a disorderly repricing in markets, as it pointed to emerging markets and housing markets as particularly vulnerable. The IMF said that "storm clouds" are looming over the global economy, including persistent inflation, a slowdown in China, and ongoing stresses from Russia's attack on Ukraine which have driven up the risk of a severe downturn to levels not seen since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. In its latest Global Financial Stability Report, the IMF warned that global financial stability risks had increased...

President Biden will meet Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Tuesday to discuss the national economy amid high inflation, which has hurt Biden’s job approval rating. It’s the first meeting between Biden and Powell since November, Bloomberg noted. A schedule released by the White House said they will “discuss the state of the American and global economy.”

U.S. stock futures pointed to sharp declines on Wall Street at the open on Monday as the number of coronavirus cases outside China surged, stoking fears of a prolonged global economic slowdown from the virus spreading. As of 7:47 a.m. ET, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were down 774 points, indicating a drop of 767 points at the open. Dow futures were down more than 800 points earlier in the session. S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures were down by 2.5% and 2.8%, respectively. Futures pointed to the biggest one-day points drop for the Dow since August, when the 30-stock...

The year 2020 could emerge as the start of the era of relative global chaos or major upheaval. It is the era we have been anticipating, as the impact of core population decline meets economic dislocation, and security and structural uncertainty. Changes in the fundamental sociological framework of global society, due to the end of the population growth cycle - and with it the end of the economic growth cycle based on expanding market size - were beginning to become evident by the beginning of 2020. It was apparent that 2020 was likely to see a major evolution in this...

The annual meetings of the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund (IMF) held Oct. 14–20 in Washington ended with increased pessimism about the global economic outlook. The U.S. economy, however, is “holding up relatively well,” despite rising trade worries and uncertainty across the globe. IMF last week warned about a “synchronized slowdown” in the world economy, with nearly 90 percent of the countries now experiencing slower growth. The fund slashed its global growth forecast for 2019 to 3 percent, the slowest pace since the 2008 financial crisis. The weakness in growth is driven by a sharp slowdown in manufacturing...

... The UK stands just two months away from a no-deal Brexit that will crash the world's economy. As it stands, no plan to prevent it commands a majority of its own MPs -- let alone the support of MPs and European negotiating partners. And no one is panicking. Perhaps they should be.

Falling rates of global trade growth have attracted much comment by analysts and officials, giving rise to a literature on the ‘global trade slowdown’ (Hoekman 2015, Constantinescu et al. 2016). The term ‘slowdown’ gives the impression of world trade losing momentum, but growing nonetheless. The sense of the global pie getting larger has the soothing implication that one nation’s export gains don’t come at the expense of another’s. But are we right to be so sanguine? World trade volume plateaued around January 2015 Using what is widely regarded as the best available data on global trade dynamics, namely, theWorld Trade...

The unexpected U.K. vote to leave the European Union has predictably set off a flight to safety, sinking global equity markets and Treasury yields, while boosting the value of the dollar. The immediate consequences are the opposite of what the weak global economy... ...the U.K. only accounts for about 2.4% of global GDP... ...Brexit vote will provoke "a crisis of confidence... ...For now, though, uncertainty about the future of Europe and concern about the disruption of trade are likely to weigh on investment and growth. IHS Global Insight, which had been forecasting 1.5% GDP growth in Germany in 2017, now...

The report blames a host of factors for this year's lackluster economic prospects including persistent weak demand in the major economies which remains a drag on global growth, the low price of oil and other commodities which are hurting exporting countries, severe weather-related shocks especially severe drought related to El Nino, political challenges, and large capital outflows in many developing regions. Dawn Holland, a senior economist in the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, said the 2.4 percent growth predicted for this year is 1 percent lower than the average annual rate of growth of 3.4 percent in the...

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa seem to be failing to justify predictions of 21st century domination ___ The political crisis in Brazil over economic mismanagement and high-level corruption, likely to come to a head next week, has reinforced the fashionable view, popular among western governments and businesses, that the Brics bubble has burst. Members of the exclusive Brics club of leading developing countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – are failing to justify predictions that, separately and together, they will dominate the 21st century world, or so the argument goes. The Brics concept, plus acronym,...

Jeffrey Gundlach, the widely followed investor who runs DoubleLine Capital, foresees a “global growth scare” between now and the end of the summer, triggered by a presidential nomination of Donald Trump. “That is where I see the vulnerabilities,” Gundlach said in a telephone interview on Monday. Trump’s protectionist policies could mean negative global growth, Gundlach warned. “As he gets the nomination, the markets and investors are going to worry about it more. You will see a downgrading of global growth based on geopolitical risks. You must factor this into your risk-management.”

The world economy would be worse off without negative interest rates, according to International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde. Negative rates in Europe and Japan have helped support global growth and price gains, she said in an interview in Ho Chi Minh City on Friday. The finance sector may need to implement new business models as a result, she said. “If we had not had those negative rates, we would be in a much worse place today, with inflation probably lower than where it is, with growth probably lower than where we have it,” Lagarde said. “It was a...

One view of what caused the Great Depression in the 1930s is that the Federal Reserve failed to prevent a collapse in the money supply. This is the famous thesis of Milton Friedman's and Anna Schwartz's A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, and it was, more or less, the view of Ben Bernanke when he was chairman of the Federal Reserve. The global economy today resembles that of the 1930s in several ominous ways. Financial author Edward Chancellor recently called attention to a paper written by Caludio Borio, head economist at the Bank of International Settlements, that provides...

After a series of stunning declines through the month of January and the first half of February, global financial markets seem to have found a patch of relative stability at least for the moment. But that does not mean that the crisis is over. On the contrary, all of the hard economic numbers that are coming in from around the world tell us that the global economy is coming apart at the seams. This is especially true when you look at global trade numbers. The amount of stuff that is being bought, sold and shipped around the planet is falling...

The currency's decline is having a pronounced effect on Canadians' grocery bills. As Bloomberg reminds us, Canada imports around 80% of its fresh fruits and vegetables. When the loonie slides, prices for those good soar. "With lower-income households tending to spend a larger portion of income on food, this side effect of a soft currency brings them the most acute stress," Bloomberg continues. Of course with the layoffs piling up, you can expect more households to fall into the "lower-income" category where they will have to struggle to afford things like $3 cucumbers, $8 cauliflower, and $15 Frosted Flakes. Have...

I was absolutely stunned to learn that the Baltic Dry Shipping Index had plummeted to a new all-time record low of 504 at one point on Thursday. I have written a number of articles lately about the dramatic slowdown in global trade, but I didn’t realize that things had gotten quite this bad already. Not even during the darkest moments of the last financial crisis did the Baltic Dry Shipping Index drop this low. Something doesn’t seem to be adding up, because the mainstream media keeps telling us that the global economy is doing just fine. In fact, the Federal...

Over the past year we have regularly contended that a far greater threat to the global economy than either corporate earnings, currency devaluations, rate cuts (or hikes), reserve outflow, or even the stock market, is the sudden, global trade crunch which has been deteriorating rapidly since late 2014 and has seen an even more dramatic drop off as 2015 is winding down. Actually, that is incorrect: global trade is merely a manifestation of the true state of the above listed items. ... We have in the past joked that the only thing that could possibly save the world from what...