Free Republic

When the global economy is doing well, the amount of stuff that is imported and exported around the world goes up, and when the global economy is in recession, the amount of stuff that is imported and exported around the world goes down. It is just basic economics. Governments around the world have become very adept at manipulating other measures of economic activity such as GDP, but the trade numbers are more difficult to fudge. Today, China accounts for more global trade than anyone else on the entire planet, and we have just learned that Chinese exports and Chinese imports...

The world economy is disturbingly close to stall speed. The United Nations has cut its global growth forecast for this year to 2.8pc, the latest of the multinational bodies to retreat. It leaves a thin safety buffer against any economic shock - most potently if China abandons its crawling dollar peg and resorts to 'beggar-thy-neighbour' policies, transmitting a further deflationary shock across the global economy. ... Each of the past four US recoveries has been weaker than the last one. The average growth rate has fallen from 4.5pc in the early 1980s to nearer 2pc this time. ... The US...

Rising inflation, slowing growth, a weakening currency, surging debt and a deepening corruption scandal - Brazil is suddenly looking vulnerable ___ The more you look at Brazil’s fundamentals, the more shaky the country looks. And we are not talking about the defensive prowess of David Luiz here. It is the country’s economic backline that risks tumbling down like a set of dominoes. When a Latin American economy is in trouble a good place to start is its inflation rate. Brazil’s is today running at 7.5%. While this is nowhere near the 2,000-3,000% of the early 1990s, when the price of...

Greek 4 month extension does nothing for the people of Greece. Sub-prime auto loans all time high and delinquencies are rising. Existing home sales implode while home price fall. Baltic Dry Index falls and ship builders are filing for bankruptcy. US blimp in Maryland used to watch the people. Ukraine bans Russian media and sets up their own propaganda media. Poroshenko wants Crimea back as they pull more weapons to the front line. US and the coalition forces getting ready for a major offensive in the middle east. DHS budget in trouble, using fear and a false flag event to...

With the Federal Reserve printing trillions upon trillions of dollars to keep the economic system afloat, many investors and financial pundits have surmised that the fundamental economic problems facing the United States during the crash of 2008 have been resolved. Stocks are, after all, at historic highs. But the insiders know different. And if there’s any single person out there who understands U.S. monetary policy and its long-term effects on domestic and global affairs it’s former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. As the head of the world’s most powerful central bank for nearly two decades he’s privy to the insider...

ISTANBUL--The world's top finance leaders on Tuesday in effect backed currency depreciation as a tool for promoting growth by signaling strong support for aggressive easy-money policies aimed at boosting the fragile global economy. The support by finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 largest economies for mass monetary easing--policies that have weakened exchange rates from Europe to Japan--is at odds with the traditional view that currency depreciation could have damaging effects on other economies. It also reflects worry that economies in much of the world could get stuck in a low-growth rut without decisive cash injections from...

"This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history. This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for the, at least, 150 years, since the industrial revolution." Those were the words spoken on Feb. 4 by Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), under the auspices...

The United Nation’s top climate change official Christiana Figueres announced this week that the group is actively working to "intentionally transform" the world's economic development model, a task she called the "most difficult" one the group has ever undertaken. "This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history," UNFCCC Executive Secretary Figueres stated at a press conference in Brussels Tuesday. The "intentional" reordering of the global economy, she told reporters, "will not happen overnight" due to the "depth of the transformation":...

Rajan: "Today, debt is making it difficult for developed countries to resume pre-2008 growth rates" http://t.co/hi4QoAqSA8 — Project Syndicate (@ProSyn) January 18, 2015 Today, debt is making it difficult for developed countries to resume pre-2008 growth rates, let alone restore the levels of GDP that would have been attained if the subsequent Great Recession had not happened. Meanwhile, industrial countries’ overall debt/GDP ratios are continuing to grow. In emerging markets, slow growth in the advanced economies has shut down a traditional development path: export-led growth. As a result, emerging markets have had to rely once again on domestic demand. This...

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) - The global economic outlook just got brighter after this week's big stimulus from the European Central Bank, leading policymakers from around the world said Saturday. In a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, they said a perkier Europe, coupled with a prolonged period of low oil prices, could help shore up the global economy following a period of underperformance that has prompted many forecasters to reduce their growth forecasts. "Lower oil prices and the big decision by ECB could further improve world economic outlook," said Haruhiko Kuroda, governor of the Bank of Japan.

The economic prophet who foresaw the Lehman crisis with uncanny accuracy is even more worried about the world's financial system going into 2015. Beggar-thy-neighbour devaluations are spreading to every region. All the major central banks are stoking asset bubbles deliberately to put off the day of reckoning. This time emerging markets have been drawn into the quagmire as well... "We are in a world that is dangerously unanchored," said William White, the Swiss-based chairman of the OECD's Review Committee. "We're seeing true currency wars and everybody is doing it, and I have no idea where this is going to end."...

Iran sees no sign of a shift within OPEC toward action to support oil prices, its oil minister said, adding its oil industry could ride out a further price slump to $25 a barrel. The comments are a further sign that despite lobbying by Iran and Venezuela, there is little chance of collective action by the 12-member OPEC to prop up prices - entrenching the reluctance of individual members to curb their own supplies.

LONDON – The global economy's problems seem to be multiplying. Hours after the leaders of the world's 20 most developed economies sought to boost confidence by promising to increase global output by $2 trillion over five years, Japan said it had fallen into recession. That leaves the country – the world's third-largest economy – on a long and growing list of troubled economies. China is slowing as well, and Europe can't seem to take off. Among major economies, only the United States and Britain are growing at decent rates, and how long that lasts depends on how much trouble their...

Despite all the gloom and doom from people like Paul Ehrlich and the warmers who say global warming will stunt food production, the reality is far different. It seems the increase in CO2 along with adaptive crop genetics may have combined to produce this bonanza. Based on the latest forecasts for production and utilization, world cereal stocks at the close of crop seasons ending in 2015 would surge to 627.5 million tonnes, up 8.3 percent from an already large volume at the start of the season and its highest level in 15 years. Maize would account for the biggest increase,...

In July 2014, ECRI’s International Cyclical Outlook reported “signs of spreading weakness in overall economic growth.” The early warning was based on our Long Leading Index of Global Growth (LLIGG), which was already “hovering near its worst levels since 2011” (top line). The LLIGG subsumes ECRI’s individual long leading indexes for 20 economies that are designed to be mutually comparable across countries, making it appropriate to combine them into a global index. At the time, we observed that, with our analogous Coincident Index of Global Growth (CIGG) “having rolled over” (bottom line) and the LLIGG “in a cyclical downturn, reports...

Barack Obama pledged to radically transform America when he took office. He didn't stop at America. President Obama's greatest legacy may be the radical reshaping of the global map. Fast forward three years. Here's where we stand. Given Europe's failure to stand up to Russian aggression in Crimea, Russia's borders have expanded to include Eastern Ukraine, northern Kazakhstan and larger portions of Moldova. As of 2014, Russia had consolidated its hold on Transnistria, the Eastern region of Moldova, which is heavily Russian; Russia had annexed Crimea; Russia had placed troops inside Eastern Ukraine. But it didn't stop there. Russia began...

Russia’s increased military buildup along Ukraine’s eastern border signals the possibility of a full-scale invasion and one that could lead to a worst-case global scenario, pitting NATO allies against old Russian foes and debilitating the global economy to nothing short of catastrophe if nothing is done to stop Moscow’s aggression, U.S. officials and analysts told TheBlaze. And the crisis seems to be heading in that direction. On Friday, more Russian troops and armored vehicles were seen offloading from ships in the Crimean harbor, reporters in the area said. The day before, Russia had already massed more than 8,000 troops and...

If you have been waiting for the "global economic crisis" to begin, just open up your eyes and look around. I know that most Americans tend to ignore what happens in the rest of the world because they consider it to be "irrelevant" to their daily lives, but the truth is that the massive economic problems that are currently sweeping across Europe, Asia and South America are going to be affecting all of us here in the U.S. very soon. Sadly, most of the big news organizations in this country seem to be more concerned about the fate of Justin...

Over the years, I’ve shared many charts, graphs, and tables to help people understand that the welfare state is fundamentally unsustainable. And, assuming there’s not genuine entitlement reform, many of these fiscal estimates show that the United States has a very perilous future. According to the Bank for International Settlements, the United States is in worse shape than every nation other than Japan and the United Kingdom. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States has a bigger long-run fiscal problem than all countries other than New Zealand and Japan. And according to International Monetary Fund...

Last week, as many of gold investors may already know, we saw the largest one-day withdrawal in over a year as the JPMorgan (JPM) warehouse withdrew a stunning 321,500 ounces of gold (10 tonnes). Additionally, we also saw a large withdrawal from the Scotia Mocatta warehouse, which brings the total withdrawal for the week to almost 5% of all COMEX gold stocks. .... As investors can see, last week's action finally saw a rise in registered gold by a small 5,002 ounces. But that was paired with a huge 350,968 ounce withdrawal from eligible gold stocks - the vast majority...