The contrast seems grotesque. A deadly pandemic has shut down the global economy and left millions of workers furloughed, fired, or stranded without gigs. The future for most businesses looks uncertain to dismal. Yet U.S. stock indices are near all-time highs, at giddy valuations comparable to the 2000 dot-com bubble and 1929.
Owing to a recent easing of both Sino-American tensions and monetary policies, many investors seem to be betting on another era of expansion for the global economy. But they would do well to remember that the fundamental risks to growth remain, and are actually getting worse.
China’s central bank must manage an economy structured in many ways quite differently from that of other major regions, such as Japan or the European Union. But the PBoC faces the same question of how effective monetary policy can be today. That has significant implications for the central bank’s signalling, which appeared to take a neutral stance on Monday.
Unlike the 2008 global financial crisis, which was mostly a large negative aggregate demand shock, the next recession is likely to be caused by permanent negative supply shocks from the Sino-American trade and technology war. And trying to undo the damage through never-ending monetary and fiscal stimulus will not be an option.
Trump’s hostile behaviour is reinvigorating efforts to turn the euro into an alternative to the world’s dominant currency. If only the Europeans could find some way to do it.
After years of low inflation, investors and policymakers have settled into a cyclical mindset that assumes advanced economies are simply suffering from insufficient aggregate demand. But they are ignoring structural factors at their peril.
A growing number of Chinese have rushed to obtain long-stay visas or property in friendly foreign countries as an insurance policy against a worsening of domestic conditions. Spurred on by a lack of investment options at home and rattled by the sweeping anti-corruption campaign of President Xi Jinping, those with significant assets are looking for ways to move their money overseas, by legal means or otherwise.
Over the past decade, the world’s largest central banks — in the United States, Europe, China and Japan — have expanded their balance sheets from less than $5 trillion to more than $17 trillion in an effort to promote the recovery. Much of that newly printed money has found its way into the financial markets, where it often follows the path of least regulation.
Ten years ago this week, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, and the world suddenly changed. That date, Sept. 15, 2008, was hardly the starting point of the Depression-sized financial crisis that would soon threaten to sink the entire world economy; it had begun more than a year earlier. But most scholars agree Lehman’s failure marked the moment when everyone realized at once that the so-called experts had no idea how deep the interconnections ran.
Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash
In the decade since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the start of the global financial crisis, the world economy has registered stronger growth than many realize, owing in large part to China. But in the years ahead, global economic imbalances and troubling trends in the business world will continue to pose economic as well as political risks.
