October 2024
- Opinion
- Global economy
Resilient global economy must brace for Trump and other risks
The world’s record-high inflation is largely easing, but significant downside risks will continue to pose a challenge for policymakers.
June 2024
- Opinion
- US election
The folly of the pro-Trump plutocrats
Business leaders dismiss fears of a return of the former president to the White House – they are wrong to do so. Trump is crazy and, alas, not amusingly so.
May 2024
- Opinion
- Population
How the world went from baby boom to baby bust
Helping people have the children they want in ways that fit with their plans should be a focus of policy. It is essential to help women combine careers with children.
- Updated
April 2024
- Opinion
- Monetary policy
Why inflation is proving sticky on both sides of the Atlantic
What matters is not what is happening right now, but what will happen in the months or even years ahead, as past policy works through the system.
- Updated
- Opinion
- Government debt
Global debt can’t keep growing forever
Now ultra-low interest rates have ended, large-scale government borrowing looks unsustainable.
February 2024
- Opinion
- World politics
UK politics is caught in a vicious downward spiral
If Britain’s Labour Party keeps to its cautious approach, it risks presiding over another period of stagnation and failure.
January 2024
- Opinion
- World elections
Why freedom is under threat across the world
Societies based on liberal principles are the most successful in world history. But both they and their ideas are embattled.
November 2023
- Opinion
- Monetary policy
The case for cutting interest rates is getting stronger
It looks increasingly plausible that this tightening cycle has come to an end. It also looks quite likely that the beginning of the subsequent loosening is closer than central banks are suggesting.
- Opinion
- World elections
A Trump win would change the world
If Donald Trump were to return to the White House as president, the implications for the US, its allies and the global economy are sure to be profound.
October 2023
- Opinion
- Global economy
China becoming a ‘country of old men’
As things stand, a declining population is set to slow the economy’s growth, prompting a need for changes to the retirement age and internal migration rules.
May 2023
- Opinion
- Global economy
G7 must accept it no longer runs the world
American hegemony and the G7’s economic dominance are now history, as many parts of the world look to China.
- Updated
- Opinion
- Government debt
Hard to trust the US and its debt ceiling theatre of the absurd
If the US were less divided, the debt ceiling would not matter. In today’s divided US, it does. So long as these divisions continue, so will the threat of a default.
- Opinion
- AI
Looming threats will not stop AI revolution
It might be the most transformative technology ever, and for now, the effects on humankind are too complex to fully understand.
- Updated
April 2023
- Opinion
- China relations
US-China relations have entered a frightening new era
Economic co-operation with Beijing will be harder than recent speeches by Janet Yellen and Ursula von der Leyen suggest. But somehow, we have to co-operate and compete.
March 2023
- Opinion
- Monetary policy
Monetary policy is not solely to blame for this banking crisis
The view that what has gone wrong with our economies in the past few decades is mainly loose monetary policy is a cop out.
- Updated
- Opinion
- SVB collapse
Four ways to fix the bank problem
If one thing is clear about the events of the last two weeks, it is that the vaunted reforms introduced after the global financial crisis have not changed any of this that much, or at least not enough.
- Opinion
- SVB collapse
Banking system has become a ward of the state
It may be amusing that those shrieking for a SVB rescue have been the libertarians of Silicon Valley. But few people are capitalists when threatened by losing money they regarded as safe.
West drags its heels on giving Ukraine what it needs
Western rhetoric about the importance of winning the war is not yet matched by deeds. This puts the outcome of the conflict in doubt.
February 2023
- Opinion
- Globalisation
New threats to global trade loom large
US interventionist policies can be successful, but they also carry risks, including worsening the trade wars now under way.
- Opinion
- Monetary policy
Fed must heed inflation mistakes of the ’70s
There is a danger not just of loosening monetary policy too soon but of loosening too far.