News and Insights

Global economic growth is stagnating in 2022, but is that a recession?

A lot has been written in recent months about whether the US, Euro area and global economies are heading for a recession.

The ECB is preparing the groundwork for more aggressive tightening

European bond markets have been particularly volatile in recent weeks as the general sell-off that started later last year deepened. The stagflationary shock triggered by the Russo-Ukrainian conflict was a major driver of the deterioration, adding to supply chain constraints associated with the pandemic.

How bad is the inflation problem in emerging Asia?

High and rising inflation has dominated the economic agenda in recent months. The combination of robust policy-induced global demand growth with pandemic-related supply constraints led to a significant uptick in consumer prices.

China’s economic outlook is weakened by Covid-Zero strategy

China’s Covid-Zero strategy was effective in 2020

China is where Covid-19 was first discovered in late 2019 and then experienced the first wave of the pandemic in early 2020 

La Fed américaine et la BCE sont sous pression pour faire baisser l'inflation.

Les marchés obligataires et boursiers mondiaux ont été particulièrement instables ces dernières semaines, la liquidation générale qui a débuté au début de l'année s'étant intensifiée avec la détérioration des perspectives macroéconomiques.

Persistently high food prices add to pressure to normalise interest rates

The world is dealing with severe stagflation, with decade-high inflation and slowing economic growth in most major advanced economies. Surging food prices are a significant contributor to high headline inflation in many countries, including most major advanced economies

Despite its hawkish rhetoric the ECB cannot follow the Fed

Global inflation is at its highest level for decades, especially in advanced economies, with GDP growth  already slowing sharply. This is called stagflation, but the severity of the stagflation varies across countries.

China’s growth outlook muddied by a plethora of uncertainties

China is a major source of uncertainty for the global growth outlook in 2022 and 2023. After a sudden collapse in demand and activity in Q1 2020, following the outbreak of Covid-19, China performed an impressive recovery from the pandemic. The positive momentum lasted from mid-2020 to mid-2021.

Headwinds pose downside risks and lead to lower global growth

The dominant global macro theme for the last year and a half has been the economic recovery from the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic shock. In fact, with a GDP growth of 5.9% in 2021, the global economy witnessed the fastest expansion in activity in almost 50 years.

Covid-19 is gradually becoming endemic, but risks remain

More than two years since Covid-19 was first discovered, China again appears to be the epicentre of the pandemic. At least that’s the take-away from recent headlines. However, focusing too much on China distracts us from the bigger global picture,