The next few months will tell us a lot about the shape of the coming global recovery. Despite ebullient stock markets, uncertainty about Covid-19 remains pervasive. Regardless of the pandemic’s course, therefore, the world’s struggle with the virus so far is likely to affect growth, employment and politics for a very long time. Let’s start with the
Bank of England Slams Bitcoin, Praises Stablecoins and CBDCs Like many other central banks around the world, the Bank of England are still thinking about developing its own digital currency. The Bank of England’s governor today slammed Bitcoin as a substandard method of payment but reiterated the bank’s interest in central bank digital currencies (CBDC) and stablecoins. Despite
The U.S. economy shrank at a dizzying 32.9% annual rate in the April-June quarter - by far the worst quarterly plunge ever - when the viral outbreak shut down businesses, throwing tens of millions out of work and sending unemployment surging to 14.7%, the government said Thursday. The Commerce Department's estimate of the second-quarter decline
The world economy will go into recession this year with a predicted loss of trillions of dollars of global income due to the corona virus pandemic, spelling serious trouble for developing countries with the likely exception of India and China, according to a latest UN trade report. With two-thirds of the world’s population living in
China will push forward comprehensive deep reforms with greater strength, state media quoted President Xi Jinping as saying on Thursday. He also said China will proactively resolve risks, challenges and huge pressure from any area, according to Xinhua. Xi was speaking on the economic agenda for the second half of the year at a meeting with
Apple rode the company’s strong earnings report to become the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, surpassing the state oil giant Saudi Aramco at Friday’s market close. Apple shares closed up 10.47% Friday, giving it a market valuation of $1.84 trillion. Saudi Aramco, which had been the most valuable publicly listed company since its market debut last year,
Even before the latest Saudi-instigated oil war crashed oil prices, Oman had a budget breakeven price per barrel of Brent of over US$85, with a senior legal source in Abu Dhabi focussed on the oil industry spoken to by OilPrice.com at that time stating that the Sultanate needed at least US$7 billion ‘very quickly’ to avoid extremely
China is at the center of the discovery of what may be one of the biggest gold counterfeiting scandal in recent history. According to a report in Zero Hedge, not only does it involve China, but it emerges from a city that has become synonymous for all that is scandalous about China: Wuhan. The 83
Pandemic, Recession: The Global Economy in Crisis Global Outlook: Pandemic, Recession: The Global Economy in Crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has, with alarming speed, delivered a global economic shock of enormous magnitude,leading to steep recessions in many countries.The baseline forecast envisions a 5.2 percent contraction in global GDP in 2020—the deepest global recession in eight decades,
The World Bank’s International Comparison Program has just released its latest measures of price levels and GDP across 176 countries – and the results are striking. For the first time, the ICP finds that China’s total real (inflation-adjusted) income is slightly larger than that of the US. In purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, China’s 2017 GDP was
