J. P. Marín-Arrese | Once again, Jerome Powell played down the need for monetary easing in the press conference following the Fed’s rate cut decision. His unconvincing delivery led Mr Trump to heap scorn on his uninspiring performance. For once, his bitter recriminations were fully justified.
Peter Isackson via Fair Observer | Politics and literature have much more in common than most people think, especially if we accept to consider Donald Trump as a major literary figure.
Johannes Müller (DWS) | Three months ago, we warned that: “The outlook for the world economy is getting cloudier. Escalating trade tensions could trigger further downgrades.” Sadly, this has now come to pass. In several export-oriented economies, notably Germany and Japan, we had to cut our growth forecasts for both 2019 and 2020. For the U.S., we have left our 2020 forecast unchanged at 2%, but now expect just 2.3% for 2019, 0.2% less than three months ago.
Peter Isackson via Fair Observer | From politics to science and the arts, we need to understand how “influence” works and how the notion has evolved in recent history.
Miguel Navascués | The slope of the interest rate curve has become negative in several countries, among them the most important. As we know, whenever this happens there is a high probability that it is anticipating a recession, in this case global. Some countries will come out of this better than others, but the recession is highly likely.
Donato Ndongo Bidyogo | 85% or 90% of Africa’s cultural patrimony is found outside the continent. Some 88,000 works in France alone.
Niel Dwane (Allianz GI) | The response of central banks to the financial crisis 10 years ago may have saved the world from a devastating depression, but it also created a host of unforeseen effects – from more indebtedness to more economic inequality. Looking back at what we got right – and what went wrong – what lessons can we take away for the future?
Peter Isackson via Fair observer | Though Steve Bannon’s English hero, Boris Johnson, is (momentarily) in charge of the chaos in the UK, his Italian champion, Matteo Salvini, is out.
Scope Ratings | France has been host of the G7. While its neighbour debates foreign policy, Emmanuel Macron continues to pursue his fiscal reforms, without losing sight of the size of France´s budget deficit (rising towards 3.1% of GDP this year and exceeding the target for 2020) which has caused concerns about the sustainability of the country´s debt.