Javiera Alarcon via Fair Observer | Women and men on track to becoming parents must face the prospect of increasing costs of quality childcare. This is true for developed nations, but no less predictable in low-income countries as well. Raising children is not what it used to be.
Jens Bastian via Macropolis | For some Greece observers and various China analysts the decision by the Greek government to join the 17+1 network came as a surprise. They shouldn’t have been taken aback. What is rather astonishing is the muted response by Brussels, Berlin and Washington.
Peter Isackson via Fair Observer | Monopolist capitalism in the era of digital control reassures some and frightens others. Can it be controlled?
Alicia García-Herrero (Natixis) | Out of the key reasons for the cyclical slowdown in 2018, namely the worsening sentiment due to the US-China trade war and the rapid shadow banking crackdown, the former can be considered as an external shock but the latter is self-inflicted.
John Feffer via Fair Observer | Several countries have already withdrawn recognition of the Trump government and recognized Nancy Pelosi instead as the legitimate leader of the country. The deputy assistant undersecretary general of the United Nations has given the United States a one-year warning. If the country doesn’t clean up its act and become a responsible world citizen, Ithell Colhoquon announced yesterday, the international community will impose sanctions on…
Jean Abi Nader via Fair Observer | The challenges of sustainable economic growth and meaningful employment are common throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
Pablo Pardo (Washington) | If in any country the word “socialist” is an insult, it is in the US of 2019. “Socialism” has become the war cry of the Republican party against the opposition Democrats, who control the House of Representatives, in large part because the media star of this party in the Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, describes herself as a “democratic socialist”.
Despite the general deleveraging in the US, the corporate and non-corporate sector has begun to indebt itself again, currently to a level of 72.6% of GDP ($15 trillion). According to calculations of economists at the firm Solunion, the real level of non-financial corporate debt could exceed by 30%, or $3.9 Tr.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has again downgraded global economic growth for 2019 to 3.3%. However, the most striking point was the strong downgrade of Eurozone GDP growth, which it now forecasts at only 1% when only a few months ago it was expecting 1.8%. Germany and Italy are the countries that emerge worse from this severe downgrade of growth.
The prospect of a settlement to the conventional elements of the trade war is helping sentiment. As discussed by Mark Tinker, Head of AXA Framlington Equities in Asia, it is in everybody’s interest to settle the tariff issue. However, the policies aimed (perhaps quixotically) at trying to limit Chinese growth, are very much still on the table. The issues over Huawei are perhaps the most visible aspect of this, but it does introduce a level of policy-dependent idiosyncratic risk for portfolios.