China Deepens Global Finance Links as It Joins Benchmark Indexes
By Sally Chen, Dimitris Drakopoulos, and Rohit Goel
China is embarking on the next stage of its integration into global financial markets. […]
The Year in Review: Global Economy in 5 Charts
By Oya Celasun, Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti, and Maurice Obstfeld
December 18, 2017
Versions in عربي (Arabic), 中文 (Chinese), Español (Spanish), Français (French), 日本語 (Japanese), Русский (Russian)
On the economic front, 2017 is ending on a high note (photo: allstars/shutterstock).
It has been a tumultuous year marked by natural disasters, geopolitical tensions, and deep political divisions in many countries.
On the economic front, however, 2017 is ending on a high note, with GDP continuing to accelerate over much of the world in the broadest cyclical upswing since the start of the decade. […]
The SDR: Giving An Old Idea New Life
By IMFBlog
June 2, 2017
The IMF’s Special Drawing Right, or SDR, was created more than 50 years ago and used only by IMF member countries to supplement their official reserves. The SDR’s value is based on a basket of five major currencies—the US dollar, the euro, the Chinese renminbi, the Japanese yen, and the British pound. In this podcast, Mohamed El-Erian, Chief Economic Advisor at the financial services firm Allianz, and a former deputy director at the IMF, says an expanded use of the SDR in global markets could help to strengthen the world economy. […]
Latin America: What’s Ahead in 2012?
A few days after the first sunrise of 2012 kissed the shores of Latin America, it is natural to ask: What does the New Year hold for the region’s economies, especially with Europe still under stress? For sure, a dimmer economic environment, here and abroad. Growth has softened in the larger countries of the region. Looking North, the United States is growing a bit more, but elsewhere activity is softening, including in China—an increasingly important customer for the region’s commodities. Perhaps more importantly, global financial markets are still strained, because many questions about advanced economies remain unanswered. What should countries do in the face of this risky outlook? A lot depends on their current macroeconomic situation.
Tailwinds or Headwinds? Adjusting the Economic Sails in Latin America
As the European crisis lingers and advanced economies stall, the next six to eighteen months will be challenging for Latin America. Increased global uncertainties may create headwinds for the region—greater stress in the global economy and markets—tailwinds, if the advanced countries’ problems are tackled and economies spring back to life, or volatile gusts—weak growth and continued uncertainty—like we are seeing now.
But it’s not easy to forecast the future of Latin America in these uncertain times, as we discuss in our just-published Regional Economic Outlook for Western Hemisphere. (Here I focus on Latin America, but our report covers the whole region, including North America, Central America, and the Caribbean.)