A chapter in the October 2020 edition of the IMF’s biannual publication, Fiscal Monitor, argues that as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and to support the recovery as Covid-19 induced lockdowns are relaxed and the world moves to a…
Declared the leading threat to global stability by the United States and a group of its allies, China has been accused of transgressions varying from stealing hi-tech secrets, spying, and interfering in domestic politics abroad to spreading viruses. Sometimes, even…
The tragic events unfolding in Lebanon are a portent of things to come for the entire third world. Lebanon, a small, highly import-dependent country, has been in the grip of an economic crisis for quite some time as the world…
Across the world, one consequence of the coronacrisis has been a shift away from fiscal conservatism, with diminishing concern for austerity or even fiscal prudence. Victor Gaspar and Gita Gopinath of the IMF estimate that the total value of the global…
There has been much discussion about how external debt concerns are likely to weigh heavily on developing countries in their attempts at economic recovery in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Most of this discussion has centred on emerging markets…
The competition among Asian countries to win a slice of export markets currently controlled by China is intensifying. In a recent development, Vietnam has finally ratified a free trade agreement with the EU, under which more than 70 per cent…
While forecasters grapple with predictions on the likely contraction in the world’s leading economies, big finance, especially in the US, seems to be prematurely preparing for its next celebration. Recall that while the post-2008 Great Recession was precipitated by the…
There is a massive problem of external debt building up for the third world, of which the recent Argentine debt crisis was only one manifestation. At the root of the problem is the collapse of primary commodity prices in the…
While everyone was busy looking at the Covid-19 numbers across the world, other “stuff was happening” in international trade: the US-China trade war, which started as far back July 2018, just got significantly worse. This on-again-off-again war has been a…
The demands for a "Global Green New Deal" were never about some Utopian vision or naïve perception of global togetherness: combined and co-ordinated global efforts are necessary to ensure the survival of the planet and of human life on it.…
