Concerns about U.S. vulnerability to cyber attacks is rising since the assassination of Iran’s general Qasem Soleimani and with good reason: according to a research paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a cyber attack on the nation’s five biggest banks could send the U.S. economy into turmoil. An attack that crippled banks’ ability to send payments among...

Since October, Chile has been rocked by public protests against conditions ranging from economic inequality and rising prices to plans to privatize pensions and public education. Economic policies begun in the 1990s created wealth but also drew millions of people into debt, with most of the new wealth flowing to richest 1 percent of the population. Protests began last fall...

Argentina’s inflation rate ended 2019 at 53.8 percent, down from a peak of 84 percent during the year. It’s among the five countries with the world’s worst inflation pace. This month, bank deposits have been off their usual pace by about $40 million a day, compared to rising deposit rates in December. Worsening the tailspin is Argentina’s inability to pay...

Turkey Inflation crept up above 11 percent in December, but Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has forced the country’s central bank to cut its benchmark one-week repo rate from 12 to 11.25 percent. Analysts had expected a cut no more than half a point. This is the fifth consecutive cut since July 2019. Because the inflation and interest rates are...

China has renewed construction projects under its Belt and Road Initiative, which is building ports, rail lines, and other infrastructure to connect its trading partners more firmly and easily to the Asian giant. During the first 11 months of 2019, China signed contracts worth $128 billion as part of the plan. Most of the money is targeted to Chinese firms,...

Germany’s GDP grew by a feeble 0.6 percent in 2019, its lowest rate since 2013. Global trade battles weakened exports, as did a general downturn in the world auto market. Domestic car sales slowed to recession rates, having a ripple effect throughout the industry’s national supply chain. What growth there was is being attributed to construction and consumer spending. Last...

After decades of wielding power over national economies, nations’ central banks have spent much of their power. Their power comes through their ability to adjust interest rates to nudge growth or restrain inflation. Now many of these national banks have lowered interest rates to or near zero, or in some cases negative numbers, to boost growth and keep recession at...

The world is drifting toward another Great Depression, says Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund. She points to IMF research that finds parallels between current economic conditions, including economic inequality and financial markets’ instability, and those of the 1920s that culminated in the stock market collapse and a 10-year global depression that was ended only by World...

Record Bond Issues Heighten Fears of Debt Collapse In 2019, corporations globally took advantage of low interest rates and issued $2.5 trillion in bonds during the year, nudging past 2017’s record number. According to the World Bank, while central banks are eager to keep rates low to stave off a recession, their cheap money policies have created a chasm of...