Macroeconomy & Globalization

After a summer of heavy turbulence in global financial markets, the new season starts with the seemingly endless story of when the Federal Reserve Board will raise interest rates. Although the Fed put off the move in September, the US central bank will up rates eventually, most likely at its next meeting in December. The hike will undoubtedly force some countries to shift monetary policies.

Emerging nations are replacing the Americas as the continent’s largest trading partners.         

More than a decade ago, the Fed tried to pump life into the faltering US economy. In 2008, the financial markets crashed. There is a connection.

Saudi Arabia needs a strategy to diversify its oil-based economy. Can change come fast enough?

Newsmakers | China
At the beginning of September, the fledgling Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank took an important step forward with the appointment of its first president.
 

Regional Report | Latin America
The large economies on the east coast of Latin America—Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina—are slumping badly. Things are far different out west.

Capital Outflows | The meltdown in China’s stock market this summer and steep falls in many emerging markets currencies led some investors to wonder if another 1997 Asian crisis was brewing.

Newsmakers | Japan
Despite a less-than-stellar performance at the helm of the country, Japanese prime minister Shinzō Abe was reelected in September to a second three-year term as the president of his Liberal Democratic Party.

Compared with several other markets in the region, Peru’s economy is rock-solid.

Neil Shearing, chief emerging markets economist at Capital Economics, visited Global Finance on September 10, just as Standard & Poor’s cut Brazil’s public debt to junk level. We asked him about the outlook for that country and other emerging markets.

Commodities | Oil prices have only slightly recovered from a new record low set at the end of August. But they are still 60% below their peak of 2014, which is putting pressure on US oil companies, with many pundits predicting a rapid overhaul of the industry.

Country Report | Turkey is roiled by political uncertainty and slowing growth ahead of November elections.

What’s irking central bankers is not that they have bought too many stocks or bonds. Rather, it’s that they haven’t bought enough.

As Africa improves transport and telecommunications links, it’s creating countless opportunities for foreign direct investment.    

With the country’s oil revenue set to slide by about 30% this year, privatization is a largely untapped resource.

Table Of Contents

Central bank heads were once a predictable and conservative lot. Now they’re swooping in, buying huge amounts of securities and rolling out unorthodox policies to avert danger.

Newsmakers | United Nations
When the United Nations Global Compact was launched 15 years ago at the New York Stock Exchange, Lise Kingo was entrenched on the corporate responsibility frontline in Europe.
 

Regional Report | As relations between Cuba and the United States get friendlier, the economic outlook of the island is also improving.

“An economic windfall.” That’s how the World Bank’s chief economist for the Middle East and North Africa, Shantayanan Devarajan, characterized the boost to the Iranian economy from the lifting of sanctions in the wake of the nuclear deal struck with the permanent members of the UN Security Council.