Pulse: Global


BlackRock Fink’s Bully Pulpit: Accelerating Stakeholder Interests

If you have a bully pulpit, use it. That’s precisely what BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink did when he championed corporates’ engagement with purpose to staunch the pace of climate change and embrace the preservation of the public commons together with its specific stakeholders.

EconVue Spotlight | Is the Global Financial Crisis Finally Over?

What a week it was!  Equity markets and cryptocurrencies, both of which appeared to defy the laws of gravity, and the US dollar took a dive.  However, the story of synchronized global growth does not seem to have changed. Have we finally escaped the long dark shadow cast in 2008?  Renowned Japanese economy expert Takatoshi Ito thinks that things are changing at the Bank of Japan, the institution that invented and led the world in quantitative easing. This could be a signal of things to come in a new global monetary policy environment.

Davos and the anti-Davos Man (Trump)

The annual World Economic Forum (WEF) will convene this week in the ski resort of Davos.  The WEF, which was founded in 1971 by Klaus Schwab (who at age 80, continues to run the organization) is an annual meeting of the global economic, business and political power elites. (Tidbit: the aggregate annual compensation of the two dozen global leaders of industry attending Davos is estimated at $300 million).  While uber-elitist, the Davos meetings do reflect the major issues of the day and are useful sounding boards for discussing global economic and financial matters.

What to Watch for in 2018

Here are ten things that I think will shape the global and Australian economies in 2018, and that expect I’ll be talking about at conferences and events over the course of the coming year.

1: Central banks
The era of ultra-cheap money, which began during the global financial crisis, is drawing to a close. Already, the US Federal Reserve has raised its key policy interest rate target four times since the end of 2015, and has begun to wind back its bloated balance sheet (something which will take a very long time to complete).

EconVue Spotlight

China on the Rebound

EconVue Spotlight | 2018 EconVue Predictions

Every year we ask our EconVue contributors to prognosticate about the coming year. Although many people value economics as a way to forecast the future, most economists are historians rather than visionaries. However, if one understands current trends and events, then it is possible to make some educated guesses about the future. At the very least, it helps us create scenarios, both likely and unlikely, that challenge the conventional wisdom. Which is exactly our mission at EconVue.

Whither the US in 2018? US and the Americas and Globally

We conclude 2017, clinging tightly to a still uncertain confidence that job expansion and strong consumer spending can somehow continue, that advancing gains in the capital markets will persist and the promise of global growth engines in China and India, the world’s two most populous countries, is realistic. Growth projections are now pushing north of three percent – and yet there is an uneasy undertow to such an outlook for investors. 

EconVue Spotlight

Pages