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).

In the mid-1800s, English philosopher and political economist John Stuart Mill developed “Utilitarianism,” a framework for making moral decisions. In Mill’s formulation, an action achieves optimal social utility when it advances the well-being of the most people, i.e. “the greatest good for the greatest number.”

I am sharing with you my article on Chinese engagement with Chile, recently published by the e-journal "China Brief."  The article, based on research and interactions during my November 2017 engagement in Santiago is also available at the website of the Jamestown Foundation.

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.

Russia

I am sharing my article on Brazil’s security challenges, and the case for strengthened U.S.-Brazil cooperation, based on my recent trip to the Brazilian Army's Strategic Studies Center (CEEEx) in Brasilia.  The article is originally published at the Global Americans.

Note: The title was inspired by the PhD thesis of LTC Oscar Medeiros Filho of the Brazilian Army Strategic Studies Center, and used with his permission.

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.