Big Reads on Economics as Global Recession Fears Amplify
Big Reads on Economics as Global Recession Fears Amplify
(Bloomberg) --
The U.S. economy is slowing and recession talk is in the air.
To get a better sense of what’s going on, here’s a collection of this week’s analysis from Bloomberg Economics:
U.S. Economy Slowdown Spurs Concern It’s Nearing Stall Speed
Fed Pressured to Cut Rates Again as Factories, Stocks Slump
Dodge a Major Global Slowdown? A Lot Has to Go Right: Economics
The good news: The U.S. economy’s stall speed is probably lower than it used to be, meaning it probably can hover below 2% without tipping into recession. The bad news: Manufacturing is sputtering, leaving the consumer as the last engine. Reade Pickert charts the risks ahead and Steve Matthews assesses what it means for the Federal Reserve. Tom Orlik and his team at Bloomberg Economics also look ahead to 2020 as they see a 25% chance of U.S. recession.
The Happy Gorilla Game Studio isn’t so happy these days as the U.S. business struggles to keep up with a tariff timeline that can be both unpredictable and unforgiving -- especially to small firms, Michael Sasso finds. Board games, cribs, and picture frames are among those caught in the crossfire. From Jakarta, Karlis Salna looks at how Indonesia is dealing with the trade war. And President Donald Trump won a victory as the World Trade Organization gave him the go-ahead to impose tariffs on European exports in retaliation for illegal aid to Airbus.
Newly minted capital controls are the latest wrench thrown in Argentina’s housing market, in which buyers and sellers already are dealing with a limp peso, mortgages priced in that troubled currency, and the world’s highest interest rates. Patrick Gillespie tracks the misfortunes of residents and real estate agents who have had to shelve plans amid economic turmoil.
Vladimir Putin’s prescription for more state protection and support for Russian farmers appears to have economically backfired for the president, with some potent side effects: steep inflation, a food price tag of an extra $6.9 billion a year, and limited production gains. Áine Quinn shows how the Russian leader’s protectionist strategy might offer lessons for trade warriors beyond his borders. Natasha Doff shows how a squeeze on spending by Russia’s finance ministry this year has dragged growth to a near standstill.
Japan is trying its luck for a third time as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe hikes the country’s sales tax. Previous efforts slammed the economy and there is concern that the latest effort to manage the country’s debt will hurt consumers and suppress inflation. Isabel Reynolds, Emi Nobuhiro, Emi Urabe and Yoshiaki Nohara look at the economic and political risks.
It’s been two decades since Lebanon pegged its pound to the greenback to stabilize the post-civil war economy, but now a crunch for its currency is showing the limits of that policy change, Dana Khraiche reports from Beirut. Amid a slow bleed of bank deposits and a soaring current account deficit, the import-reliant economy risks further unrest as policy makers struggle to save businesses and consumers.
After winning acclaim as a pioneer of chaos theory, which helps explain the unpredictability of complex systems such as the weather, Doyne Farmer jumped into markets, co-founding one of the early quantitative investment firms in the 1990s. Now, the Oxford University professor and a band of central bank researchers are focusing on the tangled web of global finance, using a tool of the natural sciences called agent-based models to find dangers lurking in the system and uncover ways to avoid them.
The Trade War Has Already Caused a Recession for America’s Factories
Stephanie Flanders, head of Bloomberg Economics, returns with a new season of the Stephanomics podcast, bringing on-the-ground insights from Bloomberg’s reporters and economists into the forces driving the global economy. On this week’s episode, senior trade reporter Shawn Donnan heads to the front lines of the US-China trade war in Wisconsin, and Stephanie talks through its global impact with Penny Goldberg, chief economist at the World Bank.
To contact the reporter on this story: Michelle Jamrisko in Singapore at mjamrisko@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Simon Kennedy at skennedy4@bloomberg.net, Zoe Schneeweiss
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