• Loading stock data...
Finance Banking Business Featured

What Germany’s medium-term fiscal plan means for Europe

EU leniency on Germany’s fiscal plan highlights rule rigidity and the need for reform to support investment. Germany’s July 2025 medium-term fiscal-structural plan exposes the tension between raising public investment in a low-risk country and the requirement in European Union fiscal rules for member state debt to comply with the 60 percent of GDP public […]

Economy Featured Global News

Speaking of debt: Framing, guilt, and economic choices

In many Germanic languages, the word for ‘debt’ also means ‘guilt’. This column explores whether the linguistic overlap leads to greater debt aversion in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland. Using a guilt-laden term reduces willingness to borrow, lowers approval for government debt, and influences firms’ financing plans and politicians’ framing of fiscal policy. While […]

Finance Banking Featured Global

Geopolitical tensions and international financial fragmentation: The 28th Geneva Report on the World Economy

Rising geopolitical tensions now threaten the rules-based world order that has governed the functioning of the international monetary system since WWII with risks of geoeconomic fragmentation. The latest Geneva Report on the World Economy examines how these risks, which include a reversal in decades of financial integration, reduced international allocative efficiency, and an erosion of […]

Economy Featured News World

IMF sounds alarm about high global public debt, urges countries to build buffers

The IMF this week edged up its 2025 global growth forecast given a more benign impact from tariffs. Global public debt is projected to rise above 100% of gross domestic product by 2029, reaching its highest level since 1948 and continuing to climb, the IMF said on Wednesday, urging countries to build up buffers to […]

Politics Economy Featured News World

Conditional budgeting: Striking a balance in EU economic governance

In July, the European Commission fired the starting gun on the negotiations of the next Multiannual Financial Framework – the EU’s budget. Against a tough geopolitical and economic backdrop, the call to bolster Brussels’ public finances clashes with the reluctance of some member states to spend more centrally. This column outlines a possible way forward […]

Finance Banking Featured News World

How the United States is eating Trump’s tariffs

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said tariffs accounted for perhaps 30-40 basis points of the latest core inflation reading of 2.9% but the effect should be “relatively short-lived”. U.S. companies and consumers are bearing the brunt of the country’s new import tariffs, early indications show, contradicting assertions by President Donald Trump and complicating the Federal Reserve’s […]

Economy Featured Finance News World

U.S. China trade tensions send Aussie sliding 1%, boost safe havens

Aussie slides as investors flock to safe-havens, yen strenghtens. The Australian dollar tumbled on Tuesday, while the safe-haven Swiss franc and Japanese yen strengthened as renewed signs of strains in U.S.-China trade relations dented risk sentiment and left investors ducking for cover. Trade and tariffs have been the main focus since dramatic market moves on […]

Economy Banking Featured Finance World

The Great Divergence and the Great Reversal: A new approach to global economic history

The starkly different paths of economic and institutional development followed by China and the West is often attributed largely to the Industrial Revolution. This column argues that institutions and culture played a key role in setting Europe and China on divergent paths well before the onset of the Industrial Revolution, but the role they played […]

Technology Featured News World

JPMorgan to invest up to $10 billion in US national security as part of $1.5 trillion pledge

JPMorgan Chase announced plans on Monday to hire bankers and invest up to $10 billion in U.S. companies considered critical to national security and economic resilience as part of a broader $1.5 trillion pledge. The 10-year initiative aims to facilitate, finance and invest in industries central to the growth of the U.S. economy, including defense, energy and manufacturing. Shares […]

World Climate News trade

Convergence, not alignment: EU-China climate relations ahead of COP30

Trade and other tensions between the European Union and China should not be allowed to derail joint work to cut emissions. The COP30 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil, in November 2025 , will convene at a moment when the Paris Agreement’s architecture is firmly in place but the politics to deliver it are […]