Stephen Pickford

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A pedestrian walks past a billboard announcing the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund (IMF) annual meetings, on the side of the IMF headquarters in Washington DC on 5 October 2023. Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images.

InternacionalEconomía

Attention around the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in Marrakesh has focused on the failure of their members to agree on language condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’s attacks on Israel. But their inability to agree an increase in IMF quotas is one of the most important – if less publicized – issues for the future of the global economic framework.

To finance its lending to countries in distress, the IMF relies on contributions known as quotas from all its member countries – a share of funds paid in to be re-lent – as well as bilateral borrowing arrangements with individual members.…  Seguir leyendo »

Geoeconomic fragmentation poses serious challenges for the UK

Europa

The latest IMF assessment of the UK economy contained some welcome good news. Compared to its projection only a month ago that the UK would be in recession this year, the IMF is now forecasting modest growth of 0.4 per cent in 2023. The Bank of England has also upgraded the prospect for real GDP growth over the next year by over 1 percentage point.

UK domestic challenges

But it is important to put this good news in perspective. In the short-term, the UK’s economic performance is still expected to be near the bottom among industrialized countries; inflation remains high and persistent; and in the longer term, the UK’s continuing poor productivity performance will remain a drag on growth and living standards.…  Seguir leyendo »

A British one pound sterling coin, a one euro coin and a US quarter dollar coin. Photo by DANIEL SORABJI/AFP via Getty Images.

InternacionalEconomía

As well as being a human tragedy, the COVID-19 pandemic has been an unprecedented economic shock for the world economy. Global output is estimated by the IMF to have fallen by 3.5 per cent in 2020, and all countries – big and small, rich and poor – have been hit.

There is now an increasingly clear route to bring the immediate crisis to an end by relying on a mass vaccination programme unprecedented in speed and scale. But implementation remains complex and risky, while the long-term consequences of the pandemic – impacts on health, acquisition of skills, and the accelerated spread of technology – remain highly uncertain.…  Seguir leyendo »

Photo illustration of various cryptocurrencies. Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images.

InternacionalEconomía

The governments of the G7 are well aware of the benefits of digital financial technology, but are also hugely concerned about the public policy and geopolitical threats from this potentially disruptive innovation, especially from so-called ‘global stablecoins’ (GSCs) operated by loosely regulated, non-financial technology giants, but denominated in national currencies.

A recent G7 report warns such innovations raise serious questions about a range of public policy issues, including ‘challenges to fair competition, financial stability, monetary policy and, in the extreme, the international monetary system’. G7 ministers and governors have stated quite explicitly that no global stablecoins should begin operation until regulatory and oversight issues are resolved.…  Seguir leyendo »

A billboard in Beijing features US dollars. Photo: Getty Images.

InternacionalEconomía

Towards the end of the Second World War, the Allied powers came together in 1944 to plan a new economic order for the post-war world which would avoid a repeat of the disastrous policy mistakes of the 1920s and 1930s.

At the conference[1] in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, 44 Allied countries met under the intellectual leadership of Harry Dexter White (a senior US Treasury official) and John Maynard Keynes. The conference envisaged new rules of the game to prevent countries following the ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’ policies that had led to the Great Depression. It also established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank[2] as the key institutions to manage this new world order.…  Seguir leyendo »