Global growth is slowing. The latest PMI survey says that it was at an almost 4-year low in February. The Chinese Authorities have already taken action and the European Central Bank is expected to do more soon. It is perhaps little surprise that the talk of negative interest rates is spreading to these shores. Continue reading
There is an increasingly unpopular drama unfolding in the global economy. It’s not quite the epic of 2007/8. But it certainly has economists and investors gripped, as we have witnessed the Big Short on oil prices and a Revenant-style bear market that has mauled the share prices of the stock markets’ biggest stars. Continue reading
The economic backdrop to the annual World Economic Forum last week was peppered with disappointing data. China is slowing and there is little sign of a pick-up in growth in the Eurozone. The one silver lining was the UK labour market, with employment hitting a record high. No sign of Davos’ job-stealing robots there, then.
Recent oil price falls partly reflect a malaise in the world economy: weak demand. And with disappointing data from the US, the UK and the Euro Area, market expectations of interest rate rises in the near future are fading.
The Federal Open Market Committee has convinced pretty well everyone that it will raise the Fed Funds Target Rate when it meets on Tuesday and Wednesday. A first rise since June 2006 would be cause for modest celebration, signalling as it would that the need for extraordinary monetary policy is beginning to pass, if not quite yet a return to normality.
Structural reform. That’s when governments reform markets – for example to boost competition – and invest in assets, from people to roads. Structural reform delivers faster growth but it offers jam tomorrow. To be sure, the Eurozone needs reform in spades but it needs substantial support today to escape weak growth and high unemployment. It’s a picture not unlike Northern Ireland!
It’s been a long haul but does normality finally beckon? The minutes of the recent Federal Open Market Committee meeting – the US equivalent of the Monetary Policy Committee – show its members edging close to raising the Fed Funds rate in December. If the Fed’s judgement is correct and growth is sufficiently strong to merit a hike, it would be another indication that the very long shadow cast by the financial crisis is waning.
Northern Ireland’s housing market is also moving slowly but surely away from the shadow of 2008, with residential property prices now +21% higher than their trough. However, they are still 48% below their (freak) peak, so the shadow won’t be totally gone for a while yet.
Last week, all eyes and ears were on the US Federal Reserve’s Chair Janet Yellen as markets braced themselves for the first interest rate hike in almost a decade. In a rate decision that was broadly seen by economists as something of a ‘coin toss’, the Fed’s policy-setting committee chose to keep rates on hold at almost 0%. This means that the Fed has yet to increase interest rates from their record lows of 2009.
These are slides from an economic outlook presentation done as part of Derry Enterprise Week. They include updates on currencies, oil prices, the labour market, the property market and more.
Disinflation and deflation have been spreading around the globe in recent months and the UK economy has not been immune from this trend either. Today Governor Mark Carney warned that the UK’s recent trend of reducing rates of inflation (i.e. disinflation) could turn to deflation, which is negative rates of inflation (falling prices), in the next few months. The annual rate of consumer price inflation (CPI) hit 0.5% in December – its joint-lowest rate since the series began in 1989. A new record low is expected next Tuesday when January’s inflation figures are released. Thereafter, the annual rate is more likely to go into negative territory which should trigger a series of headlines stating ‘the UK enters deflation’
