WASHINGTON, DC – The debt moratoria introduced early in the pandemic provided temporary relief for private borrowers, and may have limited the fallout of the economic disruption. But recent data reveal that they also created a potentially disastrous non-performing loan problem. When Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, private-debt crises ...

WASHINGTON, DC – Today's inflationary surge is being felt not just by the advanced economies but also by the majority of emerging markets and developing economies. And though its causes vary across countries, the task of resolving the problem ultimately will fall to the world's major central banks. Inflation has come back faster, spiked ...

WASHINGTON, DC – The global COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in soaring infection rates, widespread lockdowns, record-shattering declines in output, and spiking poverty. But, in addition to these trends, a quieter crisis now gaining momentum could jeopardize economic recovery prospects for years to come. The term "financial crisis" has long ...

The COVID-19 pandemic poses a once-in-a-generation threat to the world’s population. Although this is not the first disease outbreak to spread around the globe, it is the first one that governments have so fiercely combated. Mitigation efforts—including lockdowns and travel bans—have attempted to slow the rate of infections to conserve ...

ST. PETERSBURG/SINGAPORE – The pandemic is amplifying the risk of a world-wide food-price spike, which would trigger outright crises in many developing countries. Governments must therefore work together to address disruptions to food supply chains and prevent food protectionism from becoming the post-pandemic new normal. Even before the ...

NEW YORK – Argentina's creditors are being asked to accept a proposal that would reduce their revenue stream but make it sustainable. A responsible resolution will set a positive precedent, not only for Argentina, but for the international financial system as a whole. The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed humanity toward the worst global recession ...

CAMBRIDGE – Leaders of the world's largest economies must recognize that a return to "normal" in our globalized world is not possible so long as the pandemic continues its grim march. It is myopic for creditors, official and private, to expect debt repayments from countries where those resources would have to be diverted from combating ...

Developing nations as well as advanced ones will soon face a health emergency and its economic consequences.As the pandemic lockdown continues, governments and central banks in the world’s largest economies are responding with stimulus programs aimed at limiting the damage while holding societies together. But as the paralysis persists ...

CAMBRIDGE – The vast uncertainty surrounding the possible spread of COVID-19 and the duration of the near-economic standstill required to combat it make forecasting little different from guessing. Clearly, this is a "whatever-it-takes" moment for large-scale, outside-the-box fiscal and monetary policies. While pandemics are comparatively rare, ...

CAMBRIDGE – There is a reason that the US Federal Reserve chair often has a haunted look. Probably to his deep and never-to-be-expressed frustration, the Fed is setting monetary policy in a way that increases the likelihood that President Donald Trump will be reelected next year. Once a year, the leadership of both the European Central Bank ...

CAMBRIDGE – Despite central bankers' concerted efforts, credible price-stability targets have proved elusive in countries like Argentina, where inflation is soaring, and Japan, which can't shake the specter of deflation. What can governments do to influence inflation expectations when central banks' policies prove insufficient to the task? ...

CAMBRIDGE – Regardless of whether yields in advanced economies rise, fall, or stay the same, core demographic trends are unlikely to change in the coming years, implying that pension costs will continue to balloon. Is there an asset class that can provide yield-hungry pension-fund managers what they're looking for? The challenges posed by an ...

CAMBRIDGE – A decade after the subprime bubble burst, a new one seems to be taking its place in the market for corporate collateralized loan obligations. A world economy geared toward increasing the supply of financial assets has hooked market participants and policymakers alike into a global game of Whac-A-Mole. A recurrent topic in the ...

CAMBRIDGE – As Chinese policymakers attempt to address what ails their country's economy, they are pursuing two goals that will almost certainly turn out to be incompatible. Very seldom have central banks been able to maintain a fixed exchange rate over an extended period of time while providing liquidity to troubled banks and an ailing ...

CAMBRIDGE – Between 1913 (when the United States Federal Reserve was founded) and the latter part of the 1980s, it would be fair to say that the Fed was the only game in town when it came to purchases of US Treasury securities by central banks. During that era, the Fed owned anywhere between 12% and 30% of US marketable Treasury ...

CAMBRIDGE – Currency-market volatility has been around for decades, if not centuries. Wide gyrations in exchange rates became a staple of international financial markets after the Bretton Woods system broke down in the early 1970s, and mega-depreciations were commonplace later in the decade and through much of the 1980s, when inflation ...

MIAMI – When it comes to sovereign debt, the term "default" is often misunderstood. It almost never entails the complete and permanent repudiation of the entire stock of debt; indeed, even some Czarist-era Russian bonds were eventually (if only partly) repaid after the 1917 revolution. Rather, non-payment – a "default," according to ...

CAMBRIDGE – The global commodity super-cycle is hardly a new phenomenon. Though the details vary, primary commodity exporters tend to act out the same story, and economic outcomes tend to follow recognizable patterns. But the element of predictability in the path of the commodity-price cycle, like that in the course of a roller coaster, does ...

LIMA – As central bankers and finance ministers from around the globe gather for the International Monetary Fund's annual meetings here in Peru, the emerging world is rife with symptoms of increasing economic vulnerability. Gone are the days when IMF meetings were monopolized by the problems of the advanced economies struggling to recover from ...

CAMBRIDGE – Inflation – its causes and its connection to monetary policy and financial crises – was the theme of this year's international conference of central bankers and academics in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. But, while policymakers' desire to be prepared for potential future risks to price stability is understandable, they did not place ...

Greece, barring some bold new initiative, is on course to exit the euro area. How badly might this hurt the economy? How quickly could it hope to recover?QuickTake Greece's Fiscal OdysseyExits from currency unions are not as common as exits from fixed exchange rates. There are a few instances where highly dollarized economies tried ...

If it were not such an affront to the freedom of expression, we would almost be amused by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's recent tantrum over a commentary by economists Ricardo Hausmann and Miguel Angel Santos. Venezuela has long lashed out at the International Monetary Fund for daring to suggest that its macroeconomic policies might not ...

The blog of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently featured a chart plotting the U.K.’s ratio of government debt to gross domestic product against the nominal yield on long-term government bonds from about 1700 to the present. See Figure 1. The chart appeared with this comment: “You might think that these data, and the relationship ...

IIN May 2010, we published an academic paper, “Growth in a Time of Debt.” Its main finding, drawing on data from 44 countries over 200 years, was that in both rich and developing countries, high levels of government debt — specifically, gross public debt equaling 90 percent or more of the nation’s annual economic output — was associated ...