With President Trump's tariff war in full swing, attention is turning to the "Mar-a-Lago Accord", a plan to weaken the dollar. Clever as it might be, but it is based on a flawed diagnosis.

The supply-chain disruptions during the Covid pandemic look almost quaint compared to the fundamental reordering of global trade now underway and which threatens a prolonged period of stagflation.

In the space of little more than two months, Trump has turned the world inside out. The Trump shock is the functional equivalent of a full-blown crisis. Concerns over the global economic forecast seem almost trivial.

If MAGA ultimately helps everyone break their dependency on the US consumer, the rest of the world will have much to thank Trump for. The only losers will be ordinary Americans.

Trump 2.0 is starting where Trump 1.0 ended – with distortions, convoluted logic, and the related risk of major policy blunders.

The economic damage Trump could cause will be moderate, according to Woody Brock. His bigger concern is what could go wrong with foreign policy under Trump because, in Woody's view, the probability of a global war is higher than it has been in decades.

2024 was a year of confusing, inspiring, depressing, and energising developments on many fronts. It’s in the spirit of thinking differently and embracing uncertainty that I offer you this year’s set of global developments to watch over the next five years.

Looking ahead, eight risks to global GDP growth stand out. Investors will need to rethink their investment and allocation strategies to navigate an era defined by uncertainty and uneven growth.

The economy played a critical role in the 2024 presidential race, creating the conditions not only for Donald Trump to trounce Kamala Harris and for the Republicans to gain control of the Senate and House but possibly also for a counter-elite to usher in a new power structure.

History is rhyming again. With the return of President-elect Donald Trump and a Republican Congress, the baseline supply chain policies that investors will have to deal with look a lot like those applied in the 2016 to 2020 period.

In 2014, Thomas Piketty's book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, reshaped the inequality debate. However his central argument – that capitalism inevitably leads to growing inequality – falls apart when looking at cross-country inequality.

Economists are struggling to reconcile their upbeat views on the US economy with the angst of average Americans. The key measures of economic performance are almost perfect. But voters continue to cite the economy as a top issue.

The Big Five model of personality traits remains the dominant framework in personality research. Increasingly, it appears that aspects of investor sentiment and decision-making can also be explained by Big Five personality traits.

Capital markets believe that interest rates are indeed on a downward path. Regulators would do well to get ahead of the next speculative cycle while they still can.

Gold has returned to the international monetary system. Over 50 years ago, US President Richard Nixon "closed the gold window". But now, fiat money is being challenged and the price of gold has reached all-time highs.

After 15 years of economic upheavals, from the European debt crisis to the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the European economy appears set to underperform in 2024. But are appearances deceiving?

At this year's China Development Forum - the highest-level annual meeting of senior Chinese policymakers and top CEOs, policymakers, and academics - discussion focused squarely on the risk of China falling into the middle-income trap.

Is there, as many predict, another financial crisis looming? The history of financial crises suggests that the preconditions are present. But this has been the case a few times since 2008. What is the reality?

Around this time a year ago, about 85% of economists and market analysts (including me) expected the US and global economy would suffer a recession. But the opposite mostly happened. One must approach any 2024 forecast with humility.

It's in the spirit of thinking differently and embracing uncertainty that I offer you this year's set of global developments to watch over the next five years.