It is past time to revisit the widely prevailing "free lunch" view of government debt. With a few notable exceptions, those who championed the notion have not acknowledged the likelihood of a new reality.

As finance ministers and central bankers convened in Marrakesh for the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in mid October, what surprised veteran analysts the most was the expected calamity that hasn't happened - an emerging-market debt crisis.

Could Japan become the world's next great growth story? Warren Buffett seems to think so and the IMF expects the Japanese economy to grow by 1.4% in 2023. But the Japanese economy could also be a ticking time bomb.

Many who attended this year's World Economic Forum in Davos were struck by the jubilant mood of the CEOs in attendance. It was hard to reconcile this optimism economic uncertainty caused by the war in Ukraine.

FTX may be the biggest scandal in crypto so far. But, to paraphrase Mark Twain, rumours of the death of crypto itself have been much exaggerated.

The risks of a global recession trifecta are rising by the day. I am not sure politicians and policymakers are up to the task they may soon confront.

With the US's disastrous exit from Afghanistan, the parallels between the 2020s and the 1970s just keep growing. Has a sustained period of high inflation just become much more likely?

The greenback's dominance may well be more fragile than it appears, because expected future changes in China's exchange-rate regime are likely to trigger a significant shift in the international monetary order.

Economic recovery, like Covid-19 vaccines, will not be evenly distributed around the world over the coming two years. A rising tide of recovery is inevitable, but it will not lift all boats.

There is a fundamental inconsistency over the long run between an ever-rising share of US debt in world markets and an ever-falling share of US output in the global economy.

The risk today of a debilitating 1930s-style overshoot in deglobalisation is massive, particularly if the US-China relationship continues to fray. And it is folly to think a retreat from globalisation will not introduce more, vastly more serious, problems.

For those who viewed negative interest rates as a bridge too far for central banks, it might be time to think again. Emergency implementation of deeply negative interest rates would not solve all of today's problems. But it would be a start.

Even with all-out efforts by central banks and fiscal authorities to soften the blow, a deep economic slump and financial crisis are unavoidable. The key questions now are how bad the COVID-19 recession will be and how long it will last.

With interest rates on government debt at multi-decade lows, a number of leading economists have argued that almost every advanced economy can allow debt to drift up toward Japanese levels. This ignores what can go wrong.

If a final US-China trade deal prevents China from gaining greater monetary-policy autonomy, it could create major problems when the next big Asian recession hits.

The arguments of supporters of Modern Monetary Theory have a grain of truth, but also rest on some fundamental misconceptions and have unpredictable, potentially serious consequences.

Over the course of this year and next, the biggest economic risks will emerge in those areas where investors think recent patterns are unlikely to change.

When China finally has its inevitable growth recession, the world is likely to discover that China's economy matters even more than most people thought.

In a presidency that has shown little regard for conventional institutional norms, how can one explain Donald Trump's completely reasonable appointments to the Federal Reserve Board?

Neither policymakers nor markets should bet on the past decade's slow growth carrying over to the next. The best bet is that AI and other technologies will have a much larger impact on growth than up to now.