Seeking Alpha (January 17)
America has become “an attractive sponge to absorb capital from everywhere. As a result, the US stock market capitalization currently represents 61% of the global stock market capitalization, despite the fact that US GDP is only 23% of global GDP.” US equities also “now represent about 200% of US GDP, which is an all-time high.”
Tags: Absorb, Attractive, Capital, Capitalization, Equities, GDP, Global, Sponge, Stock market, U.S.
McKinsey Global Institute (November 15)
Since 2000, net worth has tripled “to $510 trillion, or 6.1 times global GDP, with China accounting for one-third of global growth.” The increase “mainly reflects valuation gains in real assets, especially real estate, rather than investment in productive assets that drive our economies.” Remarkably, the “historic link between the growth of net worth and the growth of GDP no longer holds.”
Tags: $510 trillion, 2000, China, Economies, GDP, Global growth, Investment, Net worth, Productive assets, Real assets, Real estate, Valuation gains
BBC (October 27)
“The impact of Brexit on the UK economy will be worse in the long run compared to the coronavirus pandemic.” According to Richard Hughes, the chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility, “leaving the EU will reduce the UK’s potential GDP by about 4% in the long term” while the impact of the pandemic is forecast as a 2% contraction of GDP.
The Guardian (April 30)
“It is time for a public inquiry. The coronavirus crisis has been an extraordinary period for the UK, and the toll substantial. More than 127,000 people have died, children have lost years of education, and we have seen the largest drop in GDP since consistent records began more than half a century ago…. While the government has done some things well – the vaccine programme is an undisputed success so far – there are sincere, legitimate questions about many of its other choices.*
Tags: Coronavirus, Crisis, Drop, Education, Extraordinary, GDP, Government, Legitimate, Public inquiry, Questions, UK, Vaccine
Bloomberg (April 16)
“China’s economy soared in the first quarter as consumer spending strengthened, joining production and investment in recovering from the Covid slump a year ago.” Year on year, GDP “climbed a record 18.3%,” but that is “skewed by comparisons from a year ago when the economy was in lockdown. A better reading of the economy’s momentum comes from quarter-on-quarter growth, which slowed to 0.6% from 2.6% in the previous three months.”
Tags: China, Consumer spending, Covid, Economy, GDP, Investment, Lockdown, Momentum, Production, Record, Recovering, Skewed, Slump, Strengthened
Investments & Pensions Europe (August Issue)
“Credit investors would be wise to reflect upon the growing debt burden weighing on the global economy.” Debt has surged since the pandemic and it was already at high levels. “Global debt rose by $10trn (€8.9trn) in 2019 to $255trn. At the end of last year, global debt stood at 322% of global GDP, or 40% higher than before the 2008 financial crisis.”
Tags: 2008, 2019, Burden, Credit, Debt, Financial Crisis, GDP, Global economy, Investors, Pandemic, Reflect, Surged
Wall Street Journal (August 13)
“The U.K. recorded a steeper second-quarter contraction than its peers, suffering the worst economic hit from the coronavirus in Europe as well as reporting the highest death toll there.” Great Britain’s GDP “shrank 20.4% in the second quarter, equivalent to an annualized rate of 59.8%,…. In the same period, U.S. and German output declined by around 10%, while Italy lost 12%, France 14% and Spain 19%.”
Tags: Contraction, Coronavirus, Death toll, Economic hit, Europe, France, GDP, Germany, Italy, Output, Peers, Suffering, U.K., U.S.
Washington Post (July 31)
“The second quarter GDP report confused many, but any way you slice it, the economy saw its worst quarter in at least 145 years.” A key sentence read “Real gross domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annual rate of 32.9 percent in the second quarter of 2020.” That figure is annualized and seasonally adjusted. For the quarter alone, it was a drop of 9.5 percent, “still the worst since at least 1875.”
Tags: 1875, Annual rate, Annualized, Drop, Economy, GDP, Q2, Seasonally adjusted, U.S., Worst
Wall Street Journal (July 9)
“Slack Chinese imports are a symptom of the underlying reason China’s trade surpluses, not just with the U.S. but the world, persist: China consumes too little and saves too much.” Though China’s surpluses have shrunk as a share of GDP, due a decade of explosive GDP growth, the surpluses “remain enormous.” Domestic “consumption is still under 40% of Chinese GDP, one of the lowest ratios among major economies. The persistence of those imbalances is why trade conflicts aren’t about to go away even if Mr. Trump isn’t re-elected.”
Tags: China, Conflicts, Consumption, GDP, Growth, Imbalances, Imports, Saves, Slack, Trade surpluses, Trump, U.S.
Bloomberg (April 3)
“The cost of the coronavirus pandemic could be as high as $4.1 trillion, or almost 5% of global gross domestic product, depending on the disease’s spread through Europe, the U.S. and other major economies,” according to the Asian Development Bank.
