Time (July 27)
“Reflecting the escalating urgency” of the current Ebola outbreak, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “has raised its response to the highest level.” By early July, the outbreak which was only declared in May had already become “the second largest on record.” While viruses like Ebola can’t be eliminated, “it is possible to contain them quickly, and global health experts are alarmed by the world’s worsening ability to do that. Our systems for responding to and confronting viruses are increasingly fractured and weakened, making everyone more vulnerable.”
Tags: Alarmed, CDC, Contain, Ebola outbreak, Eliminated, Escalating, Fractured, Global, Health experts, Record, Urgency, Viruses, Vulnerable, Weakened
Bloomberg (July 6)
“Donald Trump’s war against Iran may be over, but the repercussions for global monetary policy are here to stay.” In particular, “the path for central bank interest rates around the world has now shifted higher for years to come.” Forecasts for borrowing costs calculated by Bloomberg Economics (BE) “show trajectories elevated by as much as half a percentage point or more through 2028 compared with those envisaged before the war. That’s both on BE’s global gauge for rates, and its measure for advanced economies.”
Tags: 2028, Bloomberg Economics, Borrowing costs, Central bank, Elevated, Forecasts, Global, Higher, Interest rates, Iran, Monetary policy, Repercussions, Trump, War
Bloomberg Businessweek (May edition)
“For decades, global economic crises have prompted the world to band together.” Such a “coordinated response” looks unlikely today. “As central bankers and heads of state contemplate the potential fallout from the Iran war and the biggest energy crunch in half a century… it looks increasingly unlikely there’ll be another spurt of unified action. The spirit of cooperation is no longer there…. After years of responding to economic shock after economic shock, we’ve been left woefully unprepared to deal with another one.”
Tags: Central bankers, Cooperation, Coordinated response, Economic crises, Energy crunch, Global, Heads of state, Iran war, Potential fallout, Unified action
South China Morning Post (April 6)
“China’s yuan may be going global faster than Western data suggests” as “many yuan transactions are now routed through China’s own global payment system, which often does not show up in traditional data sets.” Such an understatement by mainstream metrics “could help explain the gap between Beijing’s official narrative–which describes the yuan as the world’s third-largest payment currency–and readings from tracking systems such as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift).”
Tags: China, Currency, Gap, Global, Global payment system, Mainstream metrics, Traditional data sets, Understatement, Western data, Yuan, Yuan transactions
The Guardian (March 17)
“Britons taking out a new home loan face paying almost £800 a year more on average than before the Iran war as “Trumpflation” pushes up UK mortgage rates.” Higher rates come at a bad time, as “1.8m fixed-rate deals are due to end in 2026, and most of these borrowers will need to get a new mortgage. The change of direction comes amid the global shock waves caused by the war.”
Tags: £800, Borrowers, Britons, Fixed-rate deals, Global, Home loan, Iran war, Mortgage rates, Shock waves, Trumpflation, UK, War
Bloomberg (March 16)
“Global oil markets face another week of turmoil after a US attack on Iran’s main export hub heightened risks to supply across the Middle East, and deepened concerns over a conflict that’s already upended energy flows.”
Tags: Attack, Concerns, Conflict, Deepened, Export hub, Global, Iran, Markets, Middle East, Oil, Risks, Supply, Turmoil, U.S., Upended
Axios (November 13)
In what security experts believe is “likely just the beginning,” Chinese hackers are suspected of using “Anthropic’s AI coding tool to target about 30 global organizations,” with some success. The perpetrators utilized “Claude’s agentic capabilities,” which allow the model “to take autonomous action across multiple steps with minimal human direction.” It appears “the dam is breaking on state hackers using AI to speed up and scale digital attacks.”
Tags: Agentic, AI, Anthropic, Chinese hackers, Claude, Coding, Digital attacks, Experts, Global, Human direction, Modelm Autonomous, Security, Suspected
The Economist (June 14)
“The world must escape the manufacturing delusion.” Nearly everywhere you turn, “politicians are fixated on factories.” They want to win them, open them, expand them and bring them home. But this fixation “with factories is built on myths—and will be self-defeating…. the global manufacturing push will not succeed. In fact, it is likely to do more harm than good.”
Tags: Escape, Expand, Factories, Fixated, Global, Harm, Manufacturing, Manufacturing delusion, Myths, Open, Politicians, Self-defeating, Succeed, World
CNN (June 10)
According to the World Bank, “Global economic growth is on track for its weakest decade since the 1960s.” Its current forecast now estimates global GDP growth in 2025 at 2.3%, a downgrade “from the 2.7% it had forecast in January.” If the World Bank’s current projections for 2025 and 2026 transpire, the global economy will be “on course for its weakest pace of growth in 17 years, excluding two global recessions” arising from the2009 financial crisis and the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.
Tags: 1960s, 2.3%, 2025, 2026, Downgrade, Economic growth, Financial Crisis, Forecast, GDP growth, Global, Weakest decade, World Bank
Traders Magazine (April 30)
“As global financial markets face mounting volatility and exponential growth in data and message traffic, infrastructure resilience has become a cornerstone of stability. Global market infrastructure is facing unprecedented stress tests, not from system failures, but from the relentless pace of data and messaging traffic, regulatory complexity, and volatile geopolitical conditions.” Essentially, this “means building systems to handle two or even three times their previous peak volume—ensuring not only capacity but also continuity during high-stress events.”
Tags: Capacity, Continuity, Data, Exponential growth, Financial markets, Geopolitical, Global, Market infrastructure, Message traffic, Peak volume, Regulatory complexity, Resilience, Stability, Stress tests, System failures, Volatility
