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Sweden’s hot housing market cooled last year as the Riksbank tightened monetary policy to fight inflation, leading to steeply increasing mortgage rates and debt costs and sharply plunging house prices. Although household confidence is up, the housing market is not out of the woods, with Sweden’s economic indicators on the pessimistic side.

In June, Nigeria’s overvalued naira experienced a significant devaluation after currency restrictions were lifted, producing positive and negative ripple effects. On the one hand, the move should improve exports, stimulate business activity and encourage investment inflows. But it may lead to higher inflation, rising rates and credit woes.

In the United States, junk bonds outperformed expectations and other bond-market segments during the first seven months of 2023, but does that mean they are good investments, especially if the economy undergoes a severe recession? Analysts suggest that the high-yield junk-bond market is worth serious consideration but also savvy caution.

The tokenisation of financial and real-world assets is driving blockchain into a realm of transformative possibilities. With various fungible and nonfungible tokenised assets from which to choose, investors can claim ownership of assets that were previously beyond their financial reach. The benefits are clear, but a few challenges remain.

Zimbabwe recently issued a gold-backed digital token as legal tender to stem the slide in the Zimbabwean dollar’s value and safeguard the purchasing power of Zimbabweans, who have been dealing with triple-digit inflation. Although the CBDC may lessen dependence on the US dollar, demand has been slow, and a few concerns have been expressed.

High inflation has battered all economies, leading to universally tight monetary policies, but emerging economies have suffered disproportionately, including Egypt, with its currency suffering a series of steep devaluations. Will the country shore up its slumping pound and tackle the cost-of-living crisis assailing millions of Egyptians?

US consumers have grown used to the prices of basic goods rising, but the soaring price of orange juice—around 170 percent higher than two years ago—has stunned many. What is causing this refreshing fruit’s price to spike so steeply? Demand exceeding supply is much of it, with supply constrained by factors such as hurricanes and disease.

Throughout early 2022, dire warnings of the coming huge spike in the price of natural gas filled households and industries with dread, especially in Europe. Although the price rose midway through the year, it trailed off toward the end of 2022 and stayed relatively low into 2023. What factors are keeping a lid on the price of natural gas?

Compared to the timely, relevant issues that are incorporated in the “E” (environmental) and the “S” (social) of the “ESG” initialism, the third letter, “G” (corporate governance), seems to fall flat. Yet what “G” stands for was the first of the ESG pillars, is important to investors and is essential to the progress of the other two areas.

As the geopolitical battle between the US and China intensifies, the Middle East is one pivotal region in which the US is losing ground, even among its allies such as Saudi Arabia. Polls show that many Middle Easterners have little trust in the US government to protect their interests, and oil-producing countries are ignoring US demands.