When considering the robustness of banks in the United States today, it may be a challenge to recall how perilously close many of them came to falling into the abyss a decade ago. Most of these banks are soaring above their international peers and bolstering national growth. What factors have most contributed to their recoveries—causing them to not just survive but excel a few short years after the Great Recession?
The push to transition from fossil fuels to renewables for power generation has been motivated largely by environmental concerns. But today, dollars and cents are increasingly supporting the transformation drive, as renewable-energy sources become much more cost-effective, even outmatching fossil fuels in value per dollar. Forecasts predict that new power generation through renewables—especially solar, wind, hydroelectric—will soon outstrip fossil fuels, attracting growing interest from governments, banks and investors.
The United States will soon break a record: the longest period of economic expansion, last set in the 1990s. But some don’t see this growth continuing much longer; they expect a recession, or even a depression, to extinguish the growth trajectory the world’s largest economy has been following for nearly a decade. Are these fears justified? Or are there as many reasons to expect the economy to continue to soar, shattering all records?
In October 2018, S&P Global Ratings issued a stark warning pertaining to China’s mounting debt problems. According to the ratings agency, the country’s local governments may be sitting on a pile of debt worth up to 40 trillion yuan ($6 trillion).
The construction industry in the United States does a lot more than build buildings. It undergirds the prosperity of the country’s economy as a whole in multiple ways. How are contractors, the industry’s key players, feeling these days? Overall, they are optimistic, as survey results show—and economic data supports their buoyancy—but not without reservations about future uncertainties, especially in three main areas: trade, labor and interest rates.
The US economy is on track to break its own record; its current 115 months of expansion is only five months shy of the record set in the 1990s. The next recession will come, maybe soon, as the economy succumbs to factors such as policy errors, foreign growth and corporate profit. And the United States will not fall alone; other Western Hemisphere countries will be dragged down with it.
The financial crisis a decade ago exposed the considerable challenges of resolving large, globally active banks. In the United States, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation – which has insured deposits and resolved failed banks since the Great Depression era – is one of the agencies leading the resolution planning effort. The chairman of the FDIC discusses the Corporation’s current bank resolution tactics in a global environment.
Emerging markets are already looking forward to 2019, glad to see 2018 nearly behind them. It turned out not to be a good year for emerging markets as a whole, after being on top of the world in 2017. Factors beyond their control—such as the monetary-tightening regime in the United States and high-flying dollar, trade wars and market corrections in developed economies—are largely to blame, but recognizing this will not erase the pain.
Little is more valuable to financial-market participants than accurate predictions of future growth. With interest rates on the rise in the US, investors are anxiously looking for indications of an impending recession. But what are yield curves really telling us about future growth prospects—in the United States and also in Australia? Is dreaded recession in the cards, or is modest slowdown more likely?
The United States has reached a critical point in determining data privacy standards. With mounting concern among all stakeholders, it is no longer a question of whether more privacy laws will be enacted, but how—and specifically, whether the problem will be resolved at the state or national level.