The International Monetary Fund is moving toward a more selective approach to the reforms attached to its lending programmes, reflecting a basic problem exposed by the shocks of recent years: countries receiving financial assistance cannot always implement long lists of… Read More ›
The most important warning from a sharp rise in US Treasury yields is not necessarily that borrowing costs have reached an unusually high level. It is that markets, companies and financial institutions can struggle when rates move upward faster than… Read More ›
The global economy is absorbing the latest Middle East energy shock better than initially feared, and a major reason is the unusually strong investment cycle surrounding artificial intelligence. Spending on data centres, advanced computing equipment and semiconductor production is supporting… Read More ›
Iran’s proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz has introduced a potentially important bargaining mechanism into the stalled effort to end the war with the United States. Tehran has indicated that shipping through the strategic waterway could resume within days… Read More ›
The pressure on financial stocks reflects a broader reassessment of how artificial intelligence and interest rates could change the economics of financial services. The recent decline across US financial shares brought two separate concerns into focus: whether AI could weaken… Read More ›
The European Central Bank and the national central banks of the European Union are questioning a key assumption behind Europe’s stablecoin regulation: that requiring issuers to keep a fixed portion of their reserves in bank deposits necessarily makes the system… Read More ›
The global diesel market is facing a supply problem that is becoming less about the availability of crude oil and more about the ability to convert, move and store refined fuel. Disruptions linked to the conflicts involving Iran and Russia… Read More ›
China is approaching its latest meeting with the United States from a position shaped less by diplomatic symbolism than by the continued strength of its external trade. Despite years of tariffs, restrictions on technology and efforts by Washington and its… Read More ›
France’s bond market is increasingly reflecting a problem that has been building for years: the country has struggled to bring its public finances under control while the cost of servicing its debt has become more sensitive to higher interest rates…. Read More ›
Europe’s artificial intelligence challenge is no longer simply about whether its companies can produce competitive technology. The more immediate problem is that European businesses and public institutions are becoming increasingly dependent on computing infrastructure, cloud services and AI systems controlled… Read More ›
