What in the World!

August delivered the clearest test yet of the global economy's two competing forces. The Iran war — now entering its sixth month with no diplomatic resolution after the June MOU expired on August 18 — kept oil prices elevated and inflation sticky

Europe’s most contradictory economy — world-class luxury and nuclear, chronic fiscal deterioration and political deadlock

Financial repression sounds like an extraordinary policy. Historically, it is closer to the ordinary condition of heavily indebted states. The phrase describes a collection of policies through which governments reduce the real cost of their obligations

For much of the post-war period, governments presented economic stability as both a policy objective and a social contract. Stable prices, expanding employment, predictable growth, and rising living standards formed the foundation upon which democratic legitimacy and market confidence were built

Norway occupies a position in global macro that no other country quite replicates: an extraordinarily wealthy, small, open economy that has converted finite hydrocarbon extraction into a permanent, perpetually-compounding sovereign wealth fund

Global growth held at 3.0% for 2026 and 3.4% for 2027, broadly unchanged from April cumulatively. The war shock weighs on energy importers; AI-driven demand lifts technology value chain economies

What Japan built, what it borrowed, and what a falling currency reveals about the world's largest creditor nation — the yen, the Bank of Japan, the debt, the demographics, and the carry trade that quietly funds half the planet's risk appetite.

Germany enters 2026 in the middle of the most consequential policy pivot in its post-war economic history. After three consecutive years of GDP stagnation or contraction — a combination of the 2022 energy shock

Few predictions have enjoyed greater longevity than the imminent collapse of the United States dollar. Every decade produces a new catalyst. The end of Bretton Woods. Expanding fiscal deficits. The rise of Japan. The creation of the euro. China's economic ascent. Quantitative easing.

Every economic system must absorb shocks. Recessions, inflation, financial crises, geopolitical conflict, technological disruption, demographic change, and policy mistakes all generate costs that cannot simply disappear. They must be borne by someone.