The last thing we need: neutering the free-trade referee

With the coronavirus putting the world economy into its worst dive in almost a century, it would help if the surviving trade in goods and services between countries was continuing in an orderly way. But, as if we didn’t have enough problems, the future of the international body responsible for ensuring free and fair trade, the World Trade Organisation, is in grave doubt. The eternal temptation in international trade is protectionism:...

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The G20 is a talkfest we need to keep talking

If it’s 10 years since the global financial crisis, it must be 10 years since the elevation of the Group of 20 to the status of a “leaders’ summit” – the next of which will be in Buenos Aires in two weeks’ time. You could say the decision to supplant the G7 with the G20 as the premier forum for global economic co-operation is the one good thing to come out of the financial crisis. The G7, like the various international...

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Why the success of the G20 matters

It's easy to be cynical about the G20. Will the meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors in Sydney this weekend, and the leaders' summit in Brisbane in November, amount to anything more than talkfests? People say the Brisbane summit will be the largest and most important economic meeting ever held in Australia. That's true, but it just means it will be bigger than the Sydney APEC leaders' summit in 2007...

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Europe has serious troubles, but we don’t

The economic news from Europe in recent days hasn’t been good. And it could get worse as the year progresses. Those guys have big problems. But let’s not spook ourselves by imagining it to be any worse than it is. Unfortunately, there’s been a tendency in parts of the media to convey an exaggerated impression of how bad things are and of the extent to which Europe’s problems translate into problems for us. Take last week’s...

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Pop bubbles before they can cause havoc

Don't drop your bundle yet. It would be a brave person - braver than me - who denied any possibility of another global financial crisis. Sure it's possible, but it's far from certain. And another financial crisis might be like we eventually realised the last one was: more North Atlantic than global. The Bank for International Settlements is the central bankers' club. And central bankers don't warn of catastrophe if they really...

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