The global economy is muddling through against the odds. But a storm is coming | Larry Elliott
Two regional wars and an energy shock would be enough to wreck any normal year, and yet the global economy is still standing. That's the part I find almost eerie. The IMF meetings are full of talk about cooperation, but the people in the room represent governments that can't even agree on what the problem is. China and the US are at odds, Europe is squeezed, and the poorest countries are watching their debt payments balloon while inflation eats their budgets. The system has been lucky so far, and luck runs out.
What I'd want to know is where the breaking point shows up first. A sudden spike in energy prices? A default that sets off a chain? Or something slower, like a decade of stagnation that nobody can reverse because every country is waiting for someone else to move. The article calls it a storm, and that feels right. Storms are forecast, but they still catch people unprepared. The wild part is that we've built an entire global economy on the assumption that governments will act together when things go wrong. That assumption has never really been tested at this scale.