USA

With the world's finance ministers gathered in Washington this week, one topic is coming up over and over: A surge in the value of the U.S. dollar against most other major currencies is making life complicated for economic policymakers around the world. Why it matters: The flip side of the stronger dollar is weakening in other major currencies, which tends to fuel inflation in countries that have already been struggling to bring price pressures down. It also makes dollar-denominated debts overseas — especially common in emerging markets — more onerous, essentially throttling economic activity. It creates hard questions in some countries about whether to intervene to prop up their currency in hopes of arresting capital outflows, as Indonesia did this week. The big p...

The U.S. economy has grown faster than other developed countries in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, partly due to its policy of deficit spending, the IMF says.The financial arm of the United Nations credited the U.S. with powering the global economy while warning that the national debt poses financial risks both in the short and long term.The national debt has grown in recent years because spending on COVID-19 stimulus and infrastructure has been funded by debt instead of new taxes.The U.S. economy has led the world in recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic—but that performance is largely due to heavy government spending that may be unsustainable in the face of mounting debt, according to the International Monetary Fund. The financial arm of the United Nations leveled the criticism o...

LondonCNN —  The US economy’s standout performance will be a major driver of global growth this year but could make America’s inflation problem harder to solve, according to the International Monetary Fund. The IMF upgraded Tuesday its forecast for US economic growth to 2.7% this year — 0.6 percentage points higher than it predicted as recently as January. The move highlights how the United States is outpacing other advanced economies, notably the European economy, which has struggled to regain momentum after the pandemic, with high interest rates and the lingering effects of earlier rises in energy costs weighing on activity. The Washington-based IMF expects the 20 countries that use the euro to grow just 0.8% this year, a downgrade of 0.1 percen...

With a $1.6 trillion deficit this year, $35 trillion in overall debt, and $1 trillion in interest payments this year, if the U.S. dollar is no longer the primary global reserve currency and there is suddenly a true rival to the U.S. currency, then the entire American financial system comes crashing down. by Brandon J. WeichertIn the 2012 film Prometheus, a prequel to Ridley Scott’s 1979 hit Alien, one of the lead characters, Michael Fassbender, looks upon an embryo of the iconic monster and quips, “Big things have small beginnings.” One could say the same thing about the rising economic and financial trading bloc, loosely known as the BRICS bloc. BRICS is short for “Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.” The term can find its roots in a 2001 Goldman Sachs report about t...

The economy of the United States has been on a strong recovery track since the beginning of the year, and according to Federal Reserve predictions, the US GDP may achieve an annualized year-on-year growth of 5.0 percent in the third quarter, which will be the highest expansion spurt in nearly 20 years. There are many driving forces behind such a strong uptrend to be sure. But the basic logic behind the reacceleration of the US economy, as far as we are concerned, stems from the staggered transformation of US economic growth momentum in its economic cycle. In 2021 and 2022, its economic growth was largely driven by consumption — mainly durable goods — and nonresidential property investment. Heading into the second half of 2022 and the third quarter of this year, service consumption and ...