Economy

Many of the world’s top economies are struggling with inflation levels not seen in half a century and post-pandemic supply disruptions are accounting for a large chunk of this price surge. While the disruptions were expected to last just months, Carstens argued that a host of factors from deglobalisation and demographic changes to more expensive production in emerging markets could make supply constraints more permanent. “The global economy seems to be on the cusp of a historic change as many of the aggregate supply tailwinds that have kept a lid on inflation look set to turn into headwinds,” said Carstens, who heads a group often called the central bank of the world’s central banks. “If so, the recent pickup in inflationary pressures may prove to be more persistent,” Carstens told the U.S. Federal Reserve’s Jackson Hole Economic Symposium.The realignment of global alliances, a factor of Russia’s war in Ukraine, is also disrupting supplies and access to global value chains or financial markets can no longer be taken for granted, he said. Central banks have been raising interest rates to ward off the threat of persistent inflation but nearly all, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, have been criticised for recognising the price pressure too late. Still, others have been far behind the Fed. The European Central Bank has only raised rates once and at zero, its main rate is still providing exceptional stimulus. Carstens argued that central bank policy has little power over supply side disruptions so policymakers should simply focus on inflation. “Central banks cannot hope to smooth out all economic air pockets, and must instead focus first and foremost on keeping inflation low and stable,” Carstens said. “Monetary policy needs to meet the urgent challenge of dealing with the current inflation threat.” More

The Office for Budget Responsibility confirmed on Friday that it would be ready to publish an up-to-date forecast for the UK economy and public finances by the middle of next month, in time for an emergency budget. In a letter to MPs, the fiscal watchdog said it had been working on a forecast since late July and could publish one that “meets the legislative requirements” ready for either September 14 or September 21. The letter will put pressure on the two Conservative leadership candidates, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, to announce their planned support for the economy and energy bills alongside an independent economic assessment. Truss’s team has so far said it would prefer to announce tax cuts, the removal of green levies on energy bills and other unspecified support without the OBR’s input, citing as precedent the many packages of support that were announced during the pandemic and more recently by Sunak when he was chancellor. The OBR’s letter highlights reasons the new prime minister and chancellor might decide to wait a few weeks to get a more considered forecast. While the fiscal watchdog said it could meet the standards required in law in time for an emergency budget, Richard Hughes, its chair, said these fell far short of the level of detail it normally produced.“We would necessarily have to pare back our published material,” Hughes wrote, adding that this would mean the forecast “would be shorter, with less detailed breakdowns of some economic and fiscal aggregates, less commentary on smaller elements of the forecast, and fewer historical and international comparisons which help to put the forecast in context”.If she wins the leadership election, Truss and her new chancellor, expected to be Kwasi Kwarteng, the current secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy, would not be required to call on the OBR to produce a forecast in September. But, by law, Treasury ministers have to have two independent forecasts produced every financial year. In practice, that would imply that the new chancellor would need to ask for one OBR forecast later this autumn. Hughes said that any forecast in September would be able to assess the impact of tax changes proposed by the new prime minister. But in what the Truss team will see as a sting in the tail, he added that “where policy announcements involve the reversal of a previously announced measure . . . it would be more straightforward to reflect its cost and economic impact”.Truss is proposing to reverse rises in both national insurance and corporate tax, and Hughes’ words show that the OBR is in no mind to declare that her tax cut proposals will boost medium-term growth, contrary to Truss’s claims. When the fiscal watchdog assessed the imposition of these taxes, it said they would impose only “a modest drag on GDP in the medium term”, so it could not suggest their removal would raise growth rates. Mel Stride, chair of the Treasury committee and a Sunak supporter, welcomed the OBR’s response. “Given the very significantly increased economic challenges since the OBR’s last forecast in March and the likely significant measures to be brought forward in September by whoever becomes our next prime minister, it will be vital that the OBR is requested by whoever is chancellor in the new government to publish as full a forecast as possible at that time,” he said. More

Good eveningUS Federal Reserve chief Jay Powell today insisted there was no alternative to an aggressive tightening of monetary policy to bring down inflation, declaring the Fed “must keep at it until the job is done”.Powell’s hotly anticipated speech at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium (dubbed the “Glastonbury for central bankers” by FT Alphaville) was meant to dispel any doubts about the Fed’s resolve after financial markets in recent weeks had come to believe it might ease up on its new hawkish path. The remarks in Wyoming stood in stark contrast to his address at last year’s event, where he said surging consumer prices were a “transitory” phenomenon.There was encouraging news for Powell shortly ahead of his speech as new data on personal consumption expenditure, the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, showed the annual rate cooling to 6.3 per cent in July from 6.8 per cent in June, thanks to a drop in petrol prices. “Core” PCE, stripping out volatile items such as food and energy, hit a nine-month low of 4.6 per cent. The figures follow data yesterday showing the US economy shrank less than originally reported in the second quarter.Among the attendees in Wyoming was Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey, who has also come under fire over his response to inflation. Markets are now betting that the BoE will have to more than double interest rates to 4 per cent by next May as one projection forecast UK inflation could top 18 per cent.Political interference in central banks’ independence has become more of an issue as inflation continues to rise. The BoE’s mandate has been questioned by UK prime ministerial favourite Liz Truss, while the Australian government has launched a review into its “embarrassing” central bank. The FT editorial board argues that central banks need to do some soul-searching if they are to guide economies back towards price stability and safeguard their own independence. One way they can do this, writes US editor at large Gillian Tett, is through better use of storytelling. Unless policymakers such as Powell can present a convincing “causality narrative,” others will do it for them, she suggests. But blaming policymakers wholly for the cost of living crisis would be unfair, says the FT editorial board, given an unprecedented pandemic followed by a war that led to surges in oil, gas and food prices.“In hindsight,” the FT concludes, “the mistakes look more obvious than they did at the time. Central banking is at best an art, not a science.”Check out our presentation on whether the Fed can tame inflation without causing a recession.DT is taking a short holiday break on Monday and will be back on Wednesday August 31Latest newsEurope gas prices hit record high as energy crisis deepensUS consumer sentiment improves in August from historic lowsBoris Johnson promises UK households ‘extra cash’ as energy prices soar For up-to-the-minute news updates, visit our live blogNeed to know: the economyThe energy price cap for UK households will rise by 80 per cent in October, making the typical gas and electricity bill £3,549 a year. The FT editorial board said the surge in prices was a “national emergency” while a former adviser said the government needed to move on to a “war footing”. Profits meanwhile are booming at Harbour Energy, the UK’s biggest oil and gas producer.Latest for the UK and EuropeUK postal workers launched the “biggest strike of the summer” after talks over pay and conditions foundered. A bin strike in Scotland has attracted attention as international visitors gathered for the first full return of the Edinburgh festival after two years of Covid-19 restrictions.Liz Truss, frontrunner to become the UK’s new prime minister, is considering immediately ripping up the Northern Ireland protocol on post-Brexit trade if she is victorious. The move could trigger a trade war with the EU as well as having wider repercussions.A popular €9-a-month ticket initiative for local trains and other public transport has come to an end in Germany. Similar schemes are in operation in Spain and Austria.Global latestGlobal trade fell in June, according to a tracker of exports and imports, ahead of what is expected to be a sharper decline in the months ahead, with volumes sliding in China, eastern Europe and the UK.China announced $44bn of new support for the economy, battered by a property crisis and tight zero-Covid restrictions. The revival of the Iran nuclear deal — and with it the return of Iranian oil to the market — has not gone down well in Saudi Arabia, which is worried about further drops in the oil price and the implications for its security. Riyadh has long opposed US rapprochement with Iran.The booming cocaine business is spreading across Latin America, leaving a trail of violence in its wake. “What we’re seeing now is the culmination of the globalisation of the drugs trade,” said one expert. “This is a trend which began five to 10 years ago but has been accelerating in the past couple of years.” The pandemic exposed Africa’s dependence on overseas production of vaccines but local initiatives give hope for the future. Read this and more in our new special report: African Development.Drug overdoses have played a large role in the widening gulf between the US and its peers over life expectancy, explains chief data reporter John Burn-Murdoch.Need to know: businessThe UK government ruled out further state support for CF Industries, the US fertiliser group which is the UK’s biggest carbon dioxide producer, after it announced the closure of its plant in north-east England. The company said the sharp rise in natural gas prices made the energy intensive process uneconomical, throwing the country’s meat and drinks sectors into turmoil.British companies face a “cost of doing business crisis” with bills set to rise more than fourfold this autumn. The majority are due to renegotiate their electricity and gas rates in October, the month fixed prices for businesses have been set since energy markets were privatised.Equinix and Digital Realty Trust, the world’s biggest two data centre operators, are stockpiling extra fuel for generators as a safeguard against winter energy blackouts.Europe’s luxury retailers have been hit hard by the loss of Chinese tourists. In the decade before the pandemic, Chinese consumers became by far the world’s biggest spenders on upmarket goods, making one-third (€93bn) of global sales, according to consultancy Bain, but are now spending much more at home.Citigroup is winding down its Russian operations after failing to find a buyer, with most potential suitors under western sanctions. The move will affect 2,300 staff and 15 local branches and will cost $170mn over the next 18 months. Qantas said the rebound in leisure and business travel had been stronger than expected, even as it reported a loss for the third consecutive year, sending its shares soaring. EasyJet shook up its board after a summer of disruption and cancelled flights.A wave of big budget blockbusters is being streamed this autumn as platforms try to entice subscribers while making record losses and losing the confidence of investors. The cinema industry meanwhile is still having problems recovering from its battering during the pandemic.Science round upModerna said it would sue Pfizer and BioNTech for copying the “groundbreaking technology” behind its Covid-19 vaccine. It alleges infringement of patents on its messenger RNA technology, including one related to chemical modifications that enable mRNA to enter the human body without provoking undesirable immune responses. Pfizer and BioNTech have asked US regulators for emergency authorisation of their Covid-19 vaccine targeting the fast spreading BA.4/BA.5 sub variants of coronavirus. The jab could be the first to get the go-ahead without human trials. Pfizer is also racing to develop a shot for respiratory syncytial virus.GSK and Sanofi are attempting to end the dominance of BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, arguing their shot, which contains the protein of the virus’s spike, rather than genetic code for it, has fewer side effects and lasts longer. North Korea reported four new cases of Covid (aka “the malignant epidemic”) just two weeks after leader Kim Jong Un declared “victory” over the virus. The country of 25mn people has reported about 4.8mn cases, but a death toll of just 74, a claim treated with extreme scepticism by health experts.Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, the two contenders to become the new UK PM, both hit out at their government’s handling of the pandemic, with Sunak arguing too much authority had been given to scientific advisers.Experts warned that the slow response to the spreading monkeypox outbreak shows countries have not learned lessons from the coronavirus crisis, in particular the failure to quickly roll out vaccines.Get the latest worldwide picture with our vaccine trackerSome good newsScientists have used stem cell technology to create “synthetic” mouse embryos with growing brains, beating hearts and precursors to other organs that could be used to grow replacements for humans with life-threatening illnesses. Science editor Clive Cookson has the details.Synthetic, left, and natural mouse embryos after eight and a half days of gestation © Amadei and Handford More

At a charity in a deprived part of South Shields, north-east England, the catastrophic impact of rising inflation started long before Friday’s latest energy price cap increase. The community has already been living on a financial “knife edge”, said Brian Thomas, chief executive of Hospitality and Hope, which runs a shop providing bags of donated groceries for a small fee.Since the coronavirus pandemic started, the number of people using the charity has doubled to 6,000. But Thomas said the most notable trend in recent months was that the number of people with jobs, especially those with families, referred to the shop had grown “exponentially”.“I was talking to a lady yesterday whose landlord had put up her rent by £100 a month and then told her he was putting it up by another £50 because his costs have gone up,” said Thomas. “And, of course, her income isn’t going to go up. She was hysterical.”The woman was on a prepayment meter for her energy and had a four-year-old daughter, he added. “She said ‘I’m making decisions every day whether to put money on my gas and electric or feed my daughter’,” he explained, underlying her plight by adding: “Feed my daughter. Not herself!” On Friday, regulator Ofgem delivered the news millions of households around the country were dreading. It raised the energy cap by 80 per cent, which means an average annual bill will jump to £3,549 from October, driven by soaring wholesale gas prices, as winter approaches. Worse still, the 4.5mn mainly poorer households on prepayment meters have a higher cap, and must pay in advance rather than spread their costs via direct debit over the year. To further compound the plight of millions, energy analysts forecast the cap could rise above £5,000 for the three months from January, just when the coldest weather usually hits, pushing energy usage higher still.The impact could be fatal, said Thomas. “People are going to die,” he warned, as households ration their heating and eating over the winter. “We’re going to see lots of increased health issues and increased sudden deaths, I would suggest, in the elderly. It’s just tragic.” January’s forecast would take average bills to half the average state pension, he added. He said the tax cuts, which so far have been at the centre of the cost of living policy outlined by Liz Truss, frontrunner to become the next prime minister, “were not going to impact” on those people.

A family collects food from the Hospitality and Hope community shop in South Shields © Ian Forsyth/FT

On the other side of the river Tyne in North Shields, the local Citizens Advice Bureau has also been dealing with the effects of the cost of living crisis for several months. Since the last energy price cap rise in April it has seen the number of people coming for help with utilities debts double.Its advisers have been helping with repayment plans, particularly for energy arrears and overdue rent, but the task has become increasingly impossible, said Chris Blackett, adviser at the charity. “We’re used to having the answers,” he explained. “It’s getting to the point where we’re running out and there needs to be something external done, as opposed to what we can do. It feels very much like firefighting or trying to empty out a boat that’s got a hole in it.” The CAB is increasingly seeing people who have never needed this kind of advice before, he said. One common refrain he hears is: “All of a sudden I’m in debt for the first time in my life and I don’t know what to do.”Across the other side of northern England, in Greater Manchester, the anxiety among people queueing for food at a drop-in in Salford on the day before the price cap increase was palpable. Several parents wondered if they could afford school uniforms for their children, with term about to start. The food project, run by the charity Bread and Butter Thing, provides three bags of donated groceries worth £35 for £7.50.

Helen Scott: ‘There’s going to be people dying of hunger in this country’ © James Speakman/FT

Pensioner Carol Jones said she was “very worried”, adding that her daughter was fretting about the costs of her teenage son going to college, on top of rising bills. She complained that the government were “not doing anything”, adding that she was already planning to go to her daughter’s house this winter for “body heat”.As she collected her bags of groceries, Helen Scott said she was “getting scared” about what was coming over the winter. Her electricity bill had already doubled, she said. “I run a car and can just about manage to do that. But I’m worried I won’t be able to in future, so I won’t be able to visit my mum because she’s in a care home quite a way away.”She only intends to heat one or two rooms this winter, she said, adding: “There’s going to be people dying of hunger in this country.”One of the volunteers, Mark Thompson, was recently made redundant from his job as a security guard and while his wife Amanda works as an accountant, they now rely on the drop-in themselves.

“We’d struggle without it,” said Amanda, pointing to the parallel rises in food bills in recent months. Mark said he was “really worried” about the rise in energy bills. “I think by Christmas everybody is going to feel it.” Tom Aspen, who oversees the drop-in, said it was already heavily oversubscribed before the impact of the latest price cap rise. “You’ll see people come straight from work,” he said. “I had a misconception it would be homeless people or people out of work, but I’ve seen nurses come through.”The same thing struck Thompson too: “The biggest thing that shocked me here was the nurse that came in uniform and her husband was a van driver. She said ‘without this we’d be really struggling’. It is absolutely shocking that people working full time can’t make it work. It’s heartbreaking.” More

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Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell delivers a speech at the central bank’s annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Friday at 10.a.m. ET.

Market participants have eagerly awaited Powell’s comments, searching for guidance on the extent to which policymakers will push against inflation and the criteria the central bank will refer to as it makes its decisions.
Powell’s comments come at a time when the Fed has taken drastic steps to tamp down rising prices. Though investors are looking for new guidance from the central bank leader, Powell is largely expected to issue the same inflation-fighting message, stressing that the Fed will use its rate-hiking power to rein in prices.
Powell’s speech follows the release of one of the Fed’s favorite inflation metrics earlier Friday: the personal consumption expenditures price index. July’s PCE reading showed a year-over-year gain of 6.3% in July, down from 6.8% in June. The index slipped 0.1% month over of month.The core PCE index, which excludes food and energy prices, climbed 4.6% on an annualized basis, and rose 0.1% month over month.

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There is no plausible way to sugarcoat the impact of an 80 per cent rise in energy bills for UK economic prospects or household finances. With the energy price cap, which affects 85 per cent of households, rising from an annual average of £1,971 to £3,549 for the October to December period, and further large increases expected in January, the pressure on the new prime minister for comprehensive action is overwhelming. But economists on Friday warned that any policy response would involve difficult trade-offs. They were also clear that it was impossible to find a government-led solution that was affordable, non-inflationary and well-targeted while also preserving incentives to conserve energy this winter. “There are big trade-offs and decisions that need to be made but are currently being ignored,” said Torsten Bell, director of the Resolution Foundation think-tank.The underlying problem for the UK and almost all European countries is that they are net importers of natural gas and, when wholesale prices rise, they become poorer and governments can only distribute the losses. Last year UK net imports of gas accounted for almost 60 per cent of household and industrial gas consumption.Higher wholesale gas prices — which are currently 15 times normal levels — increase inflation and cut disposable incomes because wages do not fully keep pace with prices. Alarming inflation forecasts have multiplied since the Bank of England predicted price rises of 13 per cent later this year in its latest quarterly forecasts. This month’s increase in wholesale gas prices has most of the recent forecasts of inflation peaking at 14 to 15 per cent, although Citigroup expects a peak of more than 18 per cent in January. The differing predictions come down to questions about how much economists expect food prices to rise this autumn and how much they expect the statistical authorities to increase the weight of food, fuel and energy in inflation measures next January. Whatever the exact peak in inflation, the effect of a higher cost of living not matched by pay increases has already led the BoE to expect the worst squeeze in living standards for the past 60 years and a recession starting this autumn and lasting for more than a year. Added to this is the difficult economic message that, if all households were simply bailed out, the additional government borrowing and spending would result in even higher inflation because the economy is already operating with no spare capacity. Even without additional government spending, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research think-tank said that the BoE was now likely to have to deal with a worse inflationary picture in the short term and would have to raise interest rates rapidly to stop a temporary spike in inflation becoming permanent. “The Monetary Policy Committee will now need to tighten monetary policy faster and by more than we had previously thought. We now expect the policy rate to rise to 4.25 per cent by May of next year,” said Stephen Millard, a deputy director at Niesr. Whoever wins the Tory leadership race will therefore be playing whack-a-mole with economic policy during the first few weeks in office. Generous universal support will result in greater budgetary costs, inflationary pressure and higher interest rates; more targeted policies will help households less. Even with targeted support the pain for households will be extreme, especially among those with low incomes who already devote much more of their budgets to energy than middle-income or richer people. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think-tank, estimates that inflation for the poorest 20 per cent of people will be 17.6 per cent in October compared with 10.9 per cent for the richest fifth. Niesr predicts that the new price cap will leave real disposable income among the poorest fifth around 10 per cent lower, even after the support already offered. A further targeted support package is one option available to the new prime minister. The IFS calculated on Friday that the government would need to spend another £14bn to match the generosity of the plan Tory leadership candidate and former chancellor Rishi Sunak put in place in May, when bills were expected to rise only to £2,800. While Sunak has suggested that this would be close to his preferred option should he become prime minister, Liz Truss, the current frontrunner, has been much more vague. She has suggested a £13bn reversal of April’s national insurance increase, which would mostly help richer households, and a temporary pause on green levies in electricity bills. Truss has also said she would be inclined not to “bung more money” at the problem but the plans she has announced so far would “have only a modest effect on household bills”, according to Isaac Delestre, an economist at the IFS.

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An additional problem, highlighted by the Resolution Foundation, is that energy bills vary greatly between families on similar income levels, so targeting support purely by income would leave some people flush with money and others still lacking funds. The think-tank said support also needed to “reflect households’ differing levels of energy usage”. According to Bell, the only package that would do this, while keeping costs down and inflation in check would be direct government subsidies to reduce bills alongside higher “solidarity” taxation to fund the costs, something that would probably be an anathema to Truss, the likely new leader of the Conservative party. “Big bill reductions combined with solidarity taxes, or throwing the kitchen sink at a brand-new social tariff scheme, should be the focus for whoever becomes the next prime minister,” said Bell. Are you facing difficulties managing your finances as the cost of living rises? Our consumer editor Claer Barrett and finance educator Tiffany ‘The Budgetnista’ Aliche discussed tips on the best ways to save and budget as prices across the globe increase in our latest IG Live. Watch it here. More

The writer is a former central banker and a professor of finance at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of BusinessAs central bankers meet in Jackson Hole, they must wonder how far they have fallen in the public’s eyes. A short while ago, they were heroes, supporting feeble growth with unconventional monetary policies, promoting the hiring of minorities by allowing the labour market to run a little hot, and even trying to hold back climate change, all the while berating paralysed legislatures to do more. Now they stand accused of flubbing their most important task, keeping inflation low and stable. Politicians, sniffing blood and mistrustful of the power of unelected officials, want to re-examine central bank mandates. Hindsight is, of course, 20/20. The pandemic was unprecedented, and its consequences for the globalised economy very hard to predict. The fiscal response, perhaps more generous because polarised legislatures could not agree on whom to exclude, was not easy to forecast. Few thought Vladimir Putin would go to war, and send energy and food prices skyrocketing.Yet undoubtedly, central bankers were slow to react to growing signs of inflation. In part, they believed they were still in the post-2008 financial crisis regime, when every price spike, even of oil, barely affected the overall price level. In an attempt to boost excessively low inflation, the Fed even changed its framework during the pandemic, announcing it would be less reactive to anticipated inflation and would keep policies more accommodative for longer. This was the right framework for an era of structurally low demand and weak inflation, but exactly the wrong one to espouse just as inflation was about to take off and every price increase fuelled another. But who knew the times were a-changing?Even with perfect foresight — and in reality they are no better informed than capable market players — central bankers may still have been behind the curve. This is understandable. A central bank cools inflation by slowing economic growth. No matter how independent it is, its policies have to be seen as reasonable, or else it loses its independence.With governments having spent trillions to support their economies, employment just recovered from terrible lows and inflation barely noticeable for over a decade, only a foolhardy central banker would have raised rates to disrupt growth if the public did not yet see inflation as a danger. Put differently, pre-emptive rate rises that slowed growth would have lacked public legitimacy — especially if they were successful and inflation did not rise subsequently. Central banks needed the public to see higher inflation to be able to take strong measures against it.So what happens now? The Fed’s determined policies are having some effect on economic activity. But it is a matter of guesswork how high policy rates will have to go, and how long they must stay high to cool the hot labour market. The task of the European Central Bank and Bank of England is harder because they will be tightening into recessions and energy prices account for more of the inflationary surge than in the US. They have to gauge how much tightening will contain inflationary expectations without exacerbating the supply constraint-induced downturn. Central bankers know the battle against high inflation well and have the tools to combat it. They should be free to do their job. This is not a time for postmortems to assess central bank functioning. Spending to alleviate the pain of high inflation and slowing growth can help, but governments should direct this only towards the most needy so that it does not spur more inflation.Of course, when central banks succeed in bringing inflation down, we will probably return to a low-growth world. It is hard to see what would offset the headwinds of ageing populations, a slowing China and a suspicious, militarising, deglobalising world. That low-inflation, low-growth world is one central bankers understand less well. The tools central bankers used after the financial crisis, such as quantitative easing, were not particularly effective in enhancing growth. Furthermore, aggressive central bank actions could precipitate more financial sector instability.When all settles back down, what should central bank mandates look like? In matters such as combating climate change or promoting inclusive employment, the policies of central banks have only indirect impact. Truly, these are tasks for governments. Central banks should not use the excuse of government paralysis to step into the breach.Clearly, they should re-emphasise their mandate to combat high inflation. What if inflation is too low? Perhaps like the virus, we should learn to live with it. Arguably, so long as low inflation does not collapse into a deflationary spiral, central banks should not fret excessively about it. Decades of low inflation in Japan have not exacerbated its problems, which are more directly attributable to population ageing and a shrinking labour force.Central banks may also need a stronger mandate to maintain financial stability — for an extended period of low inflation fuels higher asset prices, and consequently leverage. Will these twin mandates condemn the world to low growth? No, but they will place the onus for fostering growth back on the private sector and governments, where they belong. More focused and less interventionist central banks would probably deliver better outcomes than the high-inflation, high-leverage, low-growth world we now find ourselves in. Are we heading towards a global recession? Our economics editor Chris Giles and US economics editor Colby Smith discussed this and how different countries are likely to react in our latest IG Live. Watch it here. More