It's remarkable given economists were expecting 1.5% annualized GDP growth last quarter. It's even more remarkable considering a year ago they were all but certain there'd be a recession by now and the economy would grow at a meager 0.2% rate

Wild idea -- what if the main cause is that the US has best normalized interest rates to a functional level? I.e. malinvestment at the top is curtailed, and people can accrue savings again. Just a thought.

When other interest-sensitive assets are included, one estimate puts the loss for U.S. banks alone at $2 trillion. Globally, the total unrealized loss might be two to three times that. The fact is that higher rates and losses on securities have significantly weakened the global banking system. 

This is before loan losses. Higher rates will affect interest sensitive sectors such as real estate, non-essential consumer industries, and highly leveraged companies. Default rates are projected to rise globally, further reducing earnings and capital buffers.

...

Second, since the global financial crisis in 2008, regulatory restrictions on traditional banks have shifted higher risk or more complex lending or trading into the shadow banking system -- non-bank financial institutions including insurance companies, pension funds, mutual funds, hedge funds, family offices and specialty financiers. The Bank of International Settlements estimates that $227 trillion was held in these accounts in 2021, almost half the size of the global financial sector and an increase from 42% in 2008.

The trouble is that information about and regulation of these entities is limited. The September 2022 crisis in U.K. government bonds, triggered by liability-driven investing strategies of the British-defined benefit pension plan, highlights the potential risk here.

... [The] balkanization of the global economy is deeply stagflationary, and it is coinciding with demographic aging, not just in developed countries but also in large emerging economies such as China. Because young people tend to produce and save, whereas older people spend down their savings, this trend also is stagflationary.

...

"Why would government employees beat us up? We're only ordinary people asking for our deposits back, we did nothing wrong," the Shandong woman said.

Though repeal of Act 22 is unlikely, lawmakers are considering amendments to it, said Sen. Juan Zaragoza, a member of the centrist Popular Democrático party who chairs the Senate Finance Committee.

Some people want to "kick them out of the island, and repeal the law retroactively," Zaragoza said. "There's a high level of hate against these people.

...

Some economists have warned that the collapse of Evergrande could become China's "Lehman moment" -- a reference to the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers as a result of the subprime mortgage crisis, which triggered the 2008 global financial crisis.

However, Capital Economics senior global economist Simon MacAdam described that narrative as "wide of the mark."

Britain's services sector -- encompassing not only London's powerful financial industry, but also lawyers, architects, consultants and others -- was largely left out of the 1,246-page deal, despite the sector accounting for 80 percent of British economic activity.

The deal also did little to assuage European migrants, some of whom left Britain during the pandemic and are now struggling to determine whether they need to rush back to establish a right to settle in Britain before the split is finalized on Dec. 31.

...

Negotiators have not formally published the voluminous trade deal, though both sides have offered summaries, leaving analysts and ordinary citizens uncertain about some details even as lawmakers in Britain and Europe prepare to vote on it in a matter of days.

But it had long been clear that the agreement would offer the City of London, a hub for international banks, asset managers, insurance firms and hedge funds, few assurances about future trade across the English Channel. Britain sells roughly 30 billion pounds, or $40 billion, of financial services to the European Union each year, profiting from an integrated market that makes it easier in some cases to sell services from one member country to another than it is to sell services from one American state to another.

The new trade deal does smooth the flow of goods across British borders. But it leaves financial firms without the biggest benefit of European Union membership: the ability to easily offer services to clients across the region from a single base. This has long allowed a bank in London to provide loans to a business in Venice, or trade bonds for a company in Madrid.

That loss is especially painful for Britain, which ran a surplus of £18 billion, or $24 billion, on trade in financial and other services with the European Union in 2019, but a deficit of £97 billion, or $129 billion, on trade in goods.

"The result of the deal is that the European Union retains all of its current advantages in trading, particularly with goods, and the U.K. loses all of its current advantages in the trade for services," said Tom Kibasi, the former director of the Institute for Public Policy Research, a research institute. "The outcome of this trade negotiation is precisely what happens with most trade deals: The larger party gets what it wants and the smaller party rolls over."

...

After Jan. 1, the sale of services, once assured, will hang on patchwork decisions by European regulators about whether Britain's new financial regulations are close enough to their own to be trusted. While London's expertise is difficult to match, putting its financial and service firms in a strong position to weather the storm, some obstacles are inevitable. Already, Britons living in Europe who have bank accounts in Britain have been told their accounts will be closed.

...

In announcing the trade deal this week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain acknowledged it offered "not as much" access for financial firms "as we would have liked." But he was not as straightforward about the difficulties facing even British retailers under the deal, analysts said.

In promising that there were "no non-tariff barriers" to selling goods after Brexit, he ignored the tens of millions of customs declarations, health assessments and other checks that businesses will now be responsible for.

...

Next to a no-deal split, involving enormous logjams at the borders and deep uncertainty for businesses, the agreement was a salve. But even with such a deal, the path forward is uncertain.

This was JPMorgan's market.

...

Two financial crime experts who reviewed NoviRex's transactions at ICIJ's request said the signs of money laundering were clear. NoviRex had behaved like no legitimate business ever would.

"If I was at JPMorgan and I saw this, I'd be thinking: ‘This is horrendous,' " one of the experts, former U.K. police detective Martin Woods, said. "What normal company buys computers, lingerie and buckets?"

By early 2014, as citizens were filling the streets to protest Yanukovych, Klyuyev and other government leaders, NoviRex had moved more than $188 million in transactions via JPMorgan.

As we traverse the globe, Andelman uses original documentary research, previously classified material, interviews with key players, and reportage from more than 80 countries across five decades to help us understand the growth, the successes and frequent failures that have shaped our world today."

He'll talk about that book on this podcast... among many other topics.  You really don't want to miss it.''

The Asia-Pacific region took the biggest hit, with volumes down 45% from the year-earlier period, because it was the first struck by the outbreak, according to a report from broker Savills Plc. Investment dropped by 36% in the Americas and 19% in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Investment is "expected to remain well below pre-pandemic levels for the rest of 2020 as investors wait for market clarity," Simon Hope, Savills head of global capital markets, said in a statement on Monday. "However, certain sectors are expected to outperform as investors focus on secure assets, namely logistics, residential and life sciences."

The global economy has been hammered by the pandemic, with the International Monetary Fund forecasting a 4.9% contraction this year. IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath has said the cumulative loss for the world economy this year and next as a result of the recession is expected to reach $12.5 trillion.

Some 1.9 billion euros ($2.1 billion) vanished from payment systems provider Wirecard, until recently heralded as Germany's emerging giant of the financial tech sector. Its CEO was arrested on suspicion of market manipulation and inflating financial numbers. And on Thursday the company said it was filing for insolvency, a form of bankruptcy protection.

Adding to the damage to Germany's corporate reputation was the reaction of the financial regulator, BaFin, when media reports last year questioned the company's accounting. Rather than investigate Wirecard, it targeted investors, banning them from betting on a drop in the share price, which plunged more than 40%.

...

"WireCard was until now one of the few functioning tech companies that have come up with new ideas in the market place and now it turns out that that was to a great extent smoke and mirrors."

BaFin's head, Felix Hufeld, has conceded that Wirecard's implosion was "a disaster." But the agency is standing by its decisions throughout the scandal, details of which are still emerging.

...

Much of the acrimony surrounding the EU's north-south divide dates from the European debt crisis, which began nearly a decade ago, when strict austerity measures were imposed on many of the continent's southern countries

...

Closed borders, travel restrictions and the shutdown of restaurants and bars have been implemented across most of Europe in an attempt to combat the spread of the coronavirus. The impact of these measures is more severely felt in the southern countries, where tourism accounts for a higher share of nations' gross domestic product.

"Over time there was a lot of paranoia and people left and they had a hard time attracting good replacements," the official said. "Nobody wanted to work there."

It was hardly a morale-boosting gesture when Trump proposed a 16% cut in CDC funding on 10 February -- 11 days after the World Health Organization had declared a public health emergency over Covid-19.

...

Konyndyk recalls attending a meeting in mid-February with top Trump administration officials present in which the only topic of conversation was the travel bans. That's when he began to despair about the federal handling of the crisis.

...

So it has transpired. In the wake of the testing disaster has come the personal protective equipment (PPE) disaster, the hospital bed disaster, and now the ventilator disaster.

...

Early on in the crisis, Griffeth said, it dawned on her and many of her peers that the federal government to which they would normally look to keep them safe was nowhere to be seen. They resigned themselves to a terrible new reality.

...

But just in the last few days, Griffeth has started to see the emergence of something else. She has witnessed an explosion of Americans doing it for themselves, filling in the holes left by Trump's failed leadership.

...

A record 3.3 million Americans filed initial jobless claims for the week ended March 21. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones expect another 2.65 million to join them this week.

...

The central part of Faria-e-Castro's compilations comes from previous Fed research showing 66.8 million workers in "occupations with high risk of layoff." They are sales, production, food preparation and services. Other research also identified 27.3 million people working in "high contact-intensive" jobs such as barbers and stylists, airline attendants, and food and beverage service.

...

That would bring the U.S. unemployment rolls to 52.8 million, or more than three times worse than the peak of the Great Recession. The 30% unemployment rate would top the Great Depression peak of 24.9%.

...

While preventing the implosion of big banks and the American auto industry were an immediate focus of rescue programs more than a decade ago, relief was less comprehensive and slower to reach U.S. households, which the Brookings Institution estimates led to the loss of 8.7 million jobs, more than 8 million home foreclosures and the shuttering of more than 500 community banks.

...

"Forget this 2008 financial crisis playbook," Bair said. "We never focused enough on the real problem in 2008, which was homeowners," she said, adding that she "loves the idea" of recent proposals that aim to get cash straight into the hands of households who are grappling with shuttered schools, businesses and more.

...

Specifically, the Fed can invoke section 13-3 of the Federal Reserve Act, she said, which covers emergency lending programs, and was revised under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act to make sure that the government targets relief toward industries, not individual companies, threatened by collapse.