Globally Synchronized…
The economic sickness is predictably spreading. While unexpected in most of the world which still, somehow, depends on central banking forecasts, it really has been almost inevitable. From the very start, just the utterance of the word “decoupling” was the kiss of death. What that meant in the context of globally synchronized growth, 2017’s repeatedly dominant narrative, wasn’t the end of synchronized as many tried to say but the end of growth.
This was more than an economic factor. A fixed system leading into full, meaningful recovery was supposed to heal more than economy. Those political extremists who had multiplied and spread while waiting for it would be revealed as illegitimate, their complaints nothing more than some form of evil “ism.” The New York Times in January 2018 succinctly described its wider significance:
A decade after the world descended into a devastating economic crisis, a key marker of revival has finally been achieved. Every major economy on earth is expanding at once, a synchronous wave of growth that is creating jobs, lifting fortunes and tempering fears of popular discontent.
Well, purported significance anyway. If globally synchronized growth was “tempering fears of popular discontent”, the risks are pretty clear should there not be any. I wrote last September what wasn’t any sort of special insight:
From 2003 to 2009, it went: globally synchronized growth, decoupling, globally synchronized downturn. From 2010 to 2012, it went: globally synchronized growth, decoupling, globally synchronized downturn. From 2013 to 2016, it went: strong global growth (not synchronized), decoupling, synchronized downturn.
Last year [2017] to this year [2018], it has gone: globally synchronized growth, decoupling. What comes next?
The answer is here before us. Yesterday, the Bank of Canada throws in the towel on its end of the global economy. Last October, the Canadians were thinking how they had to get serious with their rate hikes. Now, officials admit in all likelihood there won’t be any more.
Something sure changed.
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