The Weekly Briefing from Capital Economics

Before Neil Shearing gets on to discussing the key takeaways from our latest Global Economic Outlook, he talks to David Wilder about the inflationary risks stemming from the collapse of the Francis Scott Key bridge at Baltimore’s port.    The Capital Economics Group Chief Economist also explains what to make of the apparent contradiction of US business leaders making high-profile visits to China e...

Germany's economy is in “troubled waters” and doing “dramatically badly” – and those are just the assessments of its economy minister. But are the recessionary conditions in the euro-zone’s biggest economy merely a cyclical blip or signs of deeper structural malaise?   In this special episode of The Weekly Briefing from Capital Economics, Group Chief Economist Neil Shearing talks to Andrew Kenning...

A few hot(ish) US inflation prints has spooked the market about how easily the Federal Reserve can get back to its 2% target. In this latest episode of The Weekly Briefing from Capital Economics, Group Chief Economist Neil Shearing discusses whether those fears are justified and tells David Wilder what to expect from the coming week’s meetings from the Fed and the Bank of Japan.    He also talks T...

The good news is our China team has solved a mystery about Chinese property construction: why has it held up so well, even as sales and starts have collapsed? The bad news is that their conclusions point to a painful adjustment with massive implications for China’s growth and policy outlook.    With Neil Shearing out this week, Chief Asia Economist Mark Williams is on The Weekly Briefing from Capi...

China. Inflation. Trump. In this week’s episode of The Weekly Briefing from Capital Economics , Neil Shearing addresses some of the questions which kept coming up during a recent round of client meetings in the Middle East and Asia. (00.00-10:15) Also on the show, Paul Dales and Ruth Gregory from our UK team preview the coming week’s Spring Budget and discuss why the UK’s fiscal constraints mean t...

For all the blustering about trade wars, the fact is that Donald Trump’s punitive actions against China during his presidency didn’t do much to hurt its economy. But it’ll be a very different story if he wins in November and makes good on his pledge to slap tariffs up to 60% on Chinese imports.    Group Chief Economist Neil Shearing talks to David Wilder in the latest episode of The Weekly Briefin...

In a week in which UK and Japanese data both confirmed two consecutive quarters of contracting GDP, Group Chief Economist Neil Shearing explains why the concept of “recessions” can be unhelpful in understanding the state of economies.  He also tells David Wilder why, whoever wins in upcoming elections, governments on both sides of the Atlantic are likely to be shackled by fiscal constraints.  Plus...

We’re trying a ‘quickfire round’ on this week’s episode of The Weekly Briefing from Capital Economics to get Group Chief Economist Neil Shearing answering the questions that clients have been asking most frequently in recent days: Could inflation rebound? Could escalation in the Middle East drive up inflation? Are falling commercial real estate valuations fuelling a new banking crisis? Is the boom...

If Jerome Powell dampened talk of a March rate cut on Wednesday then the January payrolls report on Friday stamped it out for good. In the latest episode of The Weekly Briefing from Capital Economics, Group Chief Economist Neil Shearing dives into the latest US jobs numbers to discuss what they say about the health of the labour market and what they signal about the timing of the first Fed rate cu...

Post-ECB and pre-Fed and Bank of England meetings, Group Chief Economist Neil Shearing explains what 'data dependency' means for central banks as they try to gauge when to begin rate cuts – and to manage the market’s expectations about when those cuts will start. David Wilder is also joined by Deputy Chief Global Economist Simon MacAdam to discuss the inflation risks stemming from disruptions to s...

Why are markets pushing back on rate cut expectations? How will the ECB play its upcoming meeting? What’s really happening to China’s economy? Group Chief Economist Neil Shearing tackles the big macro and market questions in our latest episode of The Weekly Briefing.  Plus, our forecast for the S&P 500 this year is one of the most bullish in the market. John Higgins, who leads our financial ma...

With US and UK strikes on Houthis in the headlines and Taiwanese voting in their flashpoint election, Group Chief Economist Neil Shearing unpicks what the now- clichéd idea that we live in a “more dangerous world” actually means for thinking through macro risk. He discusses with David Wilder our framework for looking at a world that’s fracturing into competing economic blocs and what this means fo...

The Fed-triggered financial market exuberance which ended 2023 hasn’t carried into the new year, with yields rising and equities struggling. Group Chief Economist Neil Shearing explains what’s changed – and what hasn’t – to explain this mood shift. In this latest episode of The Weekly Briefing , Neil also talks to David Wilder about the latest euro-zone inflation numbers and what they mean for the...

After the Fed supercharged the bond market’s recovery, Group Chief Economist Neil Shearing talks to David Wilder about issues around 2024’s flagged rate cuts, including the impact of loosening financial conditions as investors front-run policymakers, whether “team transitory” has been proved right, and why the ECB and Bank of England are still sounding decidedly hawkish. Plus, our EM team sees “un...

The same questions kept coming up in our client briefings on the 2024 outlook and Group Chief Economist Neil Shearing tackles them in this latest episode of our weekly podcast. He talks about why economic resilience will be increasingly tested and which DM central banks are likely to cut rates first, but also talks about what could go wrong for our calls in the coming year.  Deputy Chief UK Econom...

Group Chief Economist Neil Shearing warns the potential threat to fiscal positions from higher rates is “perhaps the most important question hanging over the outlook for the next couple of years”.  In this episode, he speaks to Head of Research Vicky Redwood and Andrew Kenningham, Chief Europe Economist, about the size and scope of that threat, including what governments need to do to keep markets...

Group Chief Economist Neil Shearing tackles what we think will be the key themes for the global economy in 2024, including why the consensus for growth is too optimistic, how quickly the Fed could cut rates and how to think about the macro and market consequences of a full slate of elections.  Plus, with COP 28 about to get underway in Dubai, Climate Economics head David Oxley and Climate Economis...

Does the surprise victory of Javier Milei in Argentina's presidential election mean the country is about to experience a raft of unorthodox economic policymaking to fix its ailing economy? How likely is Milei's dollarisation plan? What does this electoral victory mean for Argentina's negotiations with the IMF? In this special episode of The Capital Economics Weekly Briefing, Chief EM Economist Wil...

After nearly two years of monetary tightening, debate rages over whether advanced economies are heading for recession. However, as Group Chief Economist Neil Shearing tells David Wilder in this latest episode, recessions come in more flavours than the two sequential quarters of negative growth that have come to define them.  Plus, in the wake of that Joe Biden-Xi Jinping meeting in San Francisco,...

Central bankers have a tough task when it comes to communicating with markets – just ask the Bank of England’s Huw Pill, who started the week hinting at rate cuts and ended it with an insistence that the current setting has to remain in place to quash inflation.  In this week’s episode, Group Chief Economist Neil Shearing delves into the challenges that central banks face in articulating policy to...

Group Chief Economist Neil Shearing is back to discuss what the recent data say about the global economic outlook – including October US payrolls and China PMIs – and what to expect from the Fed, ECB and Bank of England following their decisions to keep rates unchanged over the past week. Neil also explains why a persistent focus on the threats to humanity posed by artificial intelligence is unhel...

It's Fed week and Deputy Chief US Economist Andrew Hunter joins David Wilder to discuss what to expect from the Tuesday-Wednesday FOMC meeting, including how the recent surge in long bond yields could influence the decision and accompanying language. Andrew also talks about the new House Speaker and whether Mike Johnson's appointment lowers the risk of a US government shutdown next month.  Plus, i...

With the 10-year Treasury yield finally hitting 5%, Group Chief Economist Neil Shearing explains the macro risks around rising bond yields, telling David Wilder what this all means for central banks.    He also talks about how policymakers manage geopolitical uncertainty in light of Israel’s conflict with Hamas and talks about how events in the Middle East fit with the idea that the global economy...

Which countries are leading the AI race? What role is AI playing amid growing strategic competition between the US and China? Does AI spell doom for EM outsourcing industries?    Moneli Hall-Harris from our Consultancy division and Deputy Chief EM Economist Shilan Shah talk to David Wilder about our AI Economic Impact Index and what its rankings say about which economies are best positioned to dev...

The surprise attack on Israel by Hamas last weekend upended a lot of geopolitical assumptions, but what will this mean for the economic and markets outlook? Liam Peach , a senior economist on our Macro team, and Chief Commodities Economist Caroline Bain join David Wilder to talk through the local and regional economic risks around the conflict and the potential knock-on effects on global energy ma...