debt – Desdemona Despair

Overview of the Congress Center ahead of the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, 7 December 2023. Photo: Denis Balibouse / REUTERS

January 12, 2024

Davos 2024: Extreme weather and misinformation top global risks – “The widespread use of misinformation and disinformation, and tools to disseminate it, may undermine the legitimacy of newly elected governments”

By Victoria Waldersee 11 January 2024 (Reuters) – Risk specialists see extreme weather and misinformation as most likely to trigger a global crisis in the next couple of years, a World Economic Forum (WEF) survey released on Wednesday said. While extreme weather was identified as the bigger risk in 2024, misinformation and disinformation came second […]

King Charles III meets with Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan President of the United Arab Emirates at a bilateral meeting at Expo City in Dubai, during the COP28 summit on 30 November 2023 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The King is visiting Dubai to attend COP28 UAE, the United Nation's Climate Change Conference. Photo: Andrew Matthews / Getty Images

December 3, 2023

The central problem for COP28: Where will all this money come from? “What used to be available at Libor plus 50 (basis points) or Libor plus 100 is not available at those rates any more”

By David Blackmon 3 December 2023 (Forbes) – As the UN convenes its COP28 Conference in Dubai amid the conclusion of another year during which the global community used record amounts of coal, oil and natural gas, concerns are mounting about the future direction and prospects for success of the energy transition. Much of the […]

U.S. federal government outlays for net interest (12-month rolling sum), 1985-2023. Data are current through August 2023. Data: LSEG Datastream. Graphic: Kripa Jayaram / Reuters

October 29, 2023

As global debt worries mount, is another crisis brewing? “You can take many, many countries today, and you will see that we are not far away from a public finances crisis”

By Yoruk Bahceli, Dhara Ranasinghe, and Maria Martinez 16 October 2023 LONDON (Reuters) – Record debts, high interest rates, the costs of climate change, health, and pension spending as populations age and fractious politics are stoking fears of a financial market crisis in big, developed economies. A surge in government borrowing costs has put high debt in […]

People jostle each other to buy subsidized sacks of wheat flour in Quetta, Pakistan, Thursday, 12 January 2023, after a recent price hike of flour in the country. An Associated Press analysis of a dozen countries most indebted to China - including Pakistan, Kenya, Zambia and Laos - found the debt is consuming an ever-greater amount of tax revenue needed to keep schools open, provide electricity and pay for food and fuel. Photo: Arshad Butt / AP Photo

May 21, 2023

China’s loans pushing world’s poorest countries to brink of collapse – “In a lot of the world, the clock has hit midnight”

By Bernard Condon 18 May 2023 (AP News) – A dozen poor countries are facing economic instability and even collapse under the weight of hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign loans, much of them from the world’s biggest and most unforgiving government lender, China. An Associated Press analysis of a dozen countries most indebted […]

Total household debt in the United States, 2004-2022. Total household debt rose by $394 billion, or 2.4 percent, to $16.90 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to the latest Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit. Credit card balances increased by $61 billion to reach $986 billion, surpassing the pre-pandemic high of $927 billion; mortgage balances rose to $11.92 trillion, auto loan balances to $1.55 trillion, and student loan balances to $1.60 trillion. The share of current debt transitioning into delinquency increased for nearly all debt types. Graphic: FBNY Consumer Credit Panel / Equifax

February 27, 2023

U.S. household debt hit record $16.9 trillion in Q4 2022, as consumers loaded up their credit cards – “It’s triple trouble for credit card borrowers”

By Alicia Wallace 17 February 2023 Minneapolis (CNN) – Americans continued to add to their debt at the end of last year — and grew their credit card balances at record rates, according to data released Thursday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Total US household debt hit a record $16.9 trillion during the fourth […]

Number of U.S. dollar billionaires in China, 1999-2022. The year 2022 saw the biggest fall in the Hurun China Rich List in the 24 years of its existence. Data: Hurun Research Institute. Graphic: James P. Galasyn

November 20, 2022

China’s superrich decimated as economic downturn wipes out billions – “This year has seen the biggest fall in the Hurun China Rich List of the last 24 years”

By John Feng 8 November 2022 (Newsweek) – China’s wealthy lost hundreds of billions of dollars in 2022 as the global economic downturn also shook up the country’s typically high-growth industries, according to an annual rich list published on Tuesday. The number of Chinese entrepreneurs worth 5 billion Chinese yuan ($710 million) or more on September 15 […]

U.S. consumer debt excluding mortgages, 1989-2022. The bottom 90 percent of US households by wealth saw a record jump in consumer debt from June 2021 to June 2022 amid historic inflation. Data: Federal Reserve. Graphic: Bloomberg

September 27, 2022

Consumer debt hits record for most Americans, except the wealthy – “If your costs are rising and your wages are not picking up, how are people going to fill that gap?”

By Alex Tanzi 26 September 2022 (Bloomberg) – Most Americans are more indebted than ever, underscoring a persistent and widening wealth divide in the US. Consumer debt, including credit cards, rose to an all-time high for the 118 million US households among the bottom 90%, according to the Federal Reserve’s latest data on the distribution of household […]

A protester stands against a water cannon as police use tear gas to disperse demonstrators near President’s residence during a protest demanding the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, amid the country’s economic crisis, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, 8 July 2022. Photo: Dinuka Liyanawatte / REUTERS

July 8, 2022

Sri Lanka police impose curfew, fire tear gas as unrest escalates – “We have seen the use of lethal weapons in protests”

By Uditha Jayasinghe 8 July 2022 COLOMBO (Reuters) – Police in Sri Lanka’s commercial capital Colombo imposed a curfew after firing tear gas and using a water cannon on student protesters on Friday ahead of a planned weekend rally, as public discontent escalates over the worst economic crisis in seven decades. The island nation has […]

Three-wheelers queue to buy petrol due to fuel shortage, amid the country's economic crisis, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, 5 July 2022. Dinuka Liyanawatte / REUTERS

July 8, 2022

World Bank calls for sovereign debt changes ahead of looming crises – “There are more Sri Lankas on the way”

By Marc Jones 28 June 2022 LONDON, June 28 (Reuters) – A senior official at the World Bank has ramped up its calls for changes in sovereign debt laws so governments have more control when crises strike and they have to restructure their debt. World Bank economists estimate that low- and middle-income economies owe a […]

Maps showing poverty impact hotspots as percentages of countries’ population that could fall into poverty as a result of soaring food and energy prices. Among those countries likely facing high poverty impacts across all poverty lines are Armenia and Uzbekistan in the Caspian Basin; Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda and Sudan in Sub-Saharan Africa; Haiti in Latin America; and Pakistan and Sri Lanka in South Asia. In these countries, around 3 percent of the population, on average, could fall into poverty. In Ethiopia, Mali, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Yemen, the impacts could be particularly hard at the lowest poverty lines, whereas in Albania, Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, Mongolia, Tajikistan, and Ukraine, the hits could be hardest at $5.50 a day.7 Clear geographical hotspots, depending on the poverty line, emerge in Sub-Saharan Africa, mainly in the Sahel region, the Balkans and the Caspian Basin. Graphic: UNDP

July 7, 2022

Cost-of-living crisis drives 71 million people into extreme poverty in three months – “This cost-of-living crisis is tipping millions of people into poverty and even starvation at breathtaking speed”

By Marc Jones 7 July 2022 LONDON (Reuters) – The global cost-of-living crisis is pushing an additional 71 million people in the world’s poorest countries into extreme poverty, a new report published by the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) on Thursday has warned. Achim Steiner, UNDP administrator, said an analysis of 159 developing countries showed that […]