Emmanuel Macron is my hero

What a change: from euphoric reading one year ago with 75% of the world-economy looking forward to growth, to today’s IMF prediction of most of the world facing an economic slowdown and darker clouds ahead!

• The new IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath is uncommonly straightforward in her commentary directed at the world’s policy makers: address in a cooperative way the big issues such as climate change, international trade and fiscal imbalances or else fear far worse.
• She also calls for more multi-lateral cooperation on these big topics, however many of today’s political players do not look to be very attracted by the calls for multilateralism.
• Emmanuel Macron’s “Grand Débat National” seems to have inspired IMF’s call for a “social dialogue on inequality and social discord”.
• It is a courageous initiative and Macron is my hero!
• Much of the Brexit chaos in the UK could have been avoided if some form of grand debate would have been undertaken instead of the current narrow party-political bias.
• However major economic and political events do not always have the predicted impact on financial markets, particularly not in times of “easy money”.
• As long as monetary policies across the developed world remain accommodating (as is currently expected, in contrast to some months ago), risk assets may continue to flourish.
• But after a good start of the year, investors could still head for the hills of May (and come back in September?).

For the complete article by Bart Le Blanc, please see the attachment.

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