Al-anwar Newspaper English news in Australia
A finance expert has issued a grim warning that the world economy is facing one of the toughest periods in 30 years, with another claiming we could be set to face an economic “hurricane”.
According to Bloomberg economist Scott Johnson, the energy crisis caused by the Ukraine war will see growth hit just 2.4 per cent in 2023.
That’s the lowest point in almost three decades, excluding 2009, when the planet was in the grip of the GFC, and 2020, when the Covid pandemic wreaked havoc.
Mr Johnson explained that Europe would go into the new year in recession, while the US would end 2022 in one – although he predicted China’s economy would grow in 2023 thanks largely to the easing of its zero-Covid strategy. But he’s far from the only expert to see bad news on the horizon, with JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon telling CNBC he believed a recession could soon be on the cards for the US, which would then impact the wider world.
He explained that inflation and interest rate hikes – which Australia is also battling – are “eroding everything”, and that global events including the Ukraine invasion and tension with China had added extra “storm clouds”.
“When you look out forward, those things may well derail the economy and cause this mild to hard recession that people are worried about,” Mr Dimon said.
“It could be a hurricane. We simply don’t know.” On Tuesday, America’s top bankers shared their sense of anxiety about the state of the economy during an industry conference.
Mr Dimon’s colleague Marianne Lake, co-CEO of the investment banks’s consumer and community banking division, told the conference the company was now bracing for a “modest recession” in the near future.
“The probability of recession has gone up. We’re actually looking for that right now,” she said, while Goldman Sachs chief executive David Solomon said many CEOs were now “extremely cautious” about the economic outlook. he alarming comments come amid a turbulent time in Australia as well, with the Reserve Bank on Tuesday raising the official cash rate by 0.25 per cent again in December.
