Global manufacturing took another step towards growth in June - but the process was, as ever, uneven. The JPMorgan Global Manufacturing PMI posted 46.9, its highest reading since last August. The current output component even expanded slightly following a year-long period of contraction. The PMI has now remained below the neutral 50.0 mark for thirteen [...]

The recent global financial crisis has added 100 million more to the ranks of the world’s undernourished, according to the FAO.  Doubtless Paul Ehrlich is saying “I told you so.”  But it may be a little soon to dust off your copy of Malthus.  The trend remains towards the tubby.  There are as many people [...]

The WHO has declared swine flu a pandemic and the US is considering a vaccination program involving 600 million doses. 
So far, the CDC estimates that there have been a million infections and 127 deaths in the US.  That’s a pretty low death rate, of around one per ten thousand.  The US rate for measles [...]

Dambisa Moyo  is one of Time’s 100 most influential people alongside the women of The View and ahead of Vladimir Putin (influential last year.  This year, meh).  She continues to attract attention and stir acrimonious debate.  But one thing her critics and supporters agree about is that Africa is in a mess.   
I’ve just finished [...]

As the healthcare debate continues raging in the US, universally covered Europeans look on smugly from the sidelines.  (Well, not all Europeans.    Tim Worstall argues that high US health spending is the successful application of the will of the market.) 
Meanwhile, President Obama has been telling his staff to read Atul Gawande on the weak relationship between spending and the [...]

Japan put in a pretty negative export performance in May. Even shipments to China show little sign of improvement, and the general impression is that hopes for a quick recovery in global demand are looking very premature.

On the other hand a 42 per cent year-on-year fall in imports in May left Japan with a trade [...]

The eurozone economies moved sideways in June, with the flash reading on the composite purchasing managers index (which covers both industry and services) for the 16 nation euro area rising to 44.4, fractionally above the 44 registered in May. So we are just where we were before, contracting more slowly than in Q1, but still [...]

Well that so called investor “risk appetite” took a surprise hit yesterday (and from an unexpected quarter). It wasn’t the worries about US fiscal deficits that caused the panic, but problems in the European banking system. Gwen Robinson reports:
Risk appetite suffered a sharp deterioration on Monday as fresh uncertainty about the global economy prompted investors [...]

Krishna Guha in his assessment in the Financial Times this morning of the key policy issues facing Ben Bernanke and his team at next weeks Federal Reserve meeting had this to say:
“Meanwhile, the Fed is likely to reiterate that it expects to keep rates near zero for an “extended period”, challenging market expectations of early [...]

As the European Commision and the IMF toil tirelessly away, testing out their latest post-Keynesian “social and economic experiment” in Latvia - in an attempt to see whether it is possible to revive an economy which is contracting under the weight of massive debt deflation at an annual rate of 18 percent (Q1 2009) by [...]