Financial Crisis

A decade after the beginning of the global financial crisis, the fallout continues to reshape the financial system. Gross cross-border capital flows are 65 percent lower in absolute terms than they were in 2007, representing a sharp break from the past. Roughly half of the decline is due to large European and US banks retrenching from foreign markets. But these developments do not signal an end to financial globalization—although there will be risks. Rather, we see a healthy correction from pre-crisis excesses, and a return to a potentially more stable and risk-sensitive era of financial globalization. Lessons have been learned. Moreover, we are beginning to see global finance broaden to a larger number of countries and players, many of them developing economies that are becoming more financially connected. Looking forward, we see that global finance is set for another major disruption. The increasing presence of new financial technologies, including digital platforms for financial transactions, blockchain, and machine learning, have the potential to reinforce financial globalization by making it faster and cheaper to transact across borders—but may also pose new challenges.

Growth prospects have weakened throughout the world economy. Global growth for 2016 is projected at 2.4 percent, unchanged from the disappointing pace of 2015, and 0.5 percentage point below the January forecast. Emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) are facing stronger headwinds, including weaker growth among advanced economies and persistently low commodity prices, as well as lackluster global trade and capital flows. Divergences between commodity exporters and importers persist. Conditions remain markedly challenging for commodity exporters, which continue to struggle to adjust to the new era of depressed prices. In contrast, commodity importers are showing greater resilience to headwinds, although the expected growth windfall from low energy prices has been surprisingly modest. Global growth is projected to pick up slowly to 3.0 percent by 2018, as stabilizing commodity prices provide support to commodity exporting EMDEs. Downside risks have become more pronounced. These include deteriorating conditions among key commodity exporters, softer-thanexpected activity in advanced economies, rising private sector debt in some large emerging markets, and heightened policy and geopolitical uncertainties. While policy space for monetary and fiscal stimulus is narrow, structural reforms could boost growth both in the short and the long term.

The real incomes of about two-thirds of households in 25 advanced economies were flat or fell between 2005 and 2014. Without action, this phenomenon could have corrosive economic and social consequences.

Most people growing up in advanced economies since World War II have been able to assume they will be better off than their parents. For much of the time, that assumption has proved correct: except for a brief hiatus in the 1970s, buoyant global economic and employment growth over the past 70 years saw all households experience rising incomes, both before and after taxes and transfers. As recently as between 1993 and 2005, all but 2 percent of households in 25 advanced economies saw real incomes rise.

Yet this overwhelmingly positive income trend has ended. A new McKinsey Global Institute report, Poorer than their parents? Flat or falling incomes in advanced economies, finds that between 2005 and 2014, real incomes in those same advanced economies were flat or fell for 65 to 70 percent of households, or more than 540 million people (exhibit). And while government transfers and lower tax rates mitigated some of the impact, up to a quarter of all households still saw disposable income stall or fall in that decade.

The European Union seems to be moving from one emergency to the next. Europe’s leaders are in crisis-fighting mode: reactive, improvising, often uncoordinated – but ultimately modestly successful.
The Eurozone has not splintered; Russia is smarting under Western sanctions; some burden-sharing on refugees has been agreed. Busy with short-term problems, however, Europeans have taken their eyes off more profound, long-term challenges. How the European Union copes with its immediate problems in the next couple of years will determine how the continent will fare in decades to come.
In this White Paper, we – the Global Agenda Council on Europe – are analysing some of the most pressing issues confronting the EU in 2016-2017. We present the choices that European leaders must make in the years ahead and explain how these could shape the Union’s medium to long-term development. To illustrate how different policy choices interact, we have drawn up two fictitious scenarios of how the EU could evolve in the next 10 years.
The immediate economic concerns that dominated the European agenda in 2008-2014 are lessening. The cyclical upswing in the European economy, however, must not make governments complacent about the need for reforms. Faced with stagnating or shrinking working-age populations, European countries simply must fix their productivity problem to generate long-term growth. In innovation and digitization, Europeans often seem obsessed with data privacy and protection rather than grasping new opportunities. The European Commission’s laudable attempts to integrate and improve EU markets – for example, for energy and capital – have so far been slow to get off the ground. The arrival of millions of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees is a great opportunity for an ageing Europe, but only if governments, together with the private sector, act swiftly to help the new arrivals find jobs.

This report examines the forces driving today’s alternative investment industry and considers where these may take the industry in the coming years, focusing on the core asset classes of private equity buyouts, hedge funds and venture capital. Alternative investment has matured over the last 30 years and is gradually becoming part of the mainstream financial industry, garnering greater attention and acceptance from both regulators and the general public. However, it is also entering a period of considerable growth and change due to the influence of macroeconomic drivers, post-crisis financial industry regulation, and two critical industry trends: the increasing sophistication of institutional investors and the rise of retail investors as an important source of capital.

In recent years, Germany's economy has outpaced nearly all other countries in Europe. The economy is entering its fifth year of growth in succession, employment is at a record level, state and social insurance revenues have increased, thereby significantly reducing strain on the national budget, and new borrowing by the Federal Government has been reduced to almost zero. Germany is in good shape – thanks, among other things, to a targeted reform policy undertaken in the past. Our country was able to respond decisively to the international financial crisis and resulting economic slump, as well as the debt crisis in Europe. Politicians reacted by creating the framework Germany’s citizens utilised intentionally. Collective bargaining partners safeguarded jobs by acting responsibly. Together, we were able to ensure that our country emerged stronger from the crisis. These are grounds to be confident.

The Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) is carrying out an inquiry into Whitehall’s capacity to anticipate, to analyse, to assess, and to respond to the most significant challenges (risks and opportunities) facing the UK in the next decade or so. This includes scrutinising Whitehall capabilities for foresight and for reaction to the unforeseen, as well as the adequacy of current capabilities, the need for new capabilities in the future, and the conduct of strategy and leadership.

Europe’s economic growth since the start of the financial crisis has been sluggish, and the region faces difficult long-term demographic and debt-level challenges. But a new McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) report, A Window of Opportunity for Europe, finds that the convergence of low oil prices, a favorable exchange rate, and quantitative easing has given these economies a chance to unlock new economic dynamism by undertaking ambitious reforms and stimulating job creation and investment.
The report identifies 11 growth drivers in three areas—investing for the future, boosting productivity, and mobilizing the workforce—that can help Europe achieve its aspirations. We find that by scaling and speeding reform, mostly at the national level, and stimulating investment and job creation throughout the region, Europe could close its output gap, return to sustained growth of 2 to 3 percent a year over the next ten years, unleash investments of €250 billion to €550 billion annually, and create more than 20 million new jobs (exhibit).

The Limits to Growth “standard run” (or business-as-usual, BAU) scenario produced about forty years ago aligns well with historical data that has been updated in this paper. The BAU scenario results in collapse of the global economy and environment (where standards of living fall at rates faster than they have historically risen due to disruption of normal economic functions), subsequently forcing population down. Although the modelled fall in population occurs after about 2030 - with death rates rising from 2020 onward, reversing contemporary trends - the general onset of collapse first appears at about 2015 when per capita industrial output begins a sharp decline. Given this imminent timing, a further issue this paper raises is whether the current economic difficulties of the global financial crisis are potentially related to mechanisms of breakdown in the Limits to Growth BAU scenario. In particular, contemporary peak oil issues and analysis of net energy, or energy return on (energy) invested, support the Limits to Growth modelling of resource constraints underlying the collapse.