Specifically on #Spain:

They are being upgraded, partly because Spanish economy is very strong. Partly due to strong export on services, and immigration.

Expected slowing of growth in 2026 despite continued growth in 2025. #IMF

Funding squeeze. Private capital is drying up. Drying up of aid flows.

on the flip side, commodities pricing coming down may impact this for those that buy at cheaper prices.

Trading tensions impact on low income countries.

Small countries that have low impact as a group, outside of emerging markets.

Downgrade of 0.4 is similar to aggregate levels of 0.5.

Lot of differences across countries, especially in subsaharan Africa.

Central banks must remain independent to be able to utilise tools to anchor but it requires trust in central banks.

This is impacted by the attack by the White House on the fed.

Hoe destabilising is the attack from the White House on the federal reserve?

Tarrifs are going to increase price pressure. Service price inflation have been quite strong.

Coming from a period on strong inflation. Critical thing is inflation is quite anchored and brought back to their targets.

We've seen oil prices declining since last IMF meeting.

Weakening of global activity has impacted by weaker demand.

Commodities pricing have been impacted by the lower pricing.

IMF is revising their growth on China down, but doesn't reflect the Q1 2025 data.

Regional growth in regional sub-saharan Africa is expected to slow.

On demographic shift, this will change based on human capital, international investment, and international cooperation.

Onto Africa.

What is the recommendation for how to deal with tariffs, monetary policy and currency exchange for Africa?

Disinflation process has slowed. Growth has slowed and we have challenges on the inflation side.

Argentina - Growth of 0.5. The recovery and confidence has driven IMF to provide their forecast. Policy and tighter controls have lead to their specific outlook.

Impact of tariffs in latin America. Questions on Mexico, Argentina and Brazil etc.

What will be the impacts of the 10% tariff and when will that start to be seen?

Long term and short term impact on tariffs is negative, which is also impacting outlook.

Forecast for 2025 is slightly higher than other forecasts.

This is due to their expected changes, lowering interest rate, coming from the BoE in the coming year.

This is true for all countries

Tarrifs are playing a role in the UK infection. So is uncertainty. There are specific UK factors, such as lower growth in 2024, tightening interest rates.

Revision of inflation. is coming from domestic factors, like the energy costs.

UK growth forecast questions start.

Why does the UK have the highest inflation in the G7?
Is it possible Trump is a genius and he knows something the IMF doesn't?

IMF is downgrading emerging market economies because they are plugged into the global supply chain. Due to the increased uncertainty, they are more affected by the uncertainty and volatility.

IMF doesn't think the tariffs will lead to recession due to the strength of the economy in the US. The economy is slowing down, but expects growth.

"we see the possibility of recession at around 40% from 25%"

Innovation has coalesced into platform control in the west.

Are think tanks just PR firms for the political class?

Really disappointed that this segment has been cut. Regardless of the “online pressure” these segments have real world implementations for the election and a fact checking segment allows viewers to see thru the spin from the campaign from all sides.

The fourth estate shouldn’t bow to trolls.

Grecanadapanamaland

the Le Pen conviction is wild.

Thank you, this is extremely disheartening and frustrating. Especially since social media apps make it against terms of service to scrape their data, with the requisite lawsuits to back up the threat of retaliation for those who do data scraping.

If it doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t make sense.

I can’t emphasize enough that cynicism is a dictator’s best friend. Stay outraged. Believe in and work for democracy.

The three greatest lies in finance:

This time it’s different.
The market is always right.
Markets are moral.

“It’s not necessarily right to take issues of wellbeing and put a market price on them in order to make a judgement of value”.

Speaking of what goes into GDP and other measures.

“It’d easier to be a central banker than a politician in a democracy… but it wasn’t that easy”.

One of my takeaways from lecture 1

Values are choices. Choices that society makes which are reflected in government, regulation, and markets.

What we value as a society are either not by the market or not accepted.

Example: teachers and nurses over care home and childcare workers.

YouTube video by llewrek The Reith Lectures - Mark Carney Episode 1 of 4: From Moral to Market Sentiments

Worth a listen to better understand Carney’s take on economy, markets, and societal responsibilities.

Also just super interesting.

youtu.be/uvw-aC0KLD4?...

crowd see as a broken system.