With New Year celebrations barely in the rear view mirror, foreboding storm clouds are once again forming along the horizon. The blackening skies are casting a dour mood over 2016, which in its mere infancy seems all but assured to see deepening global tumult, conflict, and crisis.
At the root of this palpable disquiet lies the still fragile state of the global economy, coming up on eight years after the financial collapse of 2008.
Writing in the German newspaper Handelsblatt last week, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde pointed to “rising interest rates in the United States and an economic slowdown in China,” coupled with slowing growth in global trade and “a decline in raw material prices,” to warn that, “global growth will be disappointing and uneven in 2016.”