Our views

Today, Charles's idea is not to say something new about China’s economy but to argue that its current dislocation is inevitable for well-documented reasons. French economist Clément Juglar explored cycles as recurring phenomena based on periods of eight to 12 years, and his ideas may be relevant to China's current predicament.

A new Biden administration catchphrase calls for a “small yard, high fence”: export and investment controls on China will be limited to a small number of critical technologies, but they will be very hard. Yanmei argues that advanced computing technologies will be locked inside that yard, while most other technologies are likely to sit outside it.

The tropical island province of Hainan was the birthplace of China’s first property bubble, an investment frenzy that took off in the early 1990s. But if China’s policymakers have their way, Hainan may also turn out to be the graveyard of the nation’s now decades-old economic fixation on property.

This month’s surge in artificial intelligence-related stocks has Louis wondering about the underlying signaling. On the one hand, he asks if mega-cap tech is merely sucking up the liquidity that until recently had been going into other markets. On the other hand, he wonders if this violent move signals a structural shift in the global liquidity environment.

Milton Friedman once compared hapless central bankers who fail to appreciate the lag between monetary policy and inflation to a “fool in the shower.” At first the water is too cold, so the shivering fool turns up the hot tap until he is enveloped in a scalding jet of steam. He frantically cranks up the cold, only to end up doused in a numbing stream of ice water.

Europe has dodged an economic bullet. Worst-case fears of a crippling energy shortage have vanished and investors have revised down the growth and inflation risks they were pricing into European markets. But while this is unambiguously positive for European growth, the implications for eurozone inflation are less straightforward.