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Dr Ivanovitch - MSI Global
Dr. Michael Ivanovitch is an independent analyst focusing on world economy, geopolitics and investment strategy. He served as a senior economist at the OECD in Paris, international economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and taught economics at Columbia Business School. 
Daily updates on world economy
U.S. will avoid recession only if it can control food and energy prices.
Germany’s economic mismanagement is a huge problem for E.U. economy.
U.S.-China relations remain in a deeply hostile competitive mode.
The weak yen is an effort to restore Japan’s export-led growth.
  • USA GDP Q4
  • China GDP Q4 23
  • Russia GDP Q3 2023

Recent Essays

America’s Monetary, Fiscal and Trade Policies Must – and Will – Change

The economy is currently held together by a roughly neutral monetary policy that ignores inflation and monetizes an irresponsibly loose fiscal policy. The markets and the mainstream media are supporting the idea that we shall somehow muddle through the next elections in early November. After that – we shall see. Some might even say, like […]

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Geopolitical Trade Fragmentation Is Amplifying

Trade and investment flows between the U.S.-led West and the Global South – represented by the BRICS – are drying up in an increasingly direct, proxy and hybrid warfare. Ideological and political underpinnings to this epochal change of world economy stems from the U.S. assessment that its “rules based international order” is challenged by Russia […]

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The G20 Should Remain an Economic Policy Coordination Forum

Last Wednesday, Brazil’s G20 presidency opened up as a slugfest about global governance – a totally inappropriate agenda item for the world’s only economic forum. Predictably, a gathering of foreign ministers (sic) had nothing to say about the ailing developed economies and their systematic macroeconomic mismanagement. That, clearly, was not their brief. The only thing […]

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Japan and Indonesia Show a Sharply Contrasting Growth Outlook in East Asia

The world’s largest archipelago, consisting of 18 thousand islands and islets, is home to 278 millions of Indonesians and an economy that has grown at an average annual rate of 5% since the turn of the millennium. Over the same period, Japan’s economy lost its forward momentum under an increasing burden of unresolved structural problems, […]

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The European Trading Bloc Is Mired in a Structural Stagnation

There was no economic growth in the European monetary union last year. And, on current evidence, the outlook is for a much worse downturn in the months ahead. The euro area’s monetary policy cannot help. The core inflation of nearly 4% and unit labor costs of 5.5% offer no room for increasing supplies of cheaper […]

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Archives

World Economy Needs Wise Political Leadership

America’s current monetary management is a bright spot in global economic affairs. Struggling with a horrendous legacy of errors that led to the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession, followed by a long period of subsequent extraordinary credit creation, the U.S. Federal Reserve (the Fed) is still trying to “normalize” its support to economic […]

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U.S. Trade Is Fragmenting Along the Global Security Fault Lines

Almost two-thirds of American foreign trade transactions in the first eleven months of this year took place with friends and treaty allies. Canada and Mexico account for about one-third of the U.S. foreign trade business, and there is every reason to expect that those two countries will remain America’s largest trade partners – regardless of […]

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Weak U.S. Economic Fundamentals Are a Big Policy Challenge

Jobs and incomes are America’s principal election issues. This time will be no different, although wars in Europe and in the Middle East, the chaos of illegal immigration and drug smuggling along the border with Mexico will register with American voters. The real election mover, however, will remain Reagan’s iconic one-liner that made all the […]

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China Pleads for Cooperation and Acts Assertively on Its Red Lines

When the Japan-China Treaty of Peace and Friendship was negotiated in late 1970s, Japan’s Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda asked China’s leader Deng Xiaoping how they should deal with a contested territorial claim over a group of uninhibited islands (Diaoyu/Senkaku) in the South China Sea. Deng did not want that issue to hold up China’s economic […]

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Intensifying Wars and West’s Fragile Economy

The G7 (major trans-Atlantic countries plus Japan) and the Global South (the developing world led by Russia, China and India) are pushing their confrontation beyond hybrid and proxy wars. Debilitating economic sanctions, massive supplies of financial support, arms, military instructors, battlefield intelligence, satellite guided attacks, political sponsorships and emphatic vows to destroy challengers of the […]

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Germany May No Longer Be China’s Most Valued Trade Partner

The recently departed former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang knew what he was doing when he chose Germany in May 2013 for his first visit to Europe. Struggling to put an end to China’s smokestack industries and to leap into a new era of smart (IT-driven) manufacturing, Li knew that Germany was his best choice as […]

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China Tries to Secure its E.U. Trade and Investments

Relations with the U.S. being stuck in a fiercely competitive mode, Beijing has been actively working to strengthen trade ties with ASEAN and the European Union. Those are China’s two largest trade partners. They accounted for 29% of Beijing’s total foreign trade during the first 11 months of this year. Over the same period, trade […]

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Strategic Power Changes Drive the Global Economic Outlook

Despite some 750 military bases in about 80 countries the U.S. is often accused by its European allies, anxious about American protection, of being “inward-looking,” “isolationist” and downright “selfish.” When Donald Trump ran, and won, on a slogan “America First,” Germans fearfully proclaimed -- “we are on our own” -- but spent nothing on defense, […]

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U.S.-China APEC Summit Was a Nonevent. East Asia Drives World Economy

The best outcome of last week’s APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) meeting in San Francisco is that it produced enough of a consensus to come up with a joint statement. Some member countries apparently wanted to stay away from geopolitics and keep the agenda tightly focused on trade and economic development. That’s a significant departure from […]

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The U.S. Wants to Prop up China Guardrails for Next Year Elections

China’s long-delayed official announcement of a summit meeting on the sidelines of APEC proceedings in San Francisco November 11-17, 2023, speaks volumes about Beijing’s view of the bilateral relations between the world’s two largest economies. Apart from an obvious intention to make Washington appear as a supplicant, China’s official media thought there was nothing new […]

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