Boris Johnson quits amid Brexit crisis
Boris Johnson has re signed as foreign secretary amid a growing crisis over the UK’s Br exit strategy. Heist he second Cabinet minister to quit within hours following Br exit Secretary David Davis’ exit. His departure came shortly before Theresa May was due to address Parliament about her Br exit plan.
Britain in sixes and sevens over Brexit ▶
Global debt is becoming a bigger worry as the global policy tightening cycle takes hold, a top boss at the World Bank warned Monday.
“After a decade of low interest rates, the corporate and public debt in many places has ballooned to a staggering $164 trillion,” Kristalina Georgieva, chief executive officer of the World Bank, said in an interview in Singapore on Monday with Bloomberg Television’s David Ingles and Haidi Lun. “With interest rates going up, that attention on debt sustainability has to be stronger.”
Central banks across the world are under pressure to follow a Federal Reserve that’s raising interest rates faster than initially anticipated, putting particular stress on emerging markets and developing economies. The need for structural policy changes, including responses to waves of anti-globalisation, remains great as policy makers in most economies haven’t taken sufficient action during the extended period of low borrowing costs, Georgieva said.
“We don’t see many countries taking advantage of this period of strong economic growth to carry forward structural reforms,” she said. “And our advice to countries is, do not wait. Good times may not last — they usually do not last forever.”
World debt, including household debt, ballooned to $237 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2017, according to calculations by the Washington-based Institute for International Finance. That’s more than $70 trillion higher than a decade ago.
Georgieva said countries must take a hard look at the affordability of projects that they’re undertaking, including in infrastructure, amid still fairly low interest rates. She warned of the “white elephant” problem and said the World Bank is working harder to attract private-sector investors for “blended finance” projects.