Global financial crash looms

STERN WARNINGS: TRADE DISPUTES, TRUMP’S PROTECTIONISM BLAMED BY FISCAL CHIEFS

Meeting in Bali between IMF and World Bank says disaster can still be averted.

Rising US interest rates, tanking emerging market currencies and a bitter US-China trade spat could push the world towards its next financial crisis – but there is still time to avert disaster, global finance chiefs have said.

The world economy is still growing but faces an “unprecedented” combination of threats, the International Monetary Fund cautioned at an annual meeting with the World Bank in Bali last week.

Among them is growing protectionism championed by the Trump administration and the intensifying trade and currency battle between Washington and Beijing.

Opening the Bali talks, Indonesian President Joko Widodo compared the dispute between the world’s two biggest economies to the hit television series Game of Thrones.

“Confrontation and collision impose a tragic price not only on those who are defeated, but also on the winners”.

And IMF chief Christine Lagarde warned of a “degree of uncertainty that we have not seen before” in international trade.

Disaster can still be averted, officials said in Bali, with reassuring talk from the global financial elite that growth remains strong – the IMF projects 3.7% for this year and the next – and could yet withstand the gathering risks.

And despite tensions, US and Chinese officials in Bali also sounded conciliatory tones.

US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin described “productive” talks with the Chinese on the yuan, which Washington has accused Beijing of keeping artificially low to boost exports.

And China’s central bank governor Yi Gang called for “constructive solutions” to the damaging tiff, but insisted that Beijing was not devaluing its currency to gain trade advantages.

But there are also other brewing concerns, including the US Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates.

This year has already seen three hikes, which have squeezed emerging markets, which are seeing capital flee towards the US, enticed by higher returns. The hikes also threaten developing countries that have large debt burdens denominated in dollars.

“The US “needs to be very mindful that spillover from the effect of their policies is very real for many countries,” Indonesia’s Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati has said. –