After East Asia leaders descended on Washington in May for commercial and diplomatic pitches under the Biden Administration’s vague Indo-Pacific strategy, short of free trade but with digital cooperation as a centerpiece, the region has its own debt crisis in tiny Laos.

Former Federal Reserve Bank of New York President Bill Dudley, a Bloomberg Opinion contributor, says the Federal Reserve's forecasts are "becoming more realistic but they are still unrealistic." He speaks on Bloomberg Television following the decision by the Fed's policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee to raise rates by 75 basis points, the biggest increase since 1994. Dudley's opinions are his own. (Source: Bloomberg)

When German Chancellor Olaf Scholz convenes the 48th summit of the other leaders of the G7 nations on the grounds of Schloss Elmau castle in the Bavarian Alps late next month, the political economy environment in which the globe’s leading industrialized democracies find themselves is startling different from the previous G7 summit, chaired by the U.K. just 12 months ago.

Just when the world desperately needs more international cooperation to address common problems, the principal mechanism for coordinating such efforts is all but defunct. Its decline is both a harbinger and a cause of the global turmoil that awaits.

Last year, the members of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved an allocation of special drawing rights (SDRs) of USD 650 billion, the largest allocation in the history of the IMF.

We should all care what happens in China, because it will affect us all. Economic dangers and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s responses to them will affect China first and foremost — but trouble in China could spell trouble everywhere this year and next. The world is rightly focused on the atrocities being committed by Russia in Ukraine, and China’s choice to stand with Russia is straining globalization’s links. But China’s economic challenges go beyond the war. Threats to China’s outlook are rising in four distinct but overlapping areas: at home, in health, in debt, and in a fracturing globe.