The Big Picture

Climate change poses risks to financial stability and could directly affect monetary authorities’ ability to pursue their traditional macroeconomic objectives. Will the fight against global warming give rise to innovative monetary policies, or simply create more headaches for today’s beleaguered central bankers?

The jury is out on whether the US airstrike on Iran’s top military figure will lead to a broader war in the region. But, at a minimum, the situation suggests that hardliners in both countries are now calling the shots.

The 2020s will be a crucial decade in the fight against global warming. The public increasingly recognizes the severity and urgency of the climate crisis, but will world leaders rise to the challenge?

Amid deteriorating economic conditions, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi spent the past year ratcheting up his illiberal brand of Hindu nationalism. Like other major democracies around the world, India will be entering the new decade under a cloud of existential uncertainty.

The United Kingdom’s recent general election may have ended the Brexit debate, but what comes next is far less clear. On a wide range of issues, the toughest choices facing Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government may be still to come.

Despite unprecedented monetary easing by central banks since the 2008 financial crisis, inflation in most advanced economies remains stubbornly low. Should central bankers concentrate on bolstering the credibility of their targets for price stability, or has the time come to focus on tackling other problems instead?

Following Turkey’s spurning of its Western allies in Syria and an abortive NATO summit this month, the transatlantic alliance seems to have hit a new political low. Is French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent lament about NATO’s “brain death” becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Both US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping would benefit from a face-saving deal to end the ongoing trade war. But even if Trump and Xi manage to ease tensions in the short term, the future of the two countries’ economic relationship remains in doubt.

At a time of shifting global power balances and asymmetric threats, the risk of a conflict involving nuclear weapons has increased to a level few would have anticipated just a decade ago. Are we headed back to the bad old days of hair-trigger warnings and mutually assured destruction?

To many observers, America’s “weaponization” of the dollar against China, the European Union, and others looks like yet another example of President Donald Trump abusing his power. The question is whether anyone can – or will – do anything about it.

When the celebrations in Berlin 30 years ago brought down the curtain on the Cold War and on communism in Europe, Western-style liberal democracy seemed to have emerged victorious. But the rise of new (and older) political forces in post-communist Europe has left the triumphalist narrative in tatters.

Although public support for more ambitious climate policies and an expanded safety net is growing in developed countries, implementing such measures means that taxes will go up. The question is whose, and how much political power they wield.