The IMF says the US risks low growth, facing economic “headwinds” and “pernicious” trends like “a shrinking middle class that could slow growth in the long term,” the FT (paywall) reports. IMF economists warned that “recent weak employment and other data may reflect the economy’s lower potential growth rate and daunting longer term trends. It also warned that the [USD] was now 10-20 per cent overvalued.” The “declining labour force participation rate, falling productivity, increasing polarisation in income distribution and a high share of the population living in poverty” could “corrode the underpinnings of growth (both potential and actual) and hold back gains in US living standards” if left unchecked, said Christine Lagarde, IMF managing director.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council, a group of US regulators, warned that bitcoin and other digital currencies could pose potential financial stability risks, the FT reports. The group, which includes the Treasury department, the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission, said “market participants have limited experience working with distributed ledger systems, and it is possible that operational vulnerabilities associated with such systems may not become apparent until they are deployed at scale.”