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Friday, 3 June 2016

Black swan events threatening the global economy

Ramadan is coming, and our minds turn to economic doomsday scenarios: French bank Societe Generale published its black swan chart of risks that could tank the economy, according to CNBC. The top economic risks and their likelihoods are:

  1. Double-drag from European policy uncertainty: 40%
  2. Hard landing in China: 30%
  3. Sharp re-pricing of Fed expectations: 25%
  4. Sharply weaker global growth: 20%

Uncertainty about Europe’s political direction, evidenced by the near election of a far-right president in Austria this month and the UK’s Brexit referendum “have brought politics in the region into sharper relief.” You could be forgiven for thinking Societe Generale sees that democracy brings plenty of risk: “with a very busy political agenda lined up for the coming quarters, the risk of an event delivering an unexpected outcome remains high, be it the OMT (outright monetary transactions) judgment from the German Constitutional Court on June 21, the U.K. ‘Brexit’ referendum on June 23, Spanish election on June 26, Italian referendum in October and heading into 2017, elections in France, Germany, Netherlands and possibly Italy.” The other major risk is stemming from China, where the “potential for policy errors is substantial, and all the more so since a new bubble appears to be building in the property market.”

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