The IMF has resurrected an old technique – commonly used in the 1980s during the Latin American debt crisis – that will allow Greece to avoid a payment default next month on debt owed to European creditors. But the Fund’s elegant compromise still leaves Greece under the shadow of an enormous debt overhang.

Economic reality is beginning to catch up with the false hopes of many Britons that the UK's withdrawal from the EU will not reduce their standard of living. The Brexit referendum cannot be undone, but people can change their minds about what their vote meant.

In the wake of the UK's snap election, how long Theresa May will survive as prime minister is impossible to predict. But in trying to anticipate the outcome of the Brexit negotiations, the questions that matter no longer have much to do with May’s political survival.

With the election of a reform-minded centrist president in France and the re-election of German Chancellor Angela Merkel seeming ever more likely, is there hope for the stalled single-currency project in Europe? Perhaps, but another decade of slow growth, punctuated by periodic debt-related convulsions, still looks more likely.

This is a good time to remember that the US is a federal system, not a unitary state with an all-powerful central government. So, can Americans who oppose the contraction of social programs and revocation of progressive federal legislation use US states’ authority to counter these trends?

Recent economic data from around the world suggest that growth could soon accelerate, now that the global economy has weathered multiple crises over the past two years. And yet the possibility of another global slowdown – if not an outright stall – cannot be ruled out.

Britain, France, the United States – which is the odd one out politically? The answer seems obvious. Last year’s Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom and the election of Donald Trump in the United States were the twin symbols of populist revolt against global elites. In Emmanuel Macron, France, by contrast, has just elected as its president the quintessential “Davos Man” – a proudly globalist technocrat identified with his country’s most elitist financial, administrative, and educational institutions.

Many observers have criticized the White House's budget plan for fiscal year 2018, owing to its optimistic assumptions about underlying economic growth. But the budget appears to be unrealistic in another crucial respect: interest rates – and thus debt-service costs – are supposed to remain low, even as full employment is reached.

Once an adapter to globalization, China is increasingly a driver of it. The Next China is becoming a Global China, upping the ante on its connection to an increasingly integrated world – and creating a new set of risks and opportunities.

One explanation for today’s stagnation focuses on growing angst about new technologies that could eventually replace many or most of our jobs, fueling massive economic inequality. People may be increasingly reluctant to spend today because they have vague fears about their employability tomorrow.