MacroScope

Mike Dicks, chief economist and blogger at Barclays Wealth, has identified what he sees as the three biggest problems facing the global economy, and conveniently found that they are linked with three separate regions.

First, there is the risk that U.S., t consumers won’t increase spending. Dicks notes that the increase in U.S. consumption has been “extremely moderate” and far less than after previous recessions. His firm has lowered is U.S. GDP forecast for 2011 to 2.7 percent from a bit over 3 percent.

Next comes the euro zone. While the wealth manager is not looking for any immediate collapse in EMU, Dicks reckons that without the ability to devalue, Greece and other struggling countries won’t see any great improvement in competitiveness. Germany, in the meantime, has sped up plans to cut its own deficit.  It leaves the Barclays Wealth’s euro zone GDP forecast at just 1 percent for next year.

Finally, Asian growth is under threat from tightening policies. Dicks says this is the least problem of the three, but there are indications that powerhouse China needs a period of slower growth to get things under control.

So,  there are three problems — and a not very bright outlook. Are there any others? Or are these three all being overstated?

From the econ blogosphere:

UK BUDGET
– The libertarian Adam Smith Institute says here that the UK government should look at every government job, programme and department, and ask whether they are really needed. “Do we really need new school buildings….? Should taxpayers really stump up for free bus passes, or winter fuel and Chistmas bonuses for wealthy pensioners?”

CHINESE FX
– VOX publishes this post from senior research fellow Willem Thorbecke of the Asian Development Bank on China’s latest move on the dollar peg. “China’s action may facilitate a concerted appreciation in Factory Asia, helping the region redirect production away from western markets and towards domestic consumers.”

U.S. JOBS
– Karen Dynan, vice president for economics studies at Brookings, looks here at the latest U.S. jobs data and argues that Congress needs to extend unemployment benefits. “Reinstating the benefits would … help the broader public by contributing to overall demand in goods and services and thereby mitigating the risks of a double dip in the economy.”

Reuters’s top news and innovation teams have put together a web site on the yuan and the debate over its revaluation. Particularly worth a look after the weekend’s statement by China that it would allow more flexibility in its currency exchange. You can access it here, but it looks like this:

Bank of America-Merrill Lynch's monthly poll of around 200 fund managers had a few nuggets in the June version, aside from the usual mood-taking.

Gold is too expensive.  A net 27 percent of respondent thought it overvalued, up from 13 percent in May. Then again, the respondents to this poll have reckoned gold is too pricey since September 2009.

The fall in the euro should be tailing off. A net 14 percent reckon the single currency is still overvalued, but that is way down from the net 45 percent who thought so in the May poll.

Far from being lauded as a virtue, China’s high savings rate has been blamed for the economic imbalances underlying the global financial crisis. The criticism being that the Chinese spend too little and rely too much on exporting to Western consumers.

The IMF and World Bank have long called for Beijing to ramp up social spending so its citizens will feel less need to save for a rainy day and instead consume more.

But in their intriguingly named paper,  ‘A Sexually Unbalanced Model of Current Account Imbalances‘, New York-based researchers Du Qingyuan and Wei Shang-Jin suggest China’s gender imbalance could also be a significant factor in the persistence of its high savings rate.

The growing acrimony in the international debate over China's currency policy has led some to warn that Beijing could dig in its heels if pushed to hard to let its yuan rise.

But Barclays Capital says Beijing could let its currency strengthen as early as next month, notwithstanding its public resolve against Washington's threat to label it as a currency manipulator.

"They do have a 'If you stop pushing, we'll do it' attitude, which is kind of childish, really. But it will happen because they are the only country in the world, besides India, where there is a whiff of inflation," says Barclays' asset allocation head Tim Bond.

Michael Pettis, a professor and China expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has put together a thorough and informative look at all things U.S.-China trade. It’s well worth reading and watching the entire thing, but here’s a few highlights that jump out:

* We’re likely to see a significant increase in global trade tensions

* China will probably allow the renminbi currency to rise, but not by a lot

* There is a way to resolve those huge global imbalances but it will be painful and the chances of mustering the political will — in China, the United States and Europe — look slim.

A bit more on that last point: Pettis thinks that those three players need to “come to some kind of grand agreement.”

Anyone wondering what ghoul is most haunting investors at the moment could see it clearly on Tuesday -- it is the exit strategy from the past few years' central bank liquidity-fest.

Germany came out with a quite positive business sentiment indicator, relief was still there that Greece had managed to sell some debt a day before, and Britain formally left recession -- albeit in a limp kind of way.

But what was the main global market mover? It was China implementing a previously announced clampdown on lending.

Many happy returns or midlife crisis?

The annual talkfest in the Alps records its 40th birthday this year but the rich and powerful will hardly be in celebratory mood as problems pile up in the post-crisis world.

How to withdraw the trillions of dollars in stimulus that helped the world avoid a rerun of the Great Depression, without spooking markets all over again?

What to do in the face of the world's lukewarm response to the hot topic of climate change?

Some fascinating data about the growing power of emerging markets, particularly the BRICs, was on display at the OECD's annual investment conference in Paris this week. Not the least of it came from MIGA, the World Bank's Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, which tries to help protect foreign direct investors from various forms of political risk.

MIGA has mainly focused on encouraging investment into developing countries, but a lot of its latest work is about investment from emerging economies.

This has been exploding over the past decade. Net outward investment from developing countries reached $198 billion in 2008 from around $20 billion in 2000. The 2008 figure was only 10.8 percent of global FDI, but it was just 1.4 percent in 2000.