Global economy loses $1.6 trn as world struggles to avoid a new Cold War

The ties that bind the global economy together, and delivered goods in abundance across the world, are unravelling at a frightening pace.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s Covid Zero lockdowns are disrupting supply chains, hammering growth and pushing inflation to forty-year highs. They’re the chief reasons why Bloomberg Economics has lopped $1.6 trillion off its forecast for global GDP in 2022.

But what if that’s just an initial hit? War and plague won’t last forever. But the underlying problem – a world increasingly divided along geopolitical fault lines — only looks set to get worse.

Bloomberg Economics has run a