Charts of the week: China’s weak borrowing, central bank challenges, natural disasters

This week’s charts begin by showing a concerning trend in China – net new borrowing is concentrated in the business sector as households pull back. 

We look at two central banks: we show how the Fed’s “dot plot” moved toward predicting rates will stay higher for longer, and we show how Turkey abandoned monetary policy orthodoxy in the run-up to its recent election. 

On inflation, we break down UK price increases by components such as food and shelter and take an OECD-wide view that shows CPI is taking its time catching up with trends in PPI, as it usually does. 

Finally, we examine a spike in US media layoffs and visualise how different countries are exposed to natural disasters.

Is China’s great reopening stuttering? Bank lending gives cause for concern: domestic credit growth has been weaker than expected, and there’s an interesting bifurcation in the data.

As our chart shows, on a twelve-month cumulated basis, new lending is growing year-on-year. But demand is solely driven by non-financial enterprises.

The Federal Reserve “dot plot,” the de facto monetary-policy forecast, entered the lexicon about a decade ago. It polls seven Fed board members and presidents of the 12 regional Feds. The resulting 19 dots show where central bankers see the Fed funds rate going.

Amid a decade-plus of low rates, many investors came to believe “there is no alternative” to equities – a mantra known by its acronym, TINA. But as rates go higher, other investment alternatives are increasingly attractive. (Or, TARA. “There are reasonable alternatives.)

Turkey followed an unconventional monetary-policy approach in the years before President Erdogan’s recent re-election: cutting key interest rates and letting inflation soar to multi-decade highs. Capital fled Turkey, aggravating the collapse of the lira. The central bank’s reserves withered as it attempted to maintain currency stability.

Traditional media companies, unable to find a sustainable response to free content on the Internet and fragmenting audiences, have been shedding staff for two decades now (a subject close to COTW’s editor’s heart).

This chart compares how companies and consumers are experiencing inflation across the OECD nations.

We’ve repeatedly highlighted concerning weather-related data. As the climate becomes more volatile, which nations are most vulnerable to catastrophe – and which ones have best prepared themselves to cope?