There is an eerie emptiness at the seat of US economic power. The US Treasury is in shutdown like much of the federal government. Most staff are furloughed as the world's finance ministers and bankers jet in for the International Monetary Fund annual meetings a few blocks away, their delayed flights handled by a small number of unpaid air traffic controllers. There is, however, one clear message the Trump administration is notably keen to get out, not so much for its domestic audience but for the bewildered world outside. And they delivered it in the middle of last week to a small number of people ushered into the Treasury and what is said to be the finest room in Washington DC, the ornate and marbled Cash Room, which hosted the inaugural reception for post-civil war president, Ulysses Grant.

The UK is forecast to be the second-fastest growing of the world's most advanced economies this year and next, according to new projections from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The rates of growth remain modest at 1.3% for both years, but that outperforms the other G7 economies apart from the US, in a torrid year of trade and geopolitical tensions. However, UK inflation is set to rise to the highest in the G7 in 2025 and 2026, the IMF predicts, driven by larger energy and utility bills. UK inflation is forecast to average 3.4% this year and 2.5% in 2026 but the IMF says this will be temporary, and fall to 2% by the end of next year. The G7 are seven advanced economies - the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan - but the group doesn't include fast-growing economies such as China and India.

"Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble." As Shakespeare's witches foretold chaos through cryptic prophecies, modern capital markets grapple with systemic risks concealed by opaque AI systems. According to IMF, the August 5, 2024, plunge in Japanese and U.S. equities can be linked to algorithmic trading yet absent from existing AI incidents database exemplifies this transparency crisis . Current AI incident databases, reliant on crowdsourcing or news scraping, systematically overlook capital market anomalies, particularly in algorithmic and high - frequency trading. We address this critical gap by proposing a regulatory - grade global database that elegantly synthesi s es post - trade reporting frameworks with proven incident documentation models from healthcare and aviation. Our framework's temporal data omission technique masking timestamps while preserving percentage - based metrics enables sophisticated cross - jurisdictional analysis of emerging risks while safeguarding confidential business information. Synthetic data validation ( modelled after real life published incidents, sentiments, data) (n=2,999 incidents) reveals compelling patterns: systemic risks transcending geographical boundaries, market manipulation clusters distinctly identifiable via K - means algorithms, and AI system typology exerting significantly greater influence on trading behaviour than geographical location, This tripartite solution empowers regulators with unprecedented cross - jurisdictional oversight, financial institutions with seamless compliance integration, and investors with critical visibility into previously obscured AI - driven vulnerabilities. We call for immediate action to strengthen risk management and foster resilience in AI - driven financial markets against the volatile "cauldron" of AI - driven syste m ic risks.

A number of big themes emerged from the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort Davos. Here are five of most pressing questions that came to dominate this year's gathering of the global elite. Donald Trump's trade war with China – continued by his successor Joe Biden – has left relations between east and west at rock bottom. But with Covid and trade tensions halving Chinese growth last year to just 3% and western businesses such as Apple moving business out of the world's second-biggest economy, Beijing has hinted it may adopt a less-hostile approach. Vice-premier Liu He appeared on the main stage at Davos to assure foreign investors that after three years of Covid disruption, it was open for business.

The U.S. refrained from designating any trading partner as a currency manipulator in the Biden administration's first foreign-exchange policy report, even as Switzerland, Taiwan and Vietnam met thresholds for the label.The Treasury Department said Friday that those three economies met criteria for the manipulator label, including a large trade surplus with the U.S. In December, the last report done under President Donald Trump designated Switzerland and Vietnam as manipulators.The new assessments signal the Biden administration is taking a less confrontational approach to international currency policy after Trump labeling of China and other countries as manipulators proved ineffective and spurred concerns of politicization.The latest report assesses currency activities through 2020.Covid ImpactThe U.S. acknowledged that the unprecedented nature of the coronavirus pandemic's impact on the global economy led to creative policy responses by governments and central banks.

In March 2018, members of the International Monetary Fund's (IMF's) executive board gave their blessing to a dramatic overhaul of the way the organisation gathers, governs and uses data. The Overarching strategy on data and statistics, the first of its kind, lays out how the fund plans to improve the quality of data, boost the ease with which it can be shared, and start making greater use of innovations in big data and artificial intelligence (AI). Key to the strategy is the "global data commons" – an ambitious, cloud‑based platform for gathering large quantities of data from IMF members. The aim is to bring all of the data together in one place in an readily comparable format, making use of common data standards and methodologies. Researchers, journalists and members of the public should no longer be required to trawl through an array of often-labyrinthine websites belonging to national statistics offices and instead be able to access all of the data through a single portal.

Inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, says intelligent machines are your friends. In this podcast, Kurzweil talks about how artificial intelligence is helping overcome our human limitations and creating better-paying jobs. "That's the purpose of technology, and we are the only species that creates technology. That was enabled by the expansion of the neocortex 2 million years ago--we used that additional neocortex to invent technology. The first technology was language so we could share ideas. Technology is a body and brain extender."