The writer is chair of Rockefeller InternationalWhile global investors increasingly recognise that the easy money era is over, many world leaders do not — and the markets are punishing them for free spending in the new age of tight money.
In the 2010s, when interest rates hit historic lows, markets punished very few free spenders — Greece, Turkey and Argentina, most notably — for extreme fiscal or monetary irresponsibility. Now inflation is back, rates are rising and debt levels have been elevated worldwide, investors are targeting an expanding list of countries.
The markets have forced a shift in policy, or at least tone, this year on countries ranging from the UK to Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ghana, Egypt, Pakistan, even defiantly populist Hungary. What these countries shared was relatively high debt and widening twin deficits — government and external — combined with unorthodox policies likely to make these burdens even worse. But tight money is here to stay. The target list will grow. No country is likely to be immune, not even the US, which has among the highest twin deficits in the developed world.