Last week marked the 10th anniversary of the London G20 summit, an event that took place at the low point in the deepest slump since the 1930s, yet represented the high point of international cooperation.

A decade on, the global outlook is once again darkening. World trade growth is at its weakest since 2009, the protectionism that the London summit eschewed has reared its head, and central banks have responded to faltering growth by scaling down plans to raise interest rates.

All this and more will be on the agenda when the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank hold their spring meetings in Washington this week.

A looming developing-country debt crisis is a concern to both the World Bank, which now has a new Donald Trump-appointed president in David Malpass, and the IMF.

Christine Lagarde, the fund’s managing director, has already said her organisation is going to reduce its forecasts for growth when it releases its world economic outlook on Tuesday.

It has been evident for some time that China’s economic growth has been slowing, and it was equally obvious that US activity in the first half of last year was artificially boosted by tax cuts.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest World leaders at the G20 summit in 2009. Photograph: Martin Argles/The Guardian

But what should really concern the IMF is the slowdown in the German economy, because it is indicative of the trend since the middle of 2018. Last week new data showed that German factory orders slumped by 4.2% in February, compared with January. That’s the worst monthly fall in two years, and on an annual basis factory orders were a painful 8.4% lower. Germany, Europe’s powerhouse economy, has been flirting with recession, and the reason is simple: its export-sensitive growth model has been badly hit by slowing world trade.

So what could happen next? Well, one theory is that the worst is over. China’s economy has shown some signs of bottoming out, and the decision by the Federal Reserve to call a halt to interest-rate increases will limit the extent to which US growth moderates this year.

One piece of good news for the IMF is that the US and China seem close to a deal that will end their damaging trade war. By all accounts China has agreed to increase its imports of US goods by a trillion dollars by the middle of the next decade, to allow full US ownership of companies in China and to enforce intellectual property rights. The White House is insisting on target dates for compliance, in an attempt to prevent backsliding. The distinct possibility of any such backsliding means the trade truce could well be short-lived.

The IMF clearly thinks there is a scenario in which the remedies for the last crisis contribute to the next one, because it has also flagged concern about the possibility that rampant house-price inflation in the US and China could trigger recessions. The reason? Years of ultra-low interest rates and aggressive lending have left a growing number of homes in the world’s two biggest economies at risk of price falls.

This all sounds eerily familiar, except that, having failed to spot the risks posed by sub-prime mortgages before the 2008 global financial crisis, the fund is not eager to be accused of making the same mistake twice.

The IMF’s real headache is that the flaws in the global economy exposed by the financial crisis were papered over rather than properly dealt with. A decade of cheap money has resulted in a build-up of debt, excessive speculation, asset price growth and a sense that the bubble is about to burst. It’s Groundhog Day, in other words.

The perils of private ownership



There are exceptions to most rules but here’s a useful one: if private equity is selling, you don’t want to be buying. Just ask investors in the AA, Debenhams and Saga.

Two of those companies – the AA, the roadside recovery service, and Saga, the insurance and cruise business for the over-50s – used to be housed under one roof. They were combined as Acromas during the buyout boom in 2007 on the hopeful idea that there would be mutually beneficial savings.

That thinking was abandoned when the owners – Permira, CVC and Charterhouse – spotted a good moment to sell. In 2014, Acromas was dismantled and the weighty borrowings divided between the AA and Saga as they floated.

Progress so far: both share prices have fallen by roughly 60% and both managements diagnose a need to step up investment to overcome years of underspending created by pressure to pay down borrowings imposed in the private equity years. The AA cut its dividend a year ago. Saga followed last week, issuing a plaintive cry about wanting to return to its “heritage”.

In a rational world, stock market investors would have spotted the lurking dangers of underinvestment. In the real world, everyone wants to believe an efficiency miracle has happened under private ownership. Business is rarely so simple.

In Debenhams’ case, a sale-and-leaseback of stores under TPG, CVC and Merrill Lynch lumbered it with inflexible and costly leases: just what it didn’t need in today’s retailing storm. Other mistakes were made after its return to the market in 2006, but lack of freehold stability made them worse. Shareholders are now staring at wipe-out.

Blame private equity? Naturally. But also blame the fund managers who bought: if they were buying a secondhand car, they would ask how hard the engine had been flogged.

Golden oldies keep Netflix going



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Friends: still thought to be the most popular show on Netflix. Photograph: NBC/NBC via Getty Images

Thanks to streaming and an explosion in the number of multi-channel households, television has entered a golden era of programming, from House of Cards to Game of Thrones and Black Mirror. But much of this success is built on a distinctly retro foundation.

The BBC’s £180m deal, announced last week, to take control of the lion’s share of UKTV – home to perennial favourites including Only Fools and Horses, Dad’s Army, Blackadder and past series of Top Gear – has put the spotlight on the often-overlooked value of the evergreen repeat.

Their commercial value and popularity has not been lost on rivals, either, with Sky last month striking a deal for hundreds of hours of most of those same BBC shows for its on-demand service. because its four4 million subscribersviewers couldn’t catch up with the shows on demand – the reason being that those the rights are mostly held by Netflix And Netflix’s willingness to pay $100m (£78m) to retain the perennially popular comedy Friends for one more year – at which point rights owner WarnerMedia will have to decide whether to keep it exclusively for its own service – highlights the value of crowd-pulling archive content.

Netflix had previously been paying WarnerMedia about $30m a year for Friends, which is thought to be the most popular show among the service’s 140 million global subscribers.

Another top-five show on Netflix is the American version of The Office, which ended in 2013, which the service may also lose when the company that owns the rights to the comedy, NBCUniversal, launches its own subscription offering later this year.

Netflix trumpets its own original television series and movies, which account for more than 85% of new-content spending – but original productions still make up less than 10% of the streaming service’s vast library of content. The old stuff sustains the subscriber base that pays for the groundbreaking new productions.

TV is at a creative zenith, but repeats help sustain it., a reference to Disney’s all-powerful, mega-money spinning superhero franchise.