Podcast
The Briefing: a sample episode
Our daily conversation about the stories shaping the world economy. This is a demonstration episode.
Daniel Okafor
Demonstration profile. Daniel Okafor covers monetary policy, trade and the global economy.
Articles by Daniel Okafor
Explainer
How central banks weigh the risk of inflation against the risk of slowing growth
Interest-rate decisions are a judgement about which mistake would be more costly. Here is how policymakers frame that choice.
Analysis
When countries cannot pay: how sovereign debt restructurings work
There is no bankruptcy court for nations. Debt crises are instead resolved through slow, often painful negotiations shaped by contract terms, creditor diversity and the threat of lost market access.
Analysis
How economic sanctions are designed, and why they so often leak
Sanctions are meant to impose costs without firing a shot. Their effect depends less on the headline measures than on the plumbing of trade and finance beneath them.
Video
Video: why economies move in cycles
Expansions and slowdowns follow one another. A visual primer on the forces that drive the rhythm.
Explainer
How broadcast rights became the most valuable asset in professional sport
Live sport is one of the few things audiences still watch together and in real time. That makes the rights to show it unusually prized, and unusually hard to price.
Podcast
The Briefing: why central banks talk so much
Forward guidance, explained in a short conversation. This is a demonstration episode.
Opinion
The case for boring infrastructure
Governments love ribbon-cuttings. The better investment is usually maintenance nobody notices until it fails.
Analysis
How companies are redrawing their supply chains
Efficiency once trumped everything. Now businesses are paying for resilience — and discovering how hard it is to buy.
Opinion
Central bank independence is worth defending, even when it is inconvenient
Insulating monetary policy from day-to-day politics has costs. Abandoning it would cost more.
Explainer
How to read a national budget without getting lost
Government budgets run to hundreds of pages. A few questions cut through to what actually matters.
Analysis
Why productivity growth, the root of rising living standards, is so hard to measure
Over the long run, almost nothing matters more for prosperity than producing more from the same effort. Yet statisticians struggle to capture what is actually being produced.
Opinion
An emergency fund is unglamorous, and it is the foundation everything else depends on
Chasing returns before building a cash buffer leaves households exposed to the one risk they can least afford: being forced to sell or borrow at the worst moment.
Explainer
Who really pays a tariff? How import duties pass through to prices
A tariff is collected at the border, but its cost is shared among foreign exporters, domestic importers, retailers and consumers. How it divides depends on market power and the time horizon.
Real Estate
Renting versus buying: the trade-offs that simple calculators leave out
The decision is often framed as throwing money away on rent versus building wealth through ownership. The reality depends on time horizons, flexibility and risk.
