Financial markets have suffered their worst start to a year since the Great Depression.
Some analysts say the combination of high inflation and growth so low it's teetering on recession could send the global economy into a period of stagflation – when growth slows or reverses while prices increase.
It's all thanks to a series of global economic shocks: the continuing effects of the pandemic, continued disruption to global supply chains and the conflict in Ukraine.
So on this edition of The Agenda, Juliet Mann asks two of the world's most eminent economists whether there is any glimmer of hope on the horizon in the second half of 2022.
She speaks to Jim O'Neill, former Chair of Goldman Sachs Asset Management and the man who coined the term BRICS, and Saadia Zahidi, Managing Director of the World Economic Forum, to see whether we should be looking to batten down the financial hatches – or open the shutters.
MEET THE EXPERTS:
Saadia Zahidi is the Managing Director at the World Economic Forum and Head of the Forum's Centre for the New Economy and Society. Zahidi founded and co-authors the Forum's Future of Jobs Report, Global Gender Gap Report, and Human Capital Report.
Zahidi's book, Fifty Million Rising, charts the rise of working women in the Muslim world and was long-listed for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year 2018. She has been selected as one of the BBC's 100 Women and won the inaugural FT/McKinsey Bracken Bower Prize for prospective authors under 35.
Lord Jim O'Neill worked for Goldman Sachs from 1995 until April 2013, spending most of his time there as Chief Economist, then becoming chair. In 2015 he was created a life peer and became Commercial Secretary to the UK Treasury.
O'Neill chaired the Cities Growth Commission in the UK, which formed the basis for the government's approach to devolution and the concept of the Northern Powerhouse. He is now Vice Chair of The Northern Powerhouse Partnership and also serves as the chair of Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs.