Global Events Darken First-Quarter Economics

May 1, 2022

For the first time during the last few years, the Covid-19 pandemic is no longer the biggest global news story at quarter end. Unfortunately, the pandemic has now been supplanted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24. As of April 1, Reuters estimates that there have been at least 24,000 total deaths, $565 billion in property damage and over 10 million people displaced.

In terms of direct economic impact on the United States, the war has exacerbated the inflationary pressure that we already had been seeing for the past few months. In turn, this has led to strong language out of the Fed about raising short-term interest rates to combat it — and ultimately to a significant selloff in the bond market during the last few weeks as bond holders look to get ahead of those upcoming rate increases.

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