The world economy had hoped for a post-pandemic normalization in 2022, but was hit by a barrage of crises including the war in Ukraine, soaring inflation and global warming, leaving a bleak 2023 ahead.
2022 will be remembered as the year of "polycrisis"an expression popularized by the historian Adam Tooze, which implies a succession of heterogeneous blows that leave an overwhelming panorama.
these blows "have increased since the turn of the century" with the financial crisis of 2008, that of the sovereign debt, the pandemic and the energy crisis, highlighted to AFP Roel Beetsma, professor of economics at the University of Amsterdam.
For the academic, the world "It has not registered such a complicated situation since World War II".
persistent inflation
The experts initially explained that after years of sluggish inflation, the return of a rise in prices would be transitory and concomitant with the post-pandemic recovery. The Russian invasion of the Ukraine and the escalation of energy prices changed these projections and explanations.
The current level of inflation has not been recorded since the 1970s-80s and has left millions of households in developed countries in precariousness, in addition to putting poor countries at risk of suffering even greater misery.
However, it shows signs of starting to slow down. In the euro zone it fell to 10.0% in November and in the United States it was 6% in October.
The OECD expects the rise in prices to reach 8% in the fourth quarter in the large developed and emerging countries of the G20, to drop to a level of 5.5% in 2023 and 2024.
The agency recommends countries give selective aid. For example France and Germany, like other economies, began to provide assistance for households and businesses.
In the European Union alone, states promised 674 billion euros (about $708 billion) in aid, according to the Bruegel think tank.
Of the total, 264,000 million correspond to Germany, a country where one in two people affirms that they only buy what is strictly necessary, according to a survey by the consulting firm EY.
"Everything became more expensive: fresh cream, wine, electricity", lists Nicole Eisermann, who has a stall at a Christmas market in Frankfurt.
"I will be careful but I have many children and grandchildren", who want gifts, says one of the customers, Günther Blum.
Tighter central banks
The big central banks, whose main mission is to ensure price stability, almost without exception began a cycle of raising their interest rates.
However, this strategy weighs down the economy a little more, since it makes credit conditions for households and companies more complicated.
The same is true of States, which have become more indebted since the financial crisis and the pandemic, and some face the risk of instability that could lead them to default on payments.
The president of the Federal Reserve (Fed) of the United States, Jerome Powell, suggested a possible slowdown in the rate hike in December, although he warned that it could keep them at high levels "for some time".
As for the European Central Bank, analysts consider a further rate hike in December almost certain, although probably less aggressive than in October.
Recessions and climate crisis
The world is still far from a general recession. The IMF and the OECD forecast growth of 2.7% and 2.2%, respectively, for 2023.
But the UK is already "in recession" and many economists think that Germany and Italy will be next.
For the euro zone as a whole, the rating agency S&P Global expects a particularly difficult first quarter and stagnation throughout the year.
One of the keys is the lack of momentum of the Chinese economy, a locomotive of global growth, due to the zero covid strategy, although it began to become more flexible in recent days.
Chinese exports, in turn, have been weighed down by the global slowdown.
Europe, in turn, is plunged into a "energy reconfiguration" which can "take years"accelerated by the war in Ukraine, S&P Global wrote.
And another of the great crises, the climate crisis, is developing "in slow motion"says Beetsma, from the University of Amsterdam.
Despite the multiplication of natural disasters, ambitions remain too timid.
That was evident in the failure of the COP27 in Egypt to set new targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The difficulty of States in managing the escalation of energy prices has also been reflected in the slowness of the transition.
"If we don’t do enough, this is going to hit us on a scale we’ve never seen before."warns Beetsma.