The Economy Is Humming. Bankers Are Cheering. What Could Go Wrong?<br />Mr. El-Erian, for example, said he was nervous about several possibilities:<br />that global growth could taper off; that prices of stocks, bonds and other financial assets are unsustainably high; and, most important, that markets might not be prepared when central banks reverse their efforts to stimulate economies by keeping interest rates low and buying huge sums of assets.<br />Susan Lund, an expert on global financial trends at the McKinsey Global Institute, said these types of investments from global asset managers tended to be longer term — and thus less destabilizing — than the so-called hot money from commercial banks<br />that contributed to recent debt crises in the United States and Europe<br />“The meetings will celebrate this period of synchronized economic growth<br />and calm financial markets,” said Mohamed A. El-Erian, chief economic adviser to the fund giant Allianz.<br />“It is the strongest growth we have seen since 2010.”<br />In Japan, a reform-minded government and aggressive action by the central bank<br />have pushed growth to 1.5 percent — up from 0.3 percent three years ago.<br />A big driver for growth in emerging markets, said Mr. Coulton, the economist at<br />Fitch, has been Chinese imports, which are up more than 10 percent this year.<br />From Wall Street to Washington, economists have been upgrading their forecasts for the global economy this year,<br />with the consensus now pointing to an expansion of more than 3 percent — up noticeably from 2.6 percent in 2016.
