Fiscal Fragilities in the Global Economy
The Decisive Podcast: Insights and analysis to empower confident decision-making.
Release Date: 01/10/2026
Fake IDs on the High Seas: How Bad Actors Evade Detection
The Decisive Podcast: Insights and analysis to empower confident decision-making.
In this episode of The Decisive, host Kristen Hallam explores the murky world of maritime identity manipulation—a growing threat that’s reshaping global shipping, sanctions enforcement, and international trade. Joined by maritime risk and compliance expert Jeremy Domballe, Kristen unpacks how vessels can alter their digital, physical, and legal identities to operate undetected on the world’s oceans. From “zombie ships” reusing the identities of long-scrapped vessels to the physical “whitewashing” of ship names, Kristen and Jeremy reveal the methods bad actors use to evade...
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State of Shock: Economic Impacts of Middle East Conflict
The Decisive Podcast: Insights and analysis to empower confident decision-making.
The global economy is facing its weakest growth outlook since 2009. What happens when geopolitical conflict collides with an already fragile energy market? In this episode of The Decisive, we examine the cascading macroeconomic impacts of recent global disruptions and the resulting negative supply shocks that have forced economists to revise their forecasts. With global real GDP growth downgraded to just 2.4% and inflation projections rising due to energy and food prices, the economic divide between oil-exporting and oil-importing nations is becoming ever more pronounced. What You'll Learn:...
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Governance Stress Tests: Key Elections in 2026
The Decisive Podcast: Insights and analysis to empower confident decision-making.
As pivotal elections approach in the United States, Brazil, and Ethiopia, global businesses are navigating a rapidly evolving landscape of risks and opportunities. In this episode of The Decisive Podcast, host Kristen Hallam is joined by S&P Global Market Intelligence experts John Raines (Head of North America Country Risk), Rafael Amiel (Head of Latin America Economics), and Jordan Anderson (Principal Analyst, Sub-Saharan Africa Country Risk) to examine how political outcomes through 2026 will influence government stability, economic policy, and geopolitical risk well into 2027 and...
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How Supply Constraints Are Defining Electronics Pricing
The Decisive Podcast: Insights and analysis to empower confident decision-making.
In this episode of The Decisive Podcast, host Kristen Hallam is joined by S&P Global Market Intelligence economist Yan Hoong for an outlook on the electronics and semiconductor landscape through 2026—taken from a March 12 client webinar. Yan explains why memory remains a big source of procurement and pricing anxiety, with tightness persisting in both advanced and conventional memory as suppliers shift capacity toward higher-end products. Yan unpacks how this constraint is already spilling into downstream categories like computers and communications equipment, and why price pressure...
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Risk On: The Macro Environment for Moving Metals Prices
The Decisive Podcast: Insights and analysis to empower confident decision-making.
In the first episode of season 6 of The Decisive podcast, S&P Global Market Intelligence's Jason Kaplan unpacks why 2026 is shaping up as a “risk-on” commodities environment—with steady but subdued global growth, rising volatility, and a deepening flight to safety that’s pushing risk premiums across key markets. Jason, a senior economist in the Pricing and Purchasing team, connects macroeconomic signals to real-world pricing and trade flows, including how tariffs and regionalization are re-splitting markets after years of prices moving in lockstep. With a year of tariff data now...
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Logistics Finds a Way: Lessons in Supply Chain Resilience
The Decisive Podcast: Insights and analysis to empower confident decision-making.
In our last episode of Season 5, host Kristen Hallam sits down with Chris Rogers, S&P Global Market Intelligence's head of supply chain research, to analyze the moments when supply chains gets stressed—and the playbooks that keep goods moving anyway. From ongoing Red Sea security disruptions that forced ocean carriers to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope, reshaping transit times, capacity, and cost, to the more everyday shocks that ripple through transportation networks, this episode explores what resilience looks like when it’s operational—not aspirational. Chris discusses how...
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Critical Minerals at a Crossroads: Navigating Supply, Demand, and Geopolitics
The Decisive Podcast: Insights and analysis to empower confident decision-making.
As the global transition to clean energy, advanced technology, and artificial intelligence accelerates, the demand for critical minerals—including copper, lithium, and rare earth elements—is reshaping supply chains and intensifying geopolitical competition. In this episode of The Decisive Podcast, host Kristen Hallam leads a discussion with S&P Global Market Intelligence experts to examine the evolving landscape of critical minerals. The panel explores how changing definitions, trade flows, and strategic stockpiling are influencing both businesses and governments worldwide. Senior...
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PMI in Focus: Turning Timely Economic Signals Into Strategy
The Decisive Podcast: Insights and analysis to empower confident decision-making.
In this episode of The Decisive Podcast from S&P Global Market Intelligence, host Paul Smith, Economics Director, is joined by fellow economists Sian Jones and Andrew Harker to unpack the role of Purchasing Managers’ Indices (PMI) in tracking economic trends across more than 40 countries and multiple sectors. They explore how PMI data offers a timely alternative to official statistics, helping organizations monitor conditions in output, prices, inventories, and supply chains when events are moving quickly. The discussion looks at how PMI data is used to understand the impact of...
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Cooling, Not Crashing: Analyzing the US Labor Market
The Decisive Podcast: Insights and analysis to empower confident decision-making.
The US labor market is no longer running hot — but it isn’t freezing up, either. In this episode of The Decisive, S&P Global Market Intelligence economist Juan Turcios unpacks what a “softening” labor market really looks like in late 2025 and into 2026, and why the headline numbers don’t tell the whole story. We dig into the sharp slowdown in payroll growth since the post-pandemic boom, the steady rise in the unemployment rate from its 2023 cyclical low, and the increasing concentration of job gains in a handful of sectors — especially healthcare. Juan also explores what’s...
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Ballots and Balance: Asia's Shifting Political Map
The Decisive Podcast: Insights and analysis to empower confident decision-making.
A wave of landmark elections across Japan, Thailand, and Bangladesh is reshaping the political map of Asia—and creating new signals for investors, multinationals, and supply-chain decision-makers. In this episode, we break down what the results mean for regional security, economic strategy, and the business operating environment over the next 12–24 months. We start in Japan, where Prime Minister Sanai Takaichi’s LDP delivers a sweeping lower-house win, strengthening policy stability while enabling more ambitious moves on defense spending, industrial policy, and potential constitutional...
info_outlineIn this episode of The Decisive Podcast, host Kristen Hallam engages in an insightful discussion with Ken Wattret, Vice President of Global Economics at S&P Global Market Intelligence, about the critical yet often overlooked topic of public debt.
Kristen and Ken explore the significant rise in public sector debt-to-GDP ratios since the mid-2000s, driven by adverse economic shocks, including the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ken explains the persistent challenges of high government budget deficits, the political reluctance to implement fiscal changes, and the implications of rising sovereign yields on economic growth. Ken discusses how these fiscal fragilities impact businesses and consumers, the potential for crowding out private sector investment, and the risks of triggering another economic shock.
Listen now for a thought-provoking conversation that highlights the complexities of fiscal policy in today’s economic landscape.
More S&P Global Market Intelligence Content:
- The Age of Agility: Key Themes for 2026
- Top 10 Economic Insights 2026
- Fiscal fragilities: Dealing with high debt
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Credits:
- Host: Kristen Hallam
- Guest: Ken Wattret
- Produced By: Kristen Hallam
- Edited By: Marz Marcello
- Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Feranmi Adeoshun