"The global economy is on a lower growth track than generally predicted over the last year, and projections for European and Japanese growth prospects are disappointing. On the plus side, the worry that the BRICS Bank would be the beginning of a fragmented system was misplaced. A close reading of the Articles of Agreement indicate that the BRICS Bank will not be an influential player for years, if ever.

In May, Bill White contended that “It’s déja vu, all over again”; referring to 2007 when the global economy was an accident waiting to happen and policy makers failed to see it coming. He argued that the situation we face today is more fraught with danger than in 2007.

The BIS annual report, issued in late June, argued that that the world could not continue to rely on debt as the main engine of growth. That with extraordinary accommodative monetary policy, “countries could at some point find themselves in a debt trap: seeking to stimulate the economy through low interest rates encourages even more debt, ultimately adding to the problem it is meant to solve”. There does not appear to be a Plan B should American inflation increase to the point where it would trigger markets to panic."

"The June 2014 WTO report on the G-20’s standstill pledges to avoid protectionist trade measures, grumbled that “G-20 members put in place 112 new trade restrictive measures during the period mid November 2013 to mid-May 2014.”

On 7 December 2013, at the end of the WTO’s Ninth Ministerial Conference in Bali, Director-General Roberto Azevêdo crowed “the WTO has truly delivered…. The Bali package may have frequently seemed impossible, but now it is done”. But on 31 July 2014, he reported to WTO ambassadors that despite intensive consultations, “we have not been able to find a solution that would allow us to bridge the gap” on the adoption of the protocol on the Trade Facilitation Agreement [the centrepiece of the Bali package]….We have not been able to find a solution that would allow us to bridge that gap. We tried everything we could. But it has not proved possible.”

One glimmer of good news was the July announcement that 14 countries formally launched international negotiations to remove tariffs on the APEC list of environmental goods."

"Atmospheric CO2 reached 399 ppm in July. While China's carbon intensity fell by 5 percent in the first half of 2014, the higher rate of economic growth resulted in an overall increase in annual carbon emissions. The shale revolution is drawing investment away from renewables. Expressions of concern are growing. Even former U.S. Treasury Henry M Paulson argued this June that the time for weighing evidence is past and now it is time for acting – before the problem becomes too big to manage.

There has been no progress in five years since the Durban agreement to negotiate a new treaty in Paris in 2015, to be in force by 2020. The UNFCCC Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) is to prepare a draft treaty text for the Conference of the Parties in December 2014 in Peru. In July, the ADP issued their report, noting that “a substantial [euphemism for unattainable] amount of work remains ahead of us in order to arrive, within more or less the next nine months, at a draft legal text of the proposed agreement”. The co-chairs also posted a “Non-paper” collating the Parties’ views and proposals on the elements of a draft negotiating text. The non-paper notes there is little prospect of agreement on mitigation goals and national commitments; accounting rules and the time frame or on how to reflect finance in the 2015 agreement, including issues referring to scope, nature and sources. Parties are far apart on removing barriers on technology transfer, on institutional arrangements for the provision of finance and on transparency arrangements to meet the needs of the new agreement.

In Paris next year, the UNFCCC will just move the goalposts to 2018 and maintain their process detached from reality."