Benchmark
G-7's Penny-Pinching Ways Clash With Central Bank Stimulus
Ignoring low borrowing costs and other incentives, countries' spending is drying up
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One big reason the global economy is spinning its wheels: some of the world's richest governments are being tightwads.
Group of Seven governments have been cutting their investment spending since a brief surge as the global financial crisis took hold. As a share of the group's gross domestic product, those expenditures were 3.3 percent in the first quarter, matching the lowest since 2000 and down from 4 percent at the start of 2009, according to numbers crunched by Oxford Economics.