In the span of just a few days, the global economic outlook has darkened while troops battled in Ukraine and unexpectedly potent financial sanctions rocked Russia’s economy and threatened to further fuel worldwide inflation.
The price of oil, natural gas and other staples spiked Monday. At the same time, the groaning weight on supply chains, still laboring from the pandemic, rose as the United States, Europe and their allies tightened the screws on Russia’s financial transactions and froze hundreds of billions of dollars of the central bank’s assets that are held abroad.