“The current period of growth should be used as an opportunity: to further safeguard the financial sector--by building up capital buffers and strengthening corporate and bank balance sheets; to address the issue of stagnant real wages--which can undermine the recovery and fuel discontent; and to confront the problem of excessive current account imbalances--with both surplus and deficit countries playing their part."

All in all, in our judgement, the U.S. economic model is not working as well as it could in generating broadly shared income growth.

Saudi Aramco today signed agreements with major U.S. companies which will pave way for the company to enhance its business synergy with the U.S. as well as attracting investments from its U.S. counterparts to the Kingdom.

Saudi Arabia will go into the meeting of OPEC and non-OPEC producers in Vienna on May 25 determined to maximize its oil revenue through high prices, even if it must make large production cuts in return.

The sum total in November of all net foreign acquisitions of long-term securities, short-term U.S. securities, and banking flows was a monthly net TIC inflow of $23.7 billion. Of this, net foreign private inflows were $25.2 billion, and net foreign official outflows were $1.5 billion.

The U.S. current account deficit decreased to $113.0 billion (preliminary) in the third quarter of 2016 from $118.3 billion (revised) in the second quarter of 2016, according to statistics released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). The deficit decreased to 2.4 percent of current-dollar gross domestic product (GDP) from 2.6 percent in the second quarter.

First-quarter 2016 financial results from U.S. onshore producers reveal an improving balance between capital expenditure and operating cash flow. Although operating cash flow was the lowest in any quarter in the past five years, larger reductions to capital expenditure brought these companies closest to self-finance (when capital investment can be paid for entirely from operating cash flow). With crude oil prices such as the global benchmark Brent price averaging over $45 per barrel in the second quarter—a 34% increase from first-quarter 2016—cash flow may improve and help offset declining revenue from lower production.

Islamic finance: By the book