A month into the worst oil supply disruption since the 1970s Arab embargo, the economic pain spreading across Asia is reviving an uncomfortable question: Could this be 1997 all over again? 

The parallels are hard to ignore. Asian currencies are under pressure, fueling the risk of capital outflows. Spiking energy costs have pushed governments to roll out emergency measures, while central banks are drawing down foreign exchange reserves. 

In Thailand, policymakers have moved to ration gasoline. Meanwhile, surging pump prices in the Philippines prompted the government to declare a national emergency. Across the region, the widening trade deficits and rising inflation expectations feel reminiscent of the Asian financial crisis that began in 1997. 

But economists say the similarities may be largely superficial, thanks to more flexible exchange-rate regimes and deeper foreign exchange reserves, which provide a buffer that helps absorb some of the shock. 

“Crises can take many shapes, and the shape of this [Iran] crisis is entirely different,” said David Lubin, a senior research fellow at Chatham House.

The 1997 episode, he noted, was driven by “a toxic mixture of fixed exchange rates, high levels of short-term foreign debt, low levels of foreign exchange reserves, and elevated current account deficits.”

“These days, Asian economies – precisely because of the legacy of the late-1990s crisis – are much better protected.” 

The region’s financial architecture has also “evolved substantially over the past three decades,” with deeper local markets, broader domestic investor bases and far less reliance on short-term foreign funding, said Fesa Wibawa, an investment manager of fixed income at Aberdeen Investments.

That, he said, reduces the risk of sudden capital flight and forced deleveraging that defined the 1997 crisis.

India’s telecom giant Bharti Airtel has raised $1 billion for its data center arm — Nxtra Data — from private equity firms Alpha Wave, Carlyle and Anchorage Capital, underscoring a growing global interest in the sector.

Bharti Airtel is India’s second-largest telecom operator and the raise will value Nxtra Data at about $3.1 billon once the transaction closes, the company said in a stock exchange filing on Monday.

Nxtra Data will receive $435 million from Florida-headquartered Alpha Wave Global, $240 million from existing investor Washington-based Carlyle, and $35 million from New York City’s Anchorage Capital, Airtel said, adding that it will contribute the remaining amount.

The fresh capital will support Nxtra’s expansion across India, Airtel said.

Gopal Vittal, executive vice chairman of Airtel, said Nxtra has built “data center networks” aimed at meeting the evolving needs of enterprises, hyperscalers, and government clients.

Nxtra has around 300MW of data center capacity, which will be scaled to 1GW “in the next few years, targeting ~25% market share,” he added. It currently has 14 large data centers and more than 120 smaller, decentralized facilities located closer to end users and devices.

Data center demand globally has surged in recent years, largely driven by the explosion in AI workloads, which require vast computing power, electrical power, cooling and networking infrastructure. More than $61 billion flowed into the data center market in 2025.

“India has an immense AI opportunity — Indians already meaningfully interact with platforms like ChatGPT, Claude and other AI tools,” said Navroz D. Udwadia, co‑founder of Alpha Wave Global, in the filing. India’s data center capacity must grow significantly to keep pace with demand from hyperscalers and large language models, he added.

Global interest has been rising sharply in India’s data center space, amid increasing artificial intelligence workloads. In December, Microsoft and Amazon pledged more than $50 billion toward India’s cloud and AI infrastructure in under 24 hours. In October, Google announced a $15 billion investment to build its largest data center hub outside the U.S. in India.

To keep up the momentum, the Indian government earlier this year announced a 20‑year tax exemption for hyperscalers using data centers in the country to serve global clients.

With already low infrastructure costs and a newly announced tax holiday, India is becoming increasingly attractive for hyperscalers compared to rival hubs such as Singapore, the UAE and Ireland.

“We have built a strong partnership with Airtel and continue to believe Nxtra is well-positioned to benefit from India’s long-term digital infrastructure tailwinds,” said Kapil Modi,…

It may be time to dive deeper into the emerging markets trade.

Despite risks tied to the war with Iran, Global X ETFs’ Malcolm Dorson points to weaker dollar trends and uncertainty at home as a tailwind for the group.

“It might be time to double down,” the firm’s senior portfolio manager told CNBC’s “ETF Edge.”

He expects a burst of U.S. war spending will soften the greenback, which jumped this week, and create a favorable backdrop for emerging markets.

When asked about whether the dollar’s near-term strength could stick, Dorson responded, “for sure.”

However, it’s not his base case.

“A lot of people are trying to say this is going to be over in a week or two. We’re not sure,” he said. “However, I do think there are a lot of reasons to take advantage, to buy the dip here [in emerging markets.]”

As of Wednesday’s market close, the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM) is off more than 5% week to date. It’s still up almost 37% over the past year.

VettaFi’s Cinthia Murphy also sees advantages by putting money to work abroad and finds investors have grown accustomed to geopolitical noise.

“There is no question that international has been the flavor of the year,” the firm’s director of research said.

Murphy indicates energy is the area to watch if the Iran conflict becomes prolonged.

“European markets are super dependent on energy and oil coming out of the Middle East,” she said. “So, I think it could really shake things up a lot.”

Murphy listed the United States Oil Fund (USO) as a potential way to play energy. It’s up 12% so far this week and up 32% this year, as of Wednesday’s close.

China’s central bank kept its benchmark lending rates unchanged Tuesday as authorities navigate a balancing act of supporting a slowing economy while maintaining currency stability.

The People’s Bank of China held its 1-year and 5-year loan prime rates at 3% and 3.5%, respectively, keeping them steady for a tenth straight month despite stuttering economic growth.

The 1-year rate serves as the benchmark for most new and outstanding loans, while the 5-year level influences mortgages.

The world’s second-largest economy showed signs of slowing down in the final quarter of last year, expanding 4.5% year on year, its slowest pace since the country lifted its stringent Covid curbs in late 2022.

Chinese authorities have struggled to lift the economy out of an entrenched deflation as consumers cut back spending amid a prolonged real estate downturn, a bleak job market and uncertain income prospects.

Retail sales growth fell to a 3-year low of 0.9% in December while the GDP deflator — a metric that shows changes in prices of goods and services — has stayed negative for 11 consecutive quarters.

Policymakers have turned to promoting the consumption of services to boost overall spending, betting that elderly care services, leisure and tourism can help make up for the tepid demand in goods.

The Chinese yuan has continued to appreciate in recent months, with the offshore yuan strengthening from around 6.974 per U.S. dollar at the start of the year to 6.889 Tuesday morning, according to LSEG data.

The PBOC in recent weeks has signaled some tolerance for a gradual strengthening in its currency, with the dollar’s weakness paving the way for the yuan to extend its advance.

The central bank manages the yuan by keeping it within a band that is 2% on either side of a midpoint that it fixes each trading day. The officials have moved its so-called fixing level lower, dipping below the 7-benchmark for the first time in nearly three years in late January.

A strengthening yuan could test the country’s export machine already under pressure due to U.S. tariffs, eroding a competitive advantage for exporters who face price pressure from other manufacturing rivals.

Economists at ING forecast a fluctuation band of 6.85 to 7.25 this year as Beijing seeks to advance the internationalization of its currency. “The wildcard will be if the currency stability objective is softened in 2026,” the bank said.

Since the dollar was created in 1792, U.S. presidents and their families have generally been content with the status quo of effectively giving the national government a monopoly on issuing currency and outlawing the use of foreign currency.

Consider the launch of the dollar the country’s Initial Coin Offering. Back when the U.S. government was hustling to surpass the dominance of the Spanish pieces of eight then in common circulation throughout the country.

When presidents have said anything about the dollar itself, it was generally to reiterate the U.S. government’s “strong dollar” policy.

That continued more or less uninterrupted through 46 presidencies  — until last March, when a company partly owned by President Donald Trump and his family began to market an alternative to the dollar, a cryptocurrency dubbed “USD1.”

Now, the president’s two oldest sons are telling CNBC on the sidelines of a day-long crypto event they hosted why that should change.

Marketed as a stablecoin, USD1’s value would track the dollar, much as the dollar when it was created in 1792 was initially pegged to the value of the then-dominant Spanish silver dollar.

The Trumps’ company, World Liberty Financial, touts USD1 as an improvement on official U.S. currency. The firm’s website brands its stablecoin as “The Dollar. Upgraded.” And it calls the coin “still the US dollar, but for a new era.”

On Wednesday, the firm held its first World Liberty Forum at Mar-a-Lago, the club owned by President Trump and operated as his winter White House.

The event, coming just before the first anniversary of the release of USD1, brought together financiers, technologists, television personalities, the president of the world soccer organization FIFA and the artist Nicki Minaj.

From a Mar-a-Lago ballroom stage beneath an enormous stylized golden eagle sculpture, the message to attendees was that the old U.S. dollar needs to be modernized, that the private sector is the place to drive that innovation, and that stablecoins will help taxpayers by creating structural demand for U.S. government debt.

In fact, World Liberty backers argue, the new cryptocurrency they are building is not a threat to the dollar at all, but will help ensure the dollar remains dominant in global crypto finance – because USD1’s value is pegged to it.

But one big question is why, if the dollar needs modernizing, should that be done by the private sector.

And why should the venture be in the private hands of the president and his family, and not in the hands of the U.S. Treasury.

CNBC put those questions to the president’s sons, World Liberty Financial’s co-founders, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, in a small event space just off Mar-a-Lago’s swimming pool.

“This is actually going to preserve dollar hegemony,” Donald Trump Jr. replied.

“There’s crypto companies that are the top five buyers in the world,” he…

Ask an investor to name safe-haven currencies, and most will say the U.S. dollar, the Swiss franc, and the Japanese yen.

Investors historically expected them to hold their value during geopolitical or economic turbulence.

But more recently, these currencies have experienced volatility themselves. The dollar and yen saw sharp declines over 2025 and into 2026. The franc has strengthened, but this is challenging for a country with unusually low inflation and a reliance on exports.

U.S. President Donald Trump reordered global trade with tariffs in 2025, sparking a “sell America” trade: a sell-off of U.S. assets, including the dollar, the world’s reserve currency.

The suddenness with which other tariffs have been imposed and withdrawn kept the pressure up.

In a December note, Swiss private bank Julius Baer stated that “erratic trade policies” were just one cause of the dollar’s woes, adding that Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” put the U.S. on “an unsustainable debt trajectory.”

Trump’s pressure on U.S. Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell also undermined investors’ confidence in the dollar, the note said.

The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of peers, tumbled 1.3% on Jan. 29 after Trump said the dollar is “doing great,” its sharpest drop in a day since Trump first announced tariffs in April. It took the greenback to its lowest level in almost four years.

The index plunged 9.37% in 2025, and it has fallen further in 2026.

In a Wednesday note, George Saravelos, head of FX research at Deutsche Bank, said the dollar’s safe-haven status was “myth.”

He challenged the notion that the dollar “rallies during risk-aversion,” adding: “A simple chart of the dollar-equity relationship shows this not to be true. The average USD-equity correlation has historically been closer to zero, and over the last year the dollar has once again de-correlated from the S&P.”

Cole Smead, CEO and portfolio manager at Smead Capital Management, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” at the end of January that he sees further weakness ahead for the dollar.

“We’re in a dollar bear market longer term,” he said. “If you go back and look at these ‘American manias’ [in markets], if you go back and look at the telecom bubble and tech bubble the late 1990s, the dollar peaked in 2002 and within six years, you saw the dollar go to a low it hadn’t seen for [a] very, very long time.”

The U.S. dollar index nosedived by around 41% between 2002 and its 2008 low.

The European Central Bank on Thursday kept policy rates unchanged for the fifth consecutive meeting, with its key interest rate at 2%, in line with the bank’s target.

The ECB commented Thursday that the inflation trajectory and wider economic conditions did not warrant a move at this month’s meeting, but warned that the outlook was unpredictable.

“Inflation should stabilise at its 2% target in the medium term. The economy remains resilient in a challenging global environment. Low unemployment, solid private sector balance sheets, the gradual rollout of public spending on defence and infrastructure and the supportive effects of the past interest rate cuts are underpinning growth,” the central bank stated.

“At the same time, the outlook is still uncertain, owing particularly to ongoing global trade policy uncertainty and geopolitical tensions,” it added. The euro was flat against the dollar, at $1.179, following the decision, which had been widely anticipated.

ECB President Christine Lagarde said at a press conference Thursday that the central bank would maintain its data-dependent and “meeting-by-meeting approach,” and would not be “pre-committing to a particular rate path.”

“In particular, our interest rate decisions will be based on our assessment of the inflation outlook and the risks surrounding it,” she said.

“Understanding how the ECB is thinking about risks is important to gauging the path of policy going forward,” they added, assessing what the rising euro exchange rate means for monetary policy when the euro zone’s inflation rate is already below the ECB’s 2% target, with flash data on Wednesday showing the rate had cooled to 1.7% in January.

“All else unchanged, the recent appreciation [of the euro] is disinflationary and reinforces the expected inflation undershoot. However, the scale of the impact depends on the circumstances.”

Currency appreciation tends to cause disinflation by making imported goods, raw materials, and energy cheaper, in turn lowering production costs and consumer prices. 

While that may be good for businesses and consumers in the short term, central banks are wary about disinflation, and potentially deflation, over the longer-term because it can trigger economic stagnation with consumers holding off purchases (in the expectation that prices will fall further) while businesses can see lower revenues and increased real debt burdens.

Over the past month, the euro has strengthened 0.75% against the dollar,…

Safe haven assets are off to a good start in 2026, with widespread uncertainty sending gold and silver to new records and the Swiss franc trading at decade highs.

But in Switzerland, policymakers are watching with apprehension.

The Swiss franc has already gained 3.5% against the U.S. dollar this year, driven higher amid unpredictable U.S. trade policy, questions over the independence of the Federal Reserve, and the threat of American military intervention in Greenland, Latin America and the Middle East.

That comes after it strengthened 12.7% against the greenback in 2025. On Tuesday, it touched on an 11-year high against the dollar, hovering near those levels on Wednesday morning even as it pared back gains.

“Further escalation, geopolitically, means more uncertainty,” Swiss National Bank Chairman Martin Schlegel told CNBC’s Karen Tso on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week.

“It’s not good for the Swiss franc or for Switzerland, because the Swiss franc is a safe haven. Whenever there is uncertainty in the world, the Swiss franc appreciates, and this makes monetary policy more complicated for Swiss National Bank.”

Unlike regional powers, Switzerland is battling sluggish price growth, and a strengthening franc could add further disinflationary pressure to the country’s export-driven economy.

“The Swiss franc remains strong in part because demand for many Swiss exports is relatively price-inelastic,” Giuliano Bianchi, Co-Founder, Quantitas Institute, EHL Hospitality Business School, told CNBC.

He noted that in key sectors such as pharmaceuticals, precision manufacturing and high-value services, currency appreciation does little to reduce foreign demand, weakening the mechanism that would otherwise stabilize the exchange rate.

“This complicates the SNB’s task, as a strong franc lowers imported inflation and squeezes exporters’ margins, weighing on wages and investment at a time when inflation is already subdued,” he said.

With the country’s inflation rate at just 0.1% and the Swiss National Bank’s key policy rate is 0%, Switzerland is teetering on the edge of disinflation and negative interest rate territory.

In 2022, the SNB ended seven years of negative interest rates, which are unpopular with savers and lenders, as they eliminate returns on savings deposits and squeeze banks’ margins and profitability.

“The bar to go negative is higher than normal, [but] if we need to go negative, we will go negative,” Schlegel told CNBC.

From July 2024 to July 2025, 1 in 3 condos sold in Manhattan sold at a loss, according to luxury real estate firm Brown Harris Stevens. Experts say this dynamic is somewhat typical in a city with high selling fees and high tax rates.

What is unusual is the borough’s wavering property values over the past decade. In November 2015, 1 square foot of space in Manhattan cost $1,562; by fall 2025, prices had fallen to $1,108 per square foot, according to Redfin data.

Manhattan condo and co-op values took a large swing down amid the Fed’s tightening of the U.S. economy from 2022 to 2024. A dearth of foreign buyers further dampened demand. Experts point to shifts in foreign exchange rates between the U.S. dollar and currencies such as the euro.

“I think there’s probably more upside over the next 10 years than the last 10 years,” said Jonathan Miller, CEO and founder of Miller Samuel, a real estate appraisal and consulting firm.

Experts say many first-time buyers are shut out of this high-end market. “I’m seeing more people in their early 30s, and they’re getting a little bit of help from their parents,” said Bess Freedman, CEO of Brown Harris Stevens. “They’re New Yorkers who are going from uptown to downtown, empty nesters, … younger families, … not so much international,” she said in an interview with CNBC.

“That’s actually why rents went up so much, because people couldn’t afford to buy,” said Pierre Debbas, a real estate lawyer in the New York metro region.

The median rent in Manhattan today is $4,973, according to rental website Zumper, a 10% increase from the year prior. A buyer purchasing the median condo in Manhattan — which sells for $1,650,000, according to data from Miller Samuel — with a 20% down payment and a 6.25% mortgage could face monthly principal and interest payments north of $8,000.

As a result, even wealthy New Yorkers are choosing to rent.

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani campaigned on affordability issues, gaining national attention.

His platform called for higher taxes on the rich and a rent freeze for approximately 1 million rent-stabilized units throughout the city. Experts say this could raise the rents on an estimated 1.2 million market-rate units in the coming years.

“What that’s going to cause landlords to do is to push expenses on the buildings they control that have more open-market units,” said Miller.

Watch the video above to see how Manhattan’s real estate market is shifting.

China is devising more ways for foreign institutions to use the yuan, as international confidence in the U.S. dollar falters.

The moves aim at challenging the greenback, experts said, even as the U.S. dollar remains by far the world’s predominant currency. The timing is favorable as the U.S. dollar index has tumbled more than 9% this year — while the offshore yuan has strengthened more than 2% against the dollar.

In a sign of growing resolve in Beijing to lure the world away from the dollar, People’s Bank of China Governor Pan Gongsheng in a speech last week at the high-profile Lujiazui Forum discussed “how to weaken excessive reliance on a single sovereign currency.”

He also announced plans to set up a center for digital yuan internationalization in Shanghai and promote trading of yuan foreign exchange futures. Beijing has already rolled out a digital version of its currency to replace some cash and coins in circulation.

Much of Beijing’s recent moves focus on the futures market.

Three major Chinese exchanges announced that starting last week, qualified foreign institutional investors would be able to trade 16 more futures and options contracts listed in mainland China.

The commodities covered include natural rubber, lead and tin, according to releases on the Shanghai, Dalian and Zhengzhou exchanges.

That follows the addition of dozens of other tradable futures contracts for foreign institutional investors earlier this year, according to Zhou Ji, macro foreign exchange innovation analyst of Nanhua Futures, a Hangzhou-based brokerage focused on futures products and research.

Zhou pointed out that besides expanding the range of hedging products for international institutions, those contracts increase the influence of the yuan in the global commodity pricing system.

In another step toward encouraging global investors to use the yuan, the Shanghai Futures Exchange announced in late May it was gathering feedback for a proposal to allow foreign currencies to be used as collateral for trades settled in yuan.

Other recent moves, though incremental, include China allowing qualified foreign investors to participate in on-exchange exchange-traded fund options trading from Oct. 9 for hedging purposes. Earlier this year, authorities also reportedly announced a 500-yuan fee waiver for international financial institutions to open a local account for accessing the bond market.

Morgan Stanley in January announced its local subsidiary could officially begin offering brokerage services for mainland China commodity futures, and planned to expand to equity and fixed-income futures and options once it received necessary qualifications.

Such access has been years in the making, as the U.S. financial giant said it received China’s approval back in May 2023 to set up a wholly owned brokerage in the…