What Happened Over The Summer

July and August tend to be pretty thin months for media coverage of economics and finance. With the holidays over here's a short primer on what the global economy did over the summer.

The main news is that China's slowdown has replaced Grexit as the number one worry for policymakers.

China's economy has been on a slowing path for the last four years. Over the summer concerns about the pace of the slowdown mounted and the Chinese stock market slumped. Official interventions to support equity prices failed to reverse the decline but prompted unease that the Chinese government may be rowing back on pro-market reforms.

In August the People's Bank of China sought to boost China's economy by letting the yuan devalue. This comes after four successive interest rate cuts by the PBOC over the last year.