Read our supplement:

The eurozone—still likely to crack

The US: Lift-off in 2015

Wage growth will improve

South America's shift

Is China heading for trouble?

Raise rates now

The cost of food

The coming year looks likely to bring a reversal of recent fortunes: a revival of some western economies, and a stalling in China and others that have been growing fast. But that reversal brings new strains. As Wolfgang Münchau points out the eurozone is as close to break-up as it has been for two years, and Italy may prove the trigger; anyone who thinks that crisis is solved is enjoying an unjustifiably sunny dream. China is struggling to re-orientate its economic model and the surging economies of South America—Brazil and Chile among them—so buoyant in the aftermath of the financial crisis, are beginning to stall. The United States has provided a crutch to these nations, the Federal Reserve’s ultra low interest rates maintaining a healthy level of liquidity and easy credit conditions throughout global markets. But the Fed has now ended its programme of quantitative easing, meaning that access to credit will now become more difficult, especially in those emerging markets that had come to rely on it to sustain growth.

Meanwhile Russia remains an alarming, corrosive presence on Europe’s east flank. A sharp decline in the oil price, combined with sanctions after its invasion of Ukraine, are depressing its growth and threaten its long-term prospects. As Wolfgang Münchau points out, Russia’s decline is affecting Germany, which has close economic ties to Russia—it supplies Germany with energy and buys its cars. Germany’s weakening output is bad for the eurozone, and a weak eurozone is bad for everyone.

Conversely, as Loretta Mester, President of the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank, points out, the US economy is looking strong. She expects growth of 3 per cent in 2015, saying that wage growth will also strengthen, not only in the US but in the United Kingdom. This is good news for British consumers, who are struggling with higher energy bills, which, Malcolm Grimston says on p14, are likely to rise. But there remains a strong feeling that the UK economy is fast returning to health, so much so that Marian Bell, a former member of the Bank of England committee that sets interest rates, says that the bank should “get a move on” and start raising interest rates.

Food prices, however, are declining. As Nick Carn explains, the cost of food is closely tied to the oil price, which fell sharply in October. Wheat has declined in price by 28 per cent this year. Price reductions of this sort for a range of commodities will cause food prices to fall especially in developing economies, though the effect will be felt less in the developed west.

Cheaper food will help stave off the threat of inflation in the surging economies of Africa, where several nations are beginning to enjoy substantial growth rates. Nigeria, for example, is forecast to have growth in 2014 of 6.2 per cent, rising to 6.75 per cent in 2015. Earlier this year, the country even overtook South Africa to become the continent’s largest economy, with a GDP in 2013 of $509.9bn, a clear indication of the colossal untapped potential for economic progress that resides on the continent. The International Monetary Fund predicts that sub-Saharan Africa will grow at 5.8 per cent in 2015, while acknowledging the threat posed by the spread of Ebola.

2015 will be a year of fragile recovery in the US and UK. Their model, blamed with some justification for the crash of 2008, has shown more resilience than many expected, even if central questions of financial regulation remain unanswered and the eurozone remains precarious. The question for 2015 is whether this more cheerful outlook can hold good if other parts of the world slow down.