There is a common thread that links the leaders of the Brexit campaign — the UK referendum in June on Britain leaving the European Union — and the insurgent campaigns of Donald Trump and Senator Bernie Sanders for the presidency in the United States: they are tapping public anger with the status quo but none of them have set out in credible detail how they would implement their goals after victory.

The US state of Delaware, calls itself the First State, and it is also the world's biggest tax haven which may explain why the revelations this week triggered by a massive leak of over 11m documents from a law firm in Panama, facilitating the hiding of wealth by the rich elite of the world, did not feature Americans as it is much easier to set up anonymous shell companies in the United States than it is in well-known tax havens such as the Cayman Islands, Bermuda or the British Virgin Islands.

More than 11m documents from the files of Panama law firm Mossback Fonseca, the world's fourth biggest offshore law firm, reveal the details of hundreds of thousands of clients using tax havens, including close associates of Vladimir Putin, president of the Russian Federation and members of the government of Iceland including Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, prime minister, and his wife.

The size of the US workforce rose 396,000 in March while 215,000 jobs were added with manufacturing losing 29,000. The private sector has now added 14.4m jobs over 73 straight months of job growth, the longest streak on record, and wage growth has accelerated over the past year. Meanwhile, the average PMI (purchasing managers' index) for global manufacturing during the opening quarter (50.4) was the weakest since the second quarter of 2013.

Google which is one of the big beneficiaries of the Double Irish tax dodge last year agreed to grant a pay package worth $100.5m, to Sundar Pichai, a native of India, even before he became head of the search engine unit of the new holding company Alphabet. Pichai got another bonanza this year and has been granted stock valued at $209m since early 2015.

On Tuesday leading indicators published by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) showed that based on January data, economic activity continued to point to continuing slowdowns in the US, the UK, Canada and Russia, with additional slowdowns expected in Germany and Brazil. Also Tuesday the International Monetary Fund warned that the world faces a growing "risk of economic derailment" and needs immediate action to boost demand. Earlier on Tuesday in Beijing data revealed the worst monthly collapse in Chinese exports since 2009.

The US and Singapore are once again the most attractive destinations for Chinese outbound investment. This is the key finding of the 2015 China Going Global Index (GGI), published this year by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

This week Ray Dalio, the founder of the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, which has some $155bn in funds under management, said that current unconventional efforts to raise economic growth through bond buying in the markets, which is called quantitative easing or more commonly money printing, have lost their potency and central banks may have to resort to radical measures such as "helicopter money." On Thursday the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) — a think tank for 34 mainly developed country governments — said governments must act "urgently" and "collectively" to raise spending in advanced economies as it cut its growth forecasts against a backdrop falling trade and market turmoil. The OECD reduced growth estimates for every member of the G7 group of leading industrial nations — the US, Japan, Germany, France, UK, and Canada.

In recent days we have had data which show weak late 2015 growth or shrinkage in the Euro Area and Japan, while last month it was reported that the US economy grew at an annualised rate of 0.7% in the final three months of the 2015. Coupled with the economic woes in emerging markets led by China, the prospect of persistent slower long-term growth rather than no growth in many significant countries, is rising.

On Tuesday Germany announced a new record trade surplus for 2015 while the US, UK and France posted another year of trade deficits. China reported a surplus last month and Japan reported its fifth straight deficit despite plunging oil prices.