10 countries with high cost of living

25 Countries With The Highest Cost of Living In The World in 2023 Ramish Cheema Mon, April 10, 2023 at 3:28 PM GMT+4·8 min read In this piece, we will take a look at the 25 countries with the highest cost of living in the world in 2023. For more countries, head on over to 10 Countries With The Highest Cost of Living In The World in 2023. 2022 turned out to be a historic year for all the wrong reasons. The brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine coupled with the after effects of massive stimulus spending to curtail the economic blowback from the coronavirus pandemic made their mark in the form of record high inflation. For the Western and developed world, Europe was the hardest hit region, as years of reliance on cheap Russian gas upended as the invasion began and countries decided to limit their Russian energy dependence. The U.S. wasn't far behind, and it was the American central bank's efforts to limit the inflationary beast that ended up making 2022 even more painful for the developing world. This is due to the fact that the primary tool that the Federal Reserve has in its fight against inflation is the benchmark interest rate. This is the rate at which the central bank provides liquidity to the financial sector, and this rate influences the banking systems' charges for their loans. In essence, banks borrow at the Fed's rate and lend at a rate that is a certain basis point higher - resulting in a spread that helps them make profits. So, the higher the benchmark rate goes, the higher rates banks charge their customers which then ends up increasing the cost of raising capital At the same time, developing countries that had relied on an era of low interest rates to issue their own bonds were priced out of the global debt markets since a higher Fed benchmark rate also influences the interest rates offered by U.S. bonds and global investors prefer the stability of the U.S. government that is almost assured to keep making coupon payments as opposed to riskier developing countries that might default on their debt obligations despite promising double digit interest rate payments to bondholders.