Of all G7 countries—seven of the world’s leading economies—the U.K. will grow slowest through the next two years due to a crippling combination of rising interest rates, consumers’ plunging buying power, and unchecked inflation, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has predicted.
China reported about 28,000 new COVID cases on 22 November, triggering a new wave of lockdowns in parts of Beijing, the manufacturing center of Guangzhou, and the metro area of Chongqing, home to more than 31 million people.
Inflation and interest rate hikes are causing companies in many sectors to lay off employees. To illustrate the employment trends and the socioeconomic implications, each week we will list job losses. This is week 19.
The private, nonprofit Campaign Legal Center (CLC) has filed legal complaints prompted by a recent Wall Street Journal report that thousands of appointees at 50 federal agencies held stock in companies that were affected by their policy decisions.
Private equity funds poured billions of dollars into the housing market since the COVID era began, buying up tens of thousands of single-family homes in a trend we documented in articles such as “Rents Soar as Investors Buy Properties and Raise Rates” (14 Sep 2021) and “Homes Sales Up as Money Gang Gobbles Up Houses” (23 Nov 2021).
The number of new U.S. homes sold in October was 7.5 percent greater than in September, the U.S. commerce department reported, reversing an 11-percent slide the month before.
European and U.S. stock markets have bounced back from their late September lows, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 index reclaiming about 13 percent.
Angela Merkel, the former German chancellor, said in an extensive interview that the Russian invasion of Ukraine did not surprise her because the Minsk agreements had been “eroded.”
Ukrainians have celebrated the recent retreat of Russian forces from Kherson. And last week we noted that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky declared that the victory marked the “beginning of the end of the war” with Russia.
Despite “Ukraine’s energy system on the verge of collapse” as noted by The Washington Post, and with nearly 20 percent of the nation’s people fleeing the nation and with Russia controlling some 20 percent of Ukraine territory since they invaded on 24 February, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared last week that President Vladimir Putin can “no longer win on the battlefield, that much seems clear."