It’s a global economic freak show. Add up the numbers. Take a trip to Argentina. With inflation running at over 100 percent and its peso down 23 percent against the U.S. dollar, Argentina’s central banksters raised its key interest rate yesterday by six percentage points to 97 percent.
“The world’s central banks are responsible for creating a “market” for their product, “currency backed by nothing,” by fostering a population boom and consumers who are dependent on their product.” —GM
On 11 May, the European Union’s (EU’s) parliament passed a sweeping set of controls that will be incorporated into the union’s Artificial Intelligence Act, likely to become the world’s first comprehensive body of regulations governing AI.
Age of Internet Influencer just met Age of AI, and they’re hitting it off quite nicely.
As forecast, the higher central banks raise interest rates, the lower the Merger and Acquisition trend... which hit record highs during the COVID war when interest rates sank and governments pumped in countless trillions to artificially prop up sinking economies.
First Republic Bank, which has teetered on the edge of failure since Signature and Silicon Valley banks collapsed in mid-March, was seized by regulators on 1 May.
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) raised its base interest rate a quarter point last week, only a month after it announced a pause in rate increases so it could assess the economic impact of its higher rates.
Ocean shipping giant AP Moller-Maersk reported first-quarter profits of $2.3 billion, two-thirds less than the same quarter in 2022. Revenue fell by 25 percent to $14.2 billion.
Deals involving Europe’s private equity firms transferring assets among themselves have fallen by more than 50 percent to €16.8 billion, year on year, as rising interest rates and a gloomy economic outlook have dimmed what the Financial Times called “buyout game of pass-the-parcel.”