CHINA’S ECONOMY RETURNS TO GROWTH IN JUNE After contracting for three consecutive months, China’s economy grew modestly in June. The country’s official purchasing managers index (PMI) for the services sector grew to 54.7 last month from 47.8 in May as China lifted its three-month anti-COVID lockdown of more than 325 million people in 46 metro...
Author: support
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SPOTLIGHT: INFLATION
EUROZONE INFLATION RISES TO 8.6 PERCENT IN JUNE Another month, another 40-year record for inflation in the 19-country Eurozone. Prices rose 8.6 across the region in June, year over year, accelerating from 8.1 percent in May and rocketing up faster than at any time since 1997 when records began to be kept. Prices in Spain...
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SWEDEN’S CENTRAL BANK RAISES INTEREST RATE A HALF-POINT
Sweden’s Riksbank became the latest national bank to take action against inflation, raising its key interest rate by a half-point to 0.75 percent last week. Inflation ran at 7.2 percent in Sweden during this year’s first quarter, the fastest pace since 1991 and almost four times the bank’s 2-percent target rate. “The policy rate will...
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GLOBAL FACTORY OUTPUT SLOWS AS CONSUMERS CUT SPENDING
Around the world, factories are seeing slower demand for their products, or cutting production outright, as prices climb, interest rates rise, and central banks are shutting off the spigots of cheap money that defined the COVID era. As prices began rising early in 2021, central banks assumed incorrectly that consumers’ surging post-COVID demand would be...
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DRAGFLATION TOP TREND: STRONG DOLLAR BATTERS EMERGING NATIONS’ CURRENCIES
Foreign-exchange traders are selling currencies of emerging nations and stockpiling dollars, according to The Wall Street Journal. Earlier this year, traders were grabbing developing countries’ currencies such as the Brazilian real and the South African rand. Commodity prices were heading skyward and the two nations, like many developing economies, depend on exporting raw materials for...
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THE RESTAURANT STRUGGLE: PRICES UP CUSTOMERS DOWN
The number of diners visiting casual sit-down restaurants such as Applebee’s and Olive Garden was 3 percent less in the three months ending 12 June than in the same period the year before, restaurant research service Black Box Intelligence reported. Although the dollar value of sales rose 4.4 percent during the year, inflation accounts for...
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MORTGAGE RATES EASE SLIGHTLY
The average interest rate for a 30-year, fixed rate mortgage loan settled back to 5.70 percent during the week ending 30 June, down from 5.81 percent the week before, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. reported. The rate still is approaching twice the 3.22 percent where rates began this year and remain close to its...
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PENSION FUNDS, FACING DEFICITS, BORROW TO INVEST
U.S. pension funds are falling far short of the money they need to meet the payments they will owe to America’s retirees, The Wall Street Journal reported. To make up the difference, the funds are investing with money they have borrowed. Pension funds issued almost $13 billion in bonded debt in 2021, more than in...
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RISING INTEREST RATES INFLATE GOVERNMENT SPENDING
Yields on U.S. treasury securities have been rising with interest rates and the federal government’s debt service payments are rising with them. The return on the benchmark 10-year treasury note will average 2.4 percent this fiscal year, compared to 1.4 percent in the previous year, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has predicted. During the...
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CONSUMER SPENDING AND FACTORY ORDERS GOING DOWN
Consumer spending increased 1.8 percent in this year’s first quarter, year over year, according to the U.S. commerce department, dramatically lower than the 3.1-percent increase the department had estimated previously. Adjusted for inflation, the gain was only 0.5 percent during the period, slipping a fraction from 0.6 percent in 2021’s final quarter. Spending on services...