Category: 21 March 2023

As forecast, the Merger and Acquisition trend which we have been long reporting would peak when the Federal Reserve would aggressively raise interest rates and cut off the cheap money supply, has indeed peaked. Indeed, they “slowed to a trickle”... and here are the latest “trickles.”

Inflation in Argentina kept climbing in February, reaching 102.5 percent, its first time in triple digits since 1991, the country’s National Institute of Statistics and Census reported. 

In February, Poland’s annual rate of inflation reached 18.4 percent, its highest since 1996, after ending January at 16.6 percent, the Russian news service RT reported.

With data showing European wages rose their fastest ever late last year, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) called on central banks to keep raising rates to battle inflation that has proved unexpectedly stubborn.

The European Central Bank (ECB) raised its base interest rate by half a percentage point last week, as it did in December and February, lifting the rate it pays on deposits from banks to 3 percent and the rate it charges banks for loans to 3.5 percent.

China’s consumers increased their spending by 3.5 percent in this year’s first two months, the country’s statistics agency reported, as China emerged from three years of draconian anti-COVID lockdown mandates.

This is week 33 of our reporting the long trend-line of layoffs that signal a further economic downturn in a country near you. Rising inflation and rising interest rate hikes are causing companies in many sectors to lay off employees. And of course, the more people fired, the more home foreclosures, inability to pay car loans, credit card debt, etc.