As we had long forecast, the higher central banks raise interest rates, the lower the Merger and Acquisition trend… which hit record highs at the height of the COVID War in 2021 when interest rates sank and governments pumped in countless trillions to artificially prop up sinking economies.
Category: TRENDS ON THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC FRONT – Jul 25 2023
SPOTLIGHT: CHINA’S ECONOMIC STRUGGLE
Despite vowing policy support to jolt China’s economy back to life, the country’s leaders have done little other than make promises, global investors have said as they scaled back their expectations for China’s economic growth this year.
CANADA GRAPPLING WITH CREEPING MONOPOLIES
Five companies—Costco, Empire, Loblaws, Metro, and Walmart—account for 75 percent of Canada’s grocery sales.
U.K.’S LARGEST ASSET MANAGER REGROUPS FOR RECESSION
Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM), Britain’s largest asset manager, has been selling off stocks and buying bonds on the judgment that the Bank of England (BoE) will be forced to raise interest rates so high that a “significant” recession will be unavoidable.
SURVEY: EMPLOYEES WORK AT HOME LESS THAN THEY WOULD LIKE
“There’s a gap between the number of days that employees would like to work from home and the number that their employers are planning for them,” Mathias Dolls, deputy director of Germany’s Ifo Center for Macroeconomics and Surveys, told a press briefing on release of a recent survey on the subject.
U.S. GREEN ENERGY INCENTIVES MOSTLY GOING TO FOREIGN COMPANIES
The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, passed by Congress last year, offered more than $260 billion in tax and other incentives for green energy manufacturing projects in the U.S.
OIL PRICES SET TO RISE: DEMAND UP, SUPPLY DOWN
Oil producers will struggle to meet demand during the second half of this year, especially as demand in China and India continues to rise, Joseph McMonigle, secretary-general of the International Energy Forum, said in a CNBC interview last week during the G20 economic summit.
WHEN THE ECONOMY FALLS JOBS GO WITH IT
Higher interest rates and rising inflation, plus the cheap money flow that governments pumped into economies to artificially drive up equity markets and economies are causing companies in many sectors to lay off employees.
$500 BILLION IN DISTRESSED CORPORATE DEBT PRESAGES WAVE OF BANKRUPTCIES
Corporate loans in “distress”—a pre-default phase in which businesses struggle to gather the assets to make debt payments—now total $500 billion, Bloomberg has calculated, the most since 2008, early in the Great Recession.
SPOTLIGHT, TOP TREND 2023: OFFICE BUILDING BUST
The number of office buildings burdened with troubled loans, or already repossessed by lenders, jumped 36 percent in this year’s second quarter from the first, MSCI Real Assets reported.