In April, car sales in Europe declined for a 10th consecutive month, with new registrations off 20 percent, year over year, the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association said, recording the largest drop this year. Stellantis, the conglomerate that subsumed Chrysler Fiat, saw sales plunge 31 percent. Italy lost more than a third of its sales, compared...
Category: TRENDS ON THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC FRONT
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CHINA’S HOME PRICES FALL FOR FIRST TIME IN SEVEN YEARS
Home prices across 70 cities in China edged down 0.11 percent in April, year over year, their first decline since November 2015, according to The Wall Street Journal’s analysis of data published by China’s National Bureau of Statistics. Prices rose in 30 cities and fell in 40. The decline was concentrated in China’s poorer, smaller...
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GLOBAL ECONOMY IMPACTED BY CHINA’S SLOWDOWN DUE TO ‘ZERO-COVID’ POLICY
China’s “Zero-COVID” policy continues to impact the global economy, which economists say is a double whammy due to the war in Ukraine. “Everyone has exposure,” Carlos Casanova, senior economist for Asia at Union Bancaire Privée in Hong Kong told The Wall Street Journal. “Whatever happens in China significantly impacts global growth.” The Journal, citing the International Monetary...
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SPOTLIGHT: BIGS GETTING BIGGER
Each week, we report instances where the money junky hedge funds, private equity groups and the already big companies swallow another piece of the global economy. Here are some more of what the BIGS have been gobbling up and how the Bigs keep getting bigger and the rich keep getting richer. DUKE REALTY SPURNS PROLOGIS’...
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LOCKDOWNS TANK CHINA’S CAR SALES
April’s passenger car sales in China plummeted 36 percent in April, year on year, to 1.04 million as more than 325 million people in as many as 46 cities remained locked at home or at work under government order to quell the spread of the COVID virus. The massive shutdown darkened factories as well as...
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TURKEY HEIGHTENS SCRUTINY OF FOREIGN CURRENCY TRANSACTIONS
Turkey’s central bank is scrutinizing corporate transactions involving foreign currency in amounts as small as $1 million in an attempt to crack down on sales of the lira, Turkey’s national currency. As inflation accelerated, investors sold lira and bought dollars, euros and other hard currencies. Eventually, the lira fell 45 percent against the dollar and...
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RATE HIKES BRAKE CANADA’S HOUSING BOOM
Canada’s housing market has been rising since 2010, with home prices up 53 percent from February 2020 through 31 March this year alone, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association, compared to 35 percent in the U.S. Rising home prices accounted for about 20 percent of Canada’s 2021 GDP, The Wall Street Journal noted. The...
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WORLD CAN GET BY WITHOUT RUSSIA’S OIL, IEA SAYS
After saying in March that sanctions on Russian oil exports would cause a “global supply shock,” the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on 12 May that the world can withstand the loss of that oil. Increases in production by other suppliers and weaker demand due to China’s widespread anti-COVID shutdowns will delay any serious shortage,...
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BUNDESBANK CHIEF BACKS ECB RATE HIKE IN JULY
Joachim Nagel, president of Germany’s central bank, called on the European Central Bank to raise its key interest rate when the governing council meets on 21 July. There is “disturbing evidence that the increase in inflation is gaining momentum,” he said in a 10 May speech, warning that “the risk of acting too late is...
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ECB: RATE HIKE HUSTLERS
Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), indicated on 11 May that she could support an increase in the bank’s interest rate as early as July. The bank is likely to stop buying bonds “early in the third quarter” and raise its key interest rate “some time later,” which “could mean only a...