Category: TRENDS ON THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC FRONT

An immediate and complete ban on all Russian natural gas from Europe would cost Germany’s economy €165 billion, the Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank, warned. Germany gets about 55 percent of its natural gas from Russia, a third of which is used by industry. The bank assumed that German manufacturers would not be able to fully...

Italy’s sovereign debt has grown 2.1 percent since December, adding about €59 billion to reach a record total of €2.74 trillion, according to the Bank of Italy. “The debt of each family…would amount to €104,482—a debt for a heart attack,” Massimiliano Dona, president of Italy’s National Consumers Union, said in a public statement. The previous...

Galloping inflation, rising interest rates, and geopolitical turmoil are likely to  shrink the number of deals Blackstone Group, the world’s largest private equity firm, takes part in this year, company president Jonathan Gray said in a Financial Times interview. “It’s hard to predict deal activity, although I would expect it to be lower than last...

Several of Libya’s oilfields and export terminals have been blockaded by protesters calling for prime minister Abdul Dbeibeh to resign. The protests would not be possible without the cooperation of the Petroleum Facilities Guard, a combination militia and oil company directed by Khalifa Haftar, a strongman who controls the country’s eastern half, Libyan oil Minister...

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, one of the world’s so-called “Big Four” accounting and business consulting firms, is giving up a 185,000-square-foot building in New Street Square, a prestigious office address in the heart of London, the company has announced. Deloitte also decided not to reopen another London office; it closed early in the COVID era and...

On 15 April, the euro fell below €1.08 to the dollar for the first time since May 2020 as the European Central Bank (ECB) opted to leave its key interest rate at -0.50 percent, where it has remained since 2014. The euro has lost about 5 percent against the buck this year, adding to a...

Russia plans legal action to gain access to about $300 billion—roughly half of its foreign currency reserves—frozen in Western banks and other institutions as part of the sanctions placed on Russia after it invaded Ukraine. “This is an unprecedented freeze, so we will be preparing lawsuits and preparing to apply them, as this is unprecedented...

The Japanese yen slid 1 percent against the dollar on 19 April to 0.007 cents, extending its losses  for a 13th consecutive day, its longest losing streak against the buck since Bloomberg started comparing the two currencies in 1971. The yen has since stabilized but not recovered any significant value. The yen slipped on 19...

Germany’s producer prices—the prices factories charge for their products—rose 30.9 percent in March compared to a year earlier, according to the Federal Statistics Office, the fastest rise ever recorded since the country began keeping records in 1949, the Financial Times said. “The extent and breadth of the rise suggests that German inflation will remain very...

A range of indicators in China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan show the region’s economic activity being dragged down by China’s COVID lockdowns, inflation in Europe, and the Ukraine war and its sanctions, The Wall Street Journal reported. China’s imports declined for the first time in two years and exports fell 6 percent in March...