Category: TRENDS ON THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC FRONT

Members of the European Central Bank’s (ECB’s) policy-making committee are at odds over the pace and degree of ending bond purchases and raising interest rates, according to the Financial Times. Some members want a “firm end date” to bond-buying so the bank can raise interest rates in this year’s third quarter to avoid “falling behind...

Ashmore Group and other asset managers heavily invested in emerging markets face worsening losses as investors withdraw to safer havens amid high inflation, rising interest rates, the Ukraine war’s economic fallout, and concerns about exposure to China’s slowing economy and growing affiliation with Russia, the Financial Times reported. Bank of America (BoA) analysts have reduced...

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO’s) food price index averaged 159.3 last month, a “giant leap” of 12.6-percent gain from February’s level, which itself was the highest since the index was created in 1990, the FAO said. The index stands 34 percent higher than a year ago. The index rose at the fastest monthly...

In response to street protests around the world, governments are adding to their already considerable debt to give tax breaks, subsidies, and other supports to outraged consumers as food and fuel prices ratchet up to new record levels. In Peru, soaring fuel prices sent people into the streets where they clashed with riot police. At...

The world has entered a “new inflationary era” in which consumers’ and businesses’ expectations about prices are becoming “unmoored” from their historical norms, the president of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has warned. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered sanctions that supercharged inflation in food, fuel, and across consumer and industrial goods well beyond the...

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. BAIN CAPITAL MULLS TOSHIBA...

HIGHEST U.S. INFLATION IN 40 YEARS CURBS CONSUMER SPENDING The Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index (PCE), the U.S. Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, ratcheted up 6.4 percent in February, year on year, the PCE’s largest annual gain since 1982, the U.S. commerce department reported. The index registered 6.0 percent in January. Food costs rose...

Daimler’s eActros long-haul electric truck carries a sticker price triple that of a combustion engine equivalent, a difference in price unlikely to change any time soon, Martin Daum, Daimler Truck CEO, said in a Financial Times interview. The company sold 712 eActros trucks last year out of more than 455,000 trucks sold in total. There...

Japan’s central bank will expand its purchase of 10-year government bonds in this year’s second quarter in an attempt to keep medium-term borrowing costs low, the bank announced last week. In the year’s first quarter, the bank bought ¥425 billion worth of the bonds four times a month. It will now buy ¥500 billion worth...

In the wake of NATO’s opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China has bandied fears of an “Indo-Pacific NATO” that would unite Australia, India, Japan, and the U.S. to block China’s influence along the Pacific Rim. Seizing on that idea, China is strengthening its relationships with countries in its own neighborhood. “The Indo-Pacific strategy is...