France and Germany have announced they will not comply with Russian president Vladimir Putin’s demand that European nations pay for Russia’s imported gas with rubles, Russia’s national currency. “Unfriendly” countries “must open ruble accounts in Russian banks,” Putin said in a 31 March televised appearance. “It is from these accounts that payments will be made...
Category: TRENDS ON THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC FRONT
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UKRAINE WAR AND SANCTIONS WILL DECIMATE EMERGING ECONOMIES
The war in Ukraine and the resulting sanctions on Russian exports likely will throw millions of people in low-and middle-income nations into poverty and push those countries toward debt crises, the World Bank has warned. The COVID era has driven about 40 lower-income countries into or toward debt distress, bank vice-president Indermit Gill said, but...
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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. PROLOGIS BIDS €21 BILLION...
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CREDIT CARD PROCESSING FEES UNAFFORDABLE, CANADIAN BUSINESSES SAY
Seventy-eight percent of Canadian business owners are unable to afford credit-card processing fees, according to a new survey by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB). “While credit card processing fees for some in-store transactions have come down in recent years, this has been more than offset by the massive growth in higher costs for...
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TOYOTA SLASHES APRIL PRODUCTION BY 17 PERCENT
Facing an ongoing shortage of computer chips and lingering COVID-related economic disruptions, Toyota will cut its global production next month to 750,000 vehicles, a reduction of 17 percent. The company already has announced a 20-percent domestic production cut for April, May, and June due to shortages of materials and supplies. Toyota also will trim 10...
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EGYPT ASKS IMF FOR AID AS WHEAT, OIL PRICES SKYROCKET
Egypt, the world’s biggest wheat importer, has asked the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for aid to stabilize its economy in the wake of rising prices for grain and oil, driven by crop shortages and higher prices made worse recently by Western sanctions on Russia. Egypt’s government subsidizes bread purchases for 70 million of its people....
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ARGENTINA’S INTEREST RATE HITS 44.5 PERCENT. U.S. SHOULD BE 9 PERCENT.
Argentina’s central bank has raised its key 28-day “Leliq” rate for the third time this year, this time by 2 percentage points to 44.5 percent. Last week, Argentine president Alberto Fernandez declared “war on inflation” and pledged “all necessary measures” to rein in rampant price increases. In February, the country’s inflation rate added another 4.7...
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CHINA’S NEW COVID LOCKDOWNS ADD TO SUPPLY-CHAIN DELAYS
Because of new COVID lockdowns in parts of China that are the strictest since the virus’s initial outbreak more than two years ago, 174 cargo ships were anchored off the ports of Hong Kong and Shenzhen last week, the most since 21 October, Bloomberg reported. Ships queueing off Shanghai’s docks also are becoming more numerous,...
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TOP TREND 2022: SELF-SUFFICIENT ECONOMIES. UKRAINE WAR SET THE PACE
“The Russian invasion of Ukraine has put an end to the globalization we have experienced over the last three decades,” Lawrence Fink, CEO of private equity firm Blackrock, which has more than $10 trillion in assets under management, wrote last week in his annual letter to investors. Since the 1980s, companies have shopped the world...
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THE UKRAINE WAR: ECONOMIC OVERVIEW
OIL COULD TOP $200 A BARREL THIS YEAR, TRADERS WARN As Russian oil disappears from the world market and alternative energy sources are unable to make up the difference, crude oil prices may move well past $200 a barrel this year, a top hedger predicted. “Wakey wakey,” Pierre Andurand told the Financial Times Global Commodities...