Category: TRENDS ON THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC FRONT

Before 2020, airports boutiques hawking Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and other luxury brands were an integral part of traveling and made up 6 percent of luxury brands’ global sales, according to The Wall Street Journal. Then came COVID. Passenger air travel in 2020 shrank to a quarter of its previous year’s volume and 2021’s volume was...

On 8 February, the number of container ships waiting to enter ports at Los Angeles and Long Beach fell to 78 from the peak of 109 a month earlier, the Marine Exchange of Southern California reported. The backlog is the smallest since 11 November, according to The Wall Street Journal. It is unclear whether the...

On 12 February, ratings agency Fitch lowered Turkey’s sovereign bond ratings deeper into junk status, dropping them from BB- to B+, putting the G20 nation on the same credit footing as Benin and Rwanda. The lower rating will increase Turkey’s borrowing cost, an especially painful consequence because Turkey depends on foreign lending to keep its...

The Bank of Russia announced on 11 February that it will raise its base interest rate from 8.5 percent to 9.5 in its ongoing attempt to lasso inflation, which edged up from 8.4 percent in December to 8.7 percent in January. The bank has raised its rate seven times in the past year, first moving...

The European Commission (EC) has announced €43 billion in funding to build new plants to make advanced computer chips that will power next-generation smartphones, appliances, and electric vehicles. The move aligns with our “Top 2022 Trend” of households, businesses, and nations moving toward economic self-sufficiency. The COVID War “painfully exposed the vulnerability” of Europe’s chip...

Europe’s central banks need to stop economic stimulus programs now, begin a “normalization” of monetary policies, and tighten the European Union’s (EU’s) fiscal rules to ensure they are being adhered to, Joachim Nagel, the new head Germany’s Bundesbank central bank, said in an interview last week with the Die Zeit newspaper. “The economy is recovering,”...

Energy prices will be “a more protracted drag” on the European Union’s (EU’s) economy this year, moving the European Commission (EC) to trim its 2022 growth forecast from 4.3 percent to an even 4. The rate will slow further to 2.8 percent in 2023 and 2.7 percent in 2024, the EC predicted, as the EU’s...

RETAIL PRICES RISING MORE QUICKLY Retailers, both online and in physical spaces, are updating prices often, sometimes more than once a day, in responses to price hikes triggered by product shortages and shipping difficulties, The Wall Street Journal reported. Quicklizard, which makes software that helps retailers automate pricing strategies, reported that about a third of...

FRONTIER, SPIRIT AIRLINES AGREE TO $6.6-BILLION MERGER  The U.S.’s two largest discount airlines have agreed to merge to create the country’s fifth-largest air passenger carrier. The merger will “create America’s most competitive ultra-low fare airline,” the companies said in a statement, and help make the new entity a stronger player in the post-COVID air travel...

On 2 February, Brazil’s central bank lifted its overnight interest rate by 1.5 percentage points, the third recent increase of that size, raising it to 10.75 percent as the bank struggles to contain an inflation rate that rose to 10.2  percent last month. The bank has raised the rate by 8.75 percent points in the...