Category: TRENDS ON THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC FRONT

Foreign investors rid themselves of $4.5 billion worth of Indian stocks in January, the largest flight since the COVID War began, reversing gains that the flagship Sensex index had made in the early days of this year. “The Ukraine crisis and impending Federal Reserve rate hikes have made more opportunistic global investors nervous, triggering a...

On 3 February, shortly after the European Central Bank announced it would not raise rates yet, the Europe-wide Stoxx 600 equities index dipped 0.5 percent below its recent narrow trading range, what traders call a “flatline.” Tech stocks pushed the market down, losing 1.8 percent, while telecom stocks rose 0.7 percent. Prices slumped partly on...

The Bank of England’s (BOE’s) monetary policy committee added another quarter of a percentage point to its prime rate, boosting it to 0.5 percent as the bank predicted the nation’s inflation rate will climb to 7.25 percent in April. Four of the committee’s nine members pressed for a half-percent hike, which would have been the...

Inflation in Turkey reached an annual rate of 48.7 percent in January, speeding past December’s pace of 36.1 percent, according to the government’s statistics agency, and notching the worst mark since 2002. Electricity, food, and gas costs were key drivers of price increases, meaning that inflation is hitting the poor the hardest. Independent economists gathered...

While the U.S. has been ending its military and political entanglement in Iraq, China has quietly been extending its influence there by funding $10.5 billion in new construction projects in 2021. The initiative is part of China’s strong shift of attention to the Middle East even as it pares back investments in other parts of...

Canada’s economy erased 200,000 jobs in January, almost double the 110,000 economists had forecast, due to far-reaching restrictions on movement and business in the midst of the Omicron surge. Unemployment rose from 6 percent to 6.5 last month, its first tick up in nine months, according to Statistics Canada. Total hours worked had returned to...

For the eighth consecutive month, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its ally nations (OPEC+) plan to raise output by another 400,000 a month in February, continuing the agreement the group made as the world’s economy showed signs of recovery from the COVID War. Last week, both benchmark Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate...

Kinks in the world’s supply chains may last through this year or even into next year, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), said in a 1 February Paris speech. “We thought supply chain disruptions would be temporary,” Okonjo-Iweala said. “We still think that, but they are taking longer to resolve than we...

In January, world food prices rose to levels not seen since 2011, according to a 3 February report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Food prices shot up 6.85 percent in December, year over year, the International Monetary Fund said, the highest since the agency began tracking the rate in 2014. From...

After experiencing the world’s worst economic contraction during the COVID War, Latin America faces a future of galloping inflation, slow growth, and higher interest rates that will keep tens of millions of people in poverty for the foreseeable future, according to The Wall Street Journal. That collision of negative forces “is a recipe for political...