Category: TRENDS ON THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC FRONT

Iron ore prices have fallen by nearly half from their 20 July high above $219 per ton under pressures from China’s slowing property market, The Wall Street Journal reported. The price opened this week at $119 after plunging to $94 on 20 September. Evergrande, China’s largest property developer, owes more than $300 billion that it...

Norges Bank, Norway’s central bank, has raised its base rate from zero to 0.25 percent, citing business activity’s return to pre-COVID levels, a high COVID vaccination rate, and unemployment of just 2.7 percent. Another hike is likely in December, bank officials said, and as many as five more next year. Norges Bank is the first...

Collectively, Asia’s developing nations will grow the region’s economy 7.1 percent this year, the Asia Development Bank (ADB) projected, instead of 7.3 percent, as the bank had forecast earlier. COVID’s Delta variant, the area’s slow and uneven progress in vaccinating citizens, and renewed lockdowns and restrictions on businesses and movement are to blame for the...

Beyond the potential collapse of Evergrande—the Chinese conglomerate toting more than $300 billion in debt, that missed a $83.5-million bond payment last week, and that has 1.6 million unfinished apartments on its hands—there are signs that China’s overall economy is losing momentum. However, we do not see as drastic a slowdown as Wall Street is...

The COVID virus’s Delta variant is slowing the world’s economic recovery but will not cripple it, according to new forecasts from the 37-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in its latest quarterly report published 21 September. The U.S. economy will grow 6 percent this year, the OECD now says, not the 6.9 percent...

INFLATION WILL GET WORSE, NOT BETTER, OECD SAYS Through 2022, prices will increase significantly more than expected in the world’s most advanced economies, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said. Inflation’s pace will quicken to 4.5 percent in this year’s final quarter, the OECD said, boosted by logistics tangles and climbing commodity prices....

Links: NICKEL IS THE NEW GOLD URANIUM PRICES RISING, MAKING PROFITS FOR HEDGE FUNDS

In this edition of the Trends Journal, we are SPOTLIGHTING essential trends that will shape the economic future. Among them is inflation. We have been reporting extensively, in great detail, of where and why inflation is heading up and its global impact on governments, businesses and consumers. Remember, when the New Year began, from the...

Each week, we report instances where the money junky hedge funds, private equity groups and the already big company swallows another piece of the global economy. Here are some more of what the BIGS have been gobbling up… GOLDMAN PAYS $2.2 BILLION FOR SPECIALTY LENDER FOX, NEWS CORP CONTINUE STRING OF ACQUISITIONS TRANSUNION FINALIZING $3.1...

World uranium prices topped $44 a pound last week, the highest in eight years, continuing a reversal of 2011’s price crash that followed Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant catastrophe. Recent price gains came after Sprott Asset Management opened an exchange-traded trust that has bought large amounts of uranium stocks, using money from hedge funds and family...