Category: TRENDS ON THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC FRONT

CHINA’S ECONOMIC DATA PAINTS MIXED PICTURE On 16 September, China’s National Bureau of Statistics released data showing that home prices continue to fall and consumer spending remains relatively feeble. In contrast, new jobs were added and infrastructure investment, a tried and true means for government agencies to goose the economy, increased. Across 70 major cities,...

U.K INFLATION EASES SLIGHTLY IN AUGUST Britain’s inflation rate in August edged back to 9.9 percent after reading 10.1 percent in July. The cost of motor fuels fell; prices for food and clothing rose more slowly than in the previous month. Core inflation, which screens out food and energy prices, actually rose in August, moving...

Struggling to survive inflation and a shortage of workers, restaurants across Canada are offering fewer menu items, cutting hours, and raising prices, according to trade association Restaurants Canada. Half the country’s restaurants are either operating in the red or just breaking even, the group reported, with sales collectively down 11 percent from 2019’s levels. Customers...

Russia’s central bank cut its interest rate by a half-point last week to 7.5 percent, its sixth cut after raising the rate to 20 percent immediately after the country invaded Ukraine. However, the bank has little room to cut further and may begin to raise rates again if inflation takes hold, bank governor Elvira Nabiullina...

Economic output in Britain stagnated in the second quarter, compared to a 0.3-percent expansion in the first three months of this year. On 1 July, the U.K. economy was the same size as it was on 1 January, the Financial Times reported. The economy shrank by 0.6 percent in June, which economists attributed to a...

The pound sterling fell more than 1 percent against the dollar late last week to $1.1351, the lowest since 1987, after the U.K. government said retail sales fell 1.6 percent in August compared to July. The pound also slid to its smallest worth against the euro in 18 months. Last week’s decline in sales was...

Europe’s real estate investors are top-heavy with debt, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. Publicly-traded companies invested in real estate hold an average debt 14 times higher than their projected earnings before interest, taxes, and amortization, compared to six times in the U.S. Industry-wide, borrowing costs in Europe have reached an average...

Twenty-nine percent of Canadians worry that they will be unable to meet basic living expenses, such as the cost of food and energy, according to a July survey of 3,000 individuals by the Financial Wellbeing Index for Summer 2022. Asked about their ability to meet their mortgage payments, 23 percent were “concerned” and an additional...

Germany’s economy has begun a contraction that will last at least through this winter as the fuel crisis worsens after Russia ended natural gas deliveries to the country through its Nord Stream 1 pipeline last month, the Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank, predicted on 19 September. Such a contraction is the definition of a prolonged recession....

In July, the Eurozone’s manufacturing sector turned out 2.3 percent fewer goods than in June, the biggest one-month drop since April 2020 during the early days of the COVID War, Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics agency reported. The drop was more than twice the 1 percent forecast by economists Reuters had polled and was attributed...