Category: TRENDS ON THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC FRONT

A majority of fund managers say the world economy’s post-crisis growth has already peaked, even though fears of a resurgent COVID virus only rank fifth on their list of worries, according to Bank of America’s July survey of 239 investors collectively handling $742 billion of clients’ money. The major concerns are inflation and the risk...

U.S. inflation sped up to 5.4 percent in June and reached 2.5 percent in the U.K, a pace not seen three in three years, the Financial Times reported, causing a growing number of economists to fear a return to 1970s-style runaway inflation. Inflation in Britain has mirrored that in the U.S. but with a few...

Turkey’s inflation rate rose to 17.53 percent in June, its highest in two years, edging past analysts’ expectations of 16.8 to 17.0 percent as consumers began spending again after the country lifted its lockdown this spring. Economists polled by Bloomberg expected a 16.8-percent rate. Consumer prices shot up 1.94 percent for the month, well past...

The median price of a home across the European Union’s 27 member countries rose 6.1 percent in this year’s first quarter, the union’s statistical agency Eurostat reported, a pace faster than at any time since the third quarter of 2007. Home prices among the 19 countries sharing the euro currency climbed 5.8 percent, the speediest...

China’s purchasing managers index for the country’s manufacturing economy edged down in June to 50.9 from May’s rating of 51, the National Bureau of Statistics reported.  Supply-chain disruptions throttled back production, but demand for exports also eased slightly, the bureau said. Factors hobbling factory output include the global shortage of computer chips that has hampered...

In its first major policy review since 2003, the European Central Bank (ECB) has set a new target inflation rate of 2 percent but says it will tolerate higher rates for brief periods without tweaking interest rates. The previous inflation target had been a more vague “below, but close to, 2 percent.” The new 2-percent...

The European Union’s economy will expand by 4.8 percent this year, the European Commission (EC) has predicted, the fastest rate since 1976. The region’s GDP will grow 4.5 percent in 2022, the commission expects. Previous forecasts targeted 4.3- and 4.4-percent growth in the respective years. Germany’s economy will add 3.6 percent, France’s 6 percent, Italy’s...

About 22 million fewer people have jobs in the world’s advanced economies than before the Covid War began, according to the annual employment outlook report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), whose 38 member nations include most of the world’s richest countries. Jobs will remain below pre-crisis numbers until late 2022, the...