Category: TRENDS ON THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC FRONT

Prices for corn, soybeans, and wheat will remain strong through mid-2023 and possibly through mid-2025 as China seeks to import more food and the biofuel industry grows, executives from grain processors Cargill, Cofco, Scoular, and Viterra said last week at the Financial Times Commodities Global Summit. Corn futures prices recently were at $3.29 a bushel,...

The U.S.’s robust economic recovery is inflating not only prices around the world but also the dollar’s value, adding to pressures on other nations’ central banks to raise interest rates sooner than they have planned. On the other hand, lingering COVID infections and economic recoveries slower than hoped are pressing banks to keep rates low...

Chinese regulators have approved Blackrock’s application to sell mutual funds in the country through its Blackrock Fund Management Co., a wholly-owned, Shanghai-based subsidiary. Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager with about $9 trillion in its portfolio, has six months to begin offering funds made up of Chinese stocks, the Wall Street Journal reported. Last month,...

El Salvador’s legislature has rubber-stamped president Nayib Bukele’s proposal that the country recognize Bitcoin as legal tender. We reported Bukele’s proposal last week (“El Salvador Moves to Make Bitcoin Legal Tender”, Trends Journal, 8 June 2021 ). The law authorizes Bitcoin to be used to pay taxes and buy goods and services. The cryptocurrency is...

Through 2020, shipping companies were selling their older boats for scrap as global demand for non-essential goods crashed. Now, with a global recovery accelerating, orders for 208 container ships with a total value of $1.3 billion have been placed this year, compared to 120 worth $8.8 billion last year and 114 valued at $6.9 billion...

Decentralized finance, or “defi,” software is streamlining cryptocurrency transactions by allowing buyers, sellers, and traders to deal directly with each other instead of working through a broker, exchange, or other mediator. In the past 12 months, defi programs have facilitated about $67 billion worth of crypto transactions, according to data from industry-watcher DeFi Pulse. Uniswap,...

Chinese law enforcement agencies swept through 23 cities, provinces, and regions last week, busting 170 criminal groups and arresting at least 1,100 people alleged to have used cryptocurrencies to launder profits from telephone and Internet scams. The groups routinely shifted their take from one digital currency to another in attempts to hide their trails, authorities...

Last month, China’s producer price index (PPI) jumped 9 percent from a year earlier, marking its fastest pace since September 2008, when producer prices leaped 9.1 percent.  The hike was significantly greater than April’s 6.8-percent year-on-year rise and edged past the 8.6 percent predicted by economists the Wall Street Journal had surveyed. The sharp rise...

Cryptocurrencies should be subject to the most stringent bank capital rules of any asset, a committee of the world’s bank regulators has said. Capital requirements for holding crypto should be significantly higher than those for holding stocks or bonds, the 45-member Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has urged in a report released 10 June. The...

Russia’s central bank has raised its benchmark interest rate from 5.0 percent to 5.5 in an attempt to cool inflation, which is now running at its fastest pace there in almost five years. The bank had considered a 1-percent hike before settling on 0.5 percent, bank president Elvira Nabiullina said in a public statement announcing...