Category: TRENDS ON THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC FRONT

Gambling that India’s disastrous second COVID surge has passed, investors have poured cash into the country’s stock market, lifting the Nifty 50 Index of India’s 50 biggest public companies 9 percent from its low six weeks ago. The rupee has gained 4 percent against the dollar during the same time. Investors apparently see little to...

Finance ministers of the G7 group of nations have reached an agreement that they should levy a minimum tax of at least 15 percent on multinational corporations that evade taxes by playing countries’ tax loopholes against each other. The group plans to finalize details of the agreement in a July meeting of the G20 nations,...

Russia’s $186-billion sovereign wealth fund will reduce its dollar holdings from $40 billion to zero this month, finance minister Anton Siluanov announced last week at the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg. The fund also will cut its stash of British pounds from 10 percent of the fund’s portfolio to 5 percent, and 40 percent...

Food prices around the globe increased by 40 percent in May, which raises concern for poor countries and their access to staple goods. The Financial Times, citing the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ (UNFAO) monthly food price index, reported that prices saw their largest increase since 2011. On 9 February, the Trends...

An executive at American Airlines told the Wall Street Journal earlier this month that 47 of the airline’s 50 largest business accounts said they plan to start flying again after over a year of lockdowns and flight advisories. The report said some investment bankers have been traveling to see clients, and sales representatives have been trying to...

Inflation is on the rise… and it global.  Consumer prices in the world’s richest countries have risen 3.3 percent since April 2020, the fastest rate of increase since 2008, the 36-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has reported. In April, energy prices were up 16.3 percent year-on-year, compared with 7.4 percent in March,...

China’s banking and insurance regulators have given preliminary approval to Goldman Sachs’ proposal to establish a wealth management service on the mainland in partnership with ICBC, one of the country’s largest banks. Goldman Sachs Asset Management will own 51 percent of the venture; the bank will own 49 percent. China has liberalized regulations governing foreign...

Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan has fired Oguzhan Ozbas, one of the deputy governors of the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, and replaced him with Semih Tumen, an economics professor and key Erdogan advisor. Ozbas is the third senior bank official that Erdogan has fired in the past two months.  He fired central bank...

Although the Bank of Canada has said private cryptocurrencies pose a vulnerability for the country’s financial system, “we don’t currently see a strong case” for issuing a national version of digital money in the near future, deputy bank governor Timothy Lane said in a panel discussion last week hosted by the country’s Chamber of Commerce....

As Europe’s restaurants and hotels reopen, customers are returning. Workers not so much. The lack of workers in the continent’s hospitality sector threatens to hobble the continent’s already weak economic recovery. Some business owners and managers say they may be forced to offer higher pay to staff their businesses. Some theorize that, as in the...