Category: TRENDS ON THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC FRONT

Last week, Brazil became the world’s biggest economy to raise its benchmark interest rate.  The country’s central bank boosted its rate from a record-low 2 percent to 2.75 percent as inflation reached 5.2 percent, its fasted pace in four years, rising close to the top of the bank’s target range. The move exemplifies a risk...

In a surprise move, Russia’s central bank raised its benchmark interest rate from 4.25 to 4.5 percent, the first rate adjustment in more than two years. The rise is intended to ward off inflation, which is rising faster than expected, bank governor Elvira Nabiullina explained in comments quoted by the Financial Times.  Russia’s economy has...

Japan’s central bank has expanded its acceptable range for bond yields from 2 percent on either side of zero to 2.5 percent, giving it greater flexibility to respond to changes in economic conditions. It also abandoned the ¥6-trillion lower limit of its budget for buying exchange-traded funds but held the program’s ¥12-trillion ceiling in place...

Calgary-based Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) will buy the Kansas City Southern railroad for $28.9 billion in cash and stock, CP announced on 21 March. The deal marks the first major change in North America’s rail ownership in more than 20 years. The purchase, Canadian Pacific’s largest in its history, will give it control of the...

Rogers Communications Inc., with 10.9 million customers for its wireless, cable TV, phone, and Internet services, announced plans to buy the $5.34-billion Shaw Communications Inc. for $16 billion. The resulting company will spend C$2 billion over five years to spread 5G wireless networks across Canada and C$1 billion to bring high-speed Internet service to rural...

Global gasoline demand has peaked and will never return to its 2019 levels, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its new five-year forecast. Increasing fuel efficiency among new vehicles and the steady, if slow, entry of electric cars into the market will more than offset the return of demand as the world’s economy recovers...

A worsening worldwide shortage of computer chips is hampering the production of everything from cars to PlayStations, according to major manufacturers. Samsung blames a “serious imbalance” in semiconductors globally for an uncertain outlook for its phone production and may delay by a year its introduction of a new Note phone.  Volkswagen says the chip shortage...

As we have forecast, the 20th century was the American century – the 21st century will be the Chinese century. The business of China is business; the business of America is war.  While America spent countless trillions waging and losing endless wars and enriching its military-industrial complex, China has spent its trillions advancing the nation’s...

In 2010, Japanese carmaker Nissan introduced the Leaf, the world’s first mass-produced fully electric car. A decade later, that nation’s auto industry has decided to step back – sticking with hybrid gas-and-battery vehicles, a market it dominates, and leaving the work of breaking ground in the nascent all-electric market to others. The market for hybrids...

After its most comprehensive policy review in five years, the Bank of Japan will continue its program of quantitative easing, Masayoshi Amamiya, the bank’s chief monetary strategist, indicated in a speech last week cited by the Financial Times. The bank was mulling near-term policy changes but decided to leave its strategy unchanged because the country’s...