RETAIL PRICES RISING MORE QUICKLY Retailers, both online and in physical spaces, are updating prices often, sometimes more than once a day, in responses to price hikes triggered by product shortages and shipping difficulties, The Wall Street Journal reported. Quicklizard, which makes software that helps retailers automate pricing strategies, reported that about a third of...
314 search results for: SPOTLIGHT ON CHINA
SPOTLIGHT: INFLATION
LITHIUM PRICES SOAR ON CHINA’S EV BOOM Lithium prices in China have risen fivefold in the past 12 months on the strength of the country’s electric vehicle boom, Bloomberg reported. The price in China of lithium carbonate, the active ingredient in EV batteries, notched a new record on 17 January, according to data from Asian...
CHINA’S CENTRAL BANK CUTS KEY INTEREST RATE
In December, China experienced the slowest year-on-year growth in 18 months, the National Bureau of Statistics reported. In response, on 19 January, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) cut its one-year prime loan rate from 3.8 percent to 3.7 and trimmed its five-year prime rate—which is used to price mortgages—from 4.65 percent to 4.6, the...
SPOTLIGHT: INFLATION
INFLATION IN OECD COUNTRIES TOUCHES 25-YEAR HIGH Inflation across member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which includes most of the world’s 37 richest countries, ran at 5.8 percent in November, compared to 1.2 percent a year earlier, according to OECD figures released last week. It was inflation’s fastest annual pace...
SPOTLIGHT: BIGS GETTING BIGGER
TAKEOVER FIRM HOPES FOR $877 MILLION FROM IPO TPG Capital, a buyout specialist formerly named Texas Pacific Group, is hoping to collect as much as $877 million from an initial public stock offering that would value the firm as highly as $9 billion, the Financial Times reported. TPG hopes to sell 28.3 million shares at...
SPOTLIGHT: INFLATION
UKRAINE FEAR: EUROPEANS, U.K. HIT WITH NEW RECORD HIGH GAS PRICES Europeans may be looking at the extended weather forecast more closely than usual in hopes of a mild winter because gas prices have hit a new record high last week as uncertainty over Russia’s intention with Ukraine looms large. The Wall Street Journal reported that...
CHINA CUTS KEY INTEREST RATE
On 20 December, the People’s Bank of China reduced its one-year prime lending rate by 0.5 percent to 3.8 percent. The rate is the one at which commercial banks lend to their most credit-worthy customers and benchmarks rates for other loans, CNN Business noted. The cut is an attempt to reinvigorate a slowing economy slammed...
CHINA’S ECONOMY SLOWS IN NOVEMBER
China’s economy slackened in November, thanks to a lagging consumer economy and the persistence of the COVID virus. The property market, which makes up almost a third of China’s GDP, stumbled with the failure of major developers Evergrande Group and Kaisa Group to be able to pay their debts, resulting in both corporations being declared...
PENTAGON: TARGET CHINA
The Pentagon completed its Global Posture Review and provided the document’s broad strokes, which included new investments in logistics facilities in Guam and Australia to counter the growing threat of China in the region. The Trends Journal has reported extensively on the relationship between Beijing and the Biden administration. (See “CHINA WON’T STOP AT TAIWAN, SO WHERE...
SPOTLIGHT: INFLATION ON THE RISE
INFLATION: LAST LONGER AND RISE FASTER What was forecast over a year ago is now reality. Inflation rates will rise more quickly, and the rising pace will last longer, than many governments and analysts had previously expected. Of course, now it is “official” since the 38-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) warned in...