CHINA’S COVID LOCKDOWN HARMS DOMESTIC, GLOBAL ECONOMIES Adidas, Intercontinental Hotels Group, and Starbucks are among the multinational firms that have seen revenues sink because of China’s draconian anti-COVID lockdowns, which have shut an estimated 325 million people in at least 46 cities into their homes or workplaces for two months. Affected areas include tech hubs...
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DIGITAL DOLLAR COULD PROTECT CONSUMERS, BRAINARD SAYS
A digital dollar issued by the U.S. Federal Reserve eventually could co-exist with and complement privately issued stablecoins and other digital assets, protecting consumers from the market whims that jolt unanchored digital assets and offering consumers a government-backed way to make digital payments, Fed vice-chair Lael Brainard said in 26 May Congressional testimony. “It could...
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SPOTLIGHT: CHINA
TOP 2022 TREND, DRAGFLATION: CHINA’S ECONOMY IS SHRINKING China’s Caixin purchasing managers index (PMI) for service industries plunged to 36.2 in April from 42 in March, IHS Markit reported on 4 May, signaling a growing weakness throughout the nation’s economy. Readings below 50 indicate contraction; the lower the number, the harder the fall. The subindex...
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BLOCKCHAIN BATTLES
ECB MEMBER COMPARES CRYPTO SECTOR TO SUBPRIME MORTGAGE CRASH The European Central Bank, busy along with the rest of the West trying to fuel WWIII over Ukraine, took time out to say cryptos are a risk comparable to the subprime mortgage crash of 2007-08. “[The] strong appeal of crypto-assets, especially unbacked ones, is a cause...
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TJ Apr 12 Long Section Test – JD
TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT ECONOMIC OVERVIEW How low can we go? This isn’t ancient history. Go back to Chinese Lunar New Year 2020: The Year of the Rat In January, when the coronavirus was launched in the city of Wuhan, Beijing locked the city down, and others, to beat the virus. In lockstep,...
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CHINA’S SERVICE ECONOMY GROWS BY A THIRD IN YEAR’S FIRST TWO MONTHS
China’s service sector grew by 33.5 percent in January and February this year, the country’s commerce ministry reported, turning in a value equivalent to $146.6 billion. Service exports were up 39.4 percent, year on year, with service imports rising 28.3 percent, yielding a 57.6-percent drop in China’s trade deficit in services compared to 2021, the...
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SELF-SUFFICIENCY TOP TREND: CHINA CREATING A “UNIFIED DOMESTIC MARKET”
The Chinese government has published a set of general guidelines intended to outline the shape and structure of what it calls a “unified domestic market that is highly efficient, rules-based, fair for competition, and open” the state-controlled Xinhua news service reported. The goals include “the efficient circulation and expansion of the domestic market, a stable,...
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TOP TREND 2022: SELF-SUFFICIENCY. BIDEN WILL INVOKE WAR POWERS
President Joe Biden will invoke the Defense Production Act to increase production of cobalt, graphite, lithium, manganese, nickel, and other key materials needed for electric vehicles and grid-scale batteries in an attempt to ease U.S. dependence on foreign suppliers and, longer-term, on oil imports. The law, when activated by presidential order, gives the government the...
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STOCK BUYBACKS CONTINUE AT RECORD PACE
Corporations have authorized a record $319 billion in stock repurchases as of 28 March, compared to $267 billion for the same period last year, Goldman Sachs reported. This surpasses the previous record of $234.5 billion in stock buybacks, set in last year’s third quarter, as we reported in “Corporate Stock Buybacks Set Record” (21 Dec...
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CHINA STABILIZES FINANCIAL MARKETS
In the wake of a prolonged sell-off in Chinese stock markets, the government will take steps to “boost the economy in the first quarter” and implement policies “that are favorable to the market,” vice-premier Liu He, president Xi Jinping’s primary economic advisor, announced last week after a meeting of the State Council’s Financial Stability and...