After a mid-summer economic slump, Chinese officials rushed an array of stimulus measures that shouldered the GDP to the 5-percent growth target Beijing had set for 2024, the Bureau of National Statistics (NBS) reported.
Tag: Economy
CONFIRMED: GERMANY IS IN DRAGFLATION
The German economy contracted by 0.2 percent last year after shrinking by 0.3 percent in 2023, the Federal Statistics Office (FSO) said, while inflation in December was at 2.8 percent.
SPOTLIGHT: BIGS GETTING BIGGER
About 54 percent of small and mid-size public companies and smaller private equity firms see 2025 as a good year for mergers and takeovers, according to a Citizens Financial survey.
ARGENTINA’S MILEI ABOLISHES KEY TARIFFS
Javier Milei, Argentina’s maverick president, has abolished the country’s blanket tariff of 7.5 percent on imported goods and trimmed import duties on a broad range of items “from acne cream to funeral urns,” the Financial Times reported.
CHINESE BOND YIELD SINKS TO RECORD LOW AS ECONOMY DEFLATES
The yield on the bellwether 10-year Chinese government bond slumped to 1.6 percent as the new year began and has remained close to that level, signaling that investors have glum expectations for the country’s economic growth and a reversal in the deflation that has plagued the world’s second-largest economy, the Financial Times reported.
U.K. GOVERNMENT’S BORROWING COST REACHES 27-YEAR HIGH
On 7 January, the interest rate the British government offered on £2.25 billion in 30-year bonds climbed to 5.2 percent, the highest since 1998.
TOP TREND 2025, THE TRUMP CARD: NATO ALLIES MUST SPEND MORE ON DEFENSE, TRUMP INSISTS
Europe’s NATO members need to spend 5 percent of their GDPs on defense, not the current 2 percent that the countries have set as their threshold, Donald Trump told a 7 January press briefing.
SPOTLIGHT: BIGS GETTING BIGGER
Members of the Nordstrom family, with help from Mexican conglomerate El Puerto de Liverpool, are buying all outstanding shares of the department store chain for about $6.25 billion in cash and taking the 123-year-old retailer private.
SPOTLIGHT: CHINA’S ECONOMIC PLAN
Beijing will issue three trillion yuan—about $411 billion—in treasury bonds this year, with the proceeds directed to spark consumer spending, speed technological innovation, and recapitalize government-owned banks, Reuters reported.
CANADIAN BUSINESS BANKRUPTCIES SET THIRD-QUARTER RECORD
In last year’s third quarter, 1,312 Canadian businesses went bust, the most in any year’s third quarter, the Financial Post reported.









