Although inflation in the Eurozone settled to 6.1 percent in May, its lowest in 14 months, European Central Bank (ECB) president Christine Lagarde said in a public statement that inflation is “still too high” and the central bank must raise its base interest rate even more to rein it back.
Across the 20-country Eurozone, inflation’s rate fell to 6.1 percent in May, down from 7 percent in April and reaching the slowest pace since February 2022 when Russia attacked Ukraine, the European Union’s statistics agency announced.
Inflation and interest rate hikes are causing companies in many sectors to lay off employees. To illustrate the employment trends and the socioeconomic implications, each week we will list job losses.
The U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), which guarantees the safety of bank deposits up to $250,000, has seen its reserve shrink from $128 billion on 1 January to $116 billion now, according to the Financial Times.
Small businesses, especially startups, are finding it harder to get new loans, while some existing businesses are seeing their credit lines cut, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The U.S. jobs market refused to slow last month, with employers adding 339,000 non-farm workers across a range of economic sectors, according to the labor department’s initial estimate.
The availability of loans to corporations, and the criteria to qualify for them, are at their most stringent since the depths of the COVID War, according to a Wall Street Journal investigation.
As we had forecast for over a month, Congressional Republicans and President Joe Biden would reach a meaningless debt ceiling deal to avoid a national default. Also as we had forecast, the debt ceiling would be broken through once again with no end in sight... as the cover of this week’s Trends Journal illustrates.
Silverstein Properties, which developed the new World Trade Center, has made a deal to sell a 20-story office property on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue for $105 million. In 2020, the company had refinanced the building for $171 million.
China dominates lithium refining but has only 8 percent of the world’s raw lithium, less than Argentina, Bolivia, or Chile. Even the U.S. has more lithium ore than the Asian giant.