Private equity funds poured billions of dollars into the housing market since the COVID era began, buying up tens of thousands of single-family homes in a trend we documented in articles such as “Rents Soar as Investors Buy Properties and Raise Rates” (14 Sep 2021) and “Homes Sales Up as Money Gang Gobbles Up Houses” (23 Nov 2021).
The number of new U.S. homes sold in October was 7.5 percent greater than in September, the U.S. commerce department reported, reversing an 11-percent slide the month before.
Each week, we report instances where the money junky hedge funds, private equity groups and the already big companies swallow another piece of the global economy.
Europe’s banks should set aside greater reserves to cover bad loans, regulators should require investment funds to hold more cash to cover a surge in withdrawals, and the European Central Bank (ECB) should not delay in beginning to sell its €5-trillion bond hoard next year, bank vice-president Luis de Guindos said in a statement accompanying the ECB’s semi-annual review of the region’s financial stability.
This is the headline on the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal: “OPEC + Weighs Pumping More Oil.”
Interest-rate futures markets are betting that Chile’s central bank will chop more than 5 percentage points from its current 11.25-percent rate by the end of next year, according to Bloomberg.
Validating analysts’ our forecasts cited in “Future Rate Hikes Will Be Smaller” in this issue, on 21 November the Bank of Israel (BoI) increased its base interest rate by a half-point, not the three-quarters of a point that analysts had expected.
Central banks’ future rate hikes will be smaller, analysts say, because recent large rate boosts are showing signs of taming inflation—and because signs are growing that a worldwide economic recession is looming.
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 list job losses.
