Federal job cuts continue under Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency with the Department of Health and Human Services leading the count this week with 10,000 layoffs of full-time employees, including 3,500 at the Food and Drug Administration, 2,400 at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1,200 at the National Institutes of Health and 300 at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Copper and gold are fetching record prices and silver futures are trading at levels not seen since 2012 as investors seek safe havens and U.S. manufacturers stockpile raw materials ahead of rising tariffs.
Indonesia’s Jakarta Composite Index plunged 7.1 percent last week to its lowest level in almost four years.
Europe’s retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports, imposed in response to U.S. trade levies, risks a return of inflation, Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni warned on the eve of last week’s meeting of European heads of state.
Next month, British households and businesses will be hammered by higher costs as government caps on energy and water bills will rise 6.4 percent and 26 percent, respectively.
Interest payments on their national debts are costing the world’s richest nations the largest share of their GDPs since at least 2007, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has calculated.
In an 18 March emergency session, the lower house of Germany’s Bundestag approved the €1-trillion infrastructure and military spending plan proposed by incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz.
As Europe prepares to spend trillions of euros more to arm itself, it loses the “peace dividend” it has been banking since the Cold War ended 35 years ago.
In March, the economy of the 20-country Eurozone grew at its fastest since last September, according to the Hamburg Commerce Bank’s preliminary purchasing managers index (PMI) for the month.
The economic landscape has presented an array of challenges that will profoundly affect the business community this year.