Tag: may 17 2022

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. Here are some more of what the BIGS have been gobbling up and how the Bigs keep getting bigger and the rich keep getting richer. DUKE REALTY SPURNS PROLOGIS’...

April’s passenger car sales in China plummeted 36 percent in April, year on year, to 1.04 million as more than 325 million people in as many as 46 cities remained locked at home or at work under government order to quell the spread of the COVID virus. The massive shutdown darkened factories as well as...

Turkey’s central bank is scrutinizing corporate transactions involving foreign currency in amounts as small as $1 million in an attempt to crack down on sales of the lira, Turkey’s national currency. As inflation accelerated, investors sold lira and bought dollars, euros and other hard currencies. Eventually, the lira fell 45 percent against the dollar and...

Canada’s housing market has been rising since 2010, with home prices up 53 percent from February 2020 through 31 March this year alone, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association, compared to 35 percent in the U.S. Rising home prices accounted for about 20 percent of Canada’s 2021 GDP, The Wall Street Journal noted. The...

After saying in March that sanctions on Russian oil exports would cause a “global supply shock,” the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on 12 May that the world can withstand the loss of that oil. Increases in production by other suppliers and weaker demand due to China’s widespread anti-COVID shutdowns will delay any serious shortage,...

Joachim Nagel, president of Germany’s central bank, called on the European Central Bank to raise its key interest rate when the governing council meets on 21 July. There is “disturbing evidence that the increase in inflation is gaining momentum,” he said in a 10 May speech, warning that “the risk of acting too late is...

Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), indicated on 11 May that she could support an increase in the bank’s interest rate as early as July. The bank is likely to stop buying bonds “early in the third quarter” and raise its key interest rate “some time later,” which “could mean only a...

In the year’s first quarter, the U.K. economy grew 0.8 percent, driven by a spending spurt after the kingdom lifted Omicron-related restrictions on movement. But Britain’s GDP flatlined in February and contracted 0.1 percent in March, the Office for National Statistics reported last week. The service sector, which usually leads the country’s growth, slid 0.2...

In April, China’s retail sales contracted 11.1 percent, year over year to their lowest pace since March 2020, and industrial output shrank by 2.9 percent, the worst month since early 2020, the National Bureau of Statistics reported, both figures disappointing expectations. Economists polled by Reuters had predicted a 6.1-percent loss in retail trade but that...

The consumer price index in Europe’s largest economy grew by 7.8 percent in April, year over year, the fastest pace since the country reunified in 1990, the National Statistics Office reported. Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics office, had predicted a 7.5 percent gain. It was the second consecutive month with inflation running above 7 percent....