WHERE HAVE ALL THE WORKERS GONE? If not for the COVID War, America’s labor force would have about 4.3 million more workers. U.S. employers have about 10 million job openings to fill. And jobless claims are at their lowest since the COVID War began. Those are the premises of an article published on 15 October...
Tag: oct 26 2021
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SPOTLIGHT: INFLATION SPREADING
INFLATION WALLOPS EUROZONE Costs for Europe’s manufacturers and service companies rose at their fastest pace on record, according to IHS Markit’s October purchasing managers index. The index fell from 56.2 in September to 54.3 in October, a sharper drop than analysts had foreseen and taking the measure to a six-month low. Numbers above 50 indicate...
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SPOTLIGHT: BIGS KEEP GROWING BIGGER
RICHEST 10 PERCENT OF U.S. HOUSEHOLDS OWN 89 PERCENT OF STOCKS The wealthiest 10 percent of U.S. households now own 89 percent of all stocks, according to U.S. Federal Reserve data, up from 87 percent in the Fed’s study a year ago (“The FU, K-Shaped Recovery Worsens Wealth Inequality,” 9 Sep 2020). The richest 1...
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TURKEY’S CENTRAL BANK CUTS RATES AMID PROTESTS
Ignoring warnings from its business community, Turkey’s central bank cut its overnight repo rate for the second time in two months, from 18 percent to 16 percent. The Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey has made a series of interest rate cuts this year, despite inflation running as high as 20 percent, according to...
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NEW SPENDING PLAN SPARKS CRISIS IN BRAZIL
Brazil’s treasury secretary, budget secretary, and their two chief aides abruptly resigned on 21 October after president Jair Bolsonaro pushed ahead with a spending plan designed to shower aid on households and jump-start a feeble economy but that also risks spiking inflation. Brazil’s central bank has already raised interest rates three times this year in...
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CHINA STRUGGLES TO STABILIZE HOUSING MARKET
China’s home prices have galloped to all-time highs in recent months in tandem with developers’ debt loads. The higher prices helped subsidize builders’ debt payments. However, over the summer, Beijing tightened rules around lending to property developers, saying that the industry was overleveraged, a fact underscored by the ongoing debt crisis among building companies, which...
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CHINA’S REAL ESTATE TROUBLES RIPPLE ACROSS EMERGING MARKETS
Through recent years, China’s insatiable construction industry has drawn a steady flow of imported materials from emerging nations. Now, however, giant property developers such as Evergrande and Fantasia are on the brink of collapse, as we documented in “Spotlight China: Crash Coming? Recovery Ahead?” (19 Oct 2021). As a result, exports of raw materials—a crucial...
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CHINA TAKES MORE ECONOMIC CONTROL
After buying 51 percent of Greece’s Piraeus Port Authority in August 2016, China’s state-controlled Cosco shipping company has taken another 16 percent, the Financial Times reported. The deal has fanned anxieties about China’s deepening involvement in Europe’s infrastructure and drew outrage over environmental, financial, and social concerns surrounding China’s ownership. Cosco pledged to make investments...
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SERVICE SECTOR STRENGTH BUOYS WEAK MANUFACTURING ECONOMY
As worldwide factory output shrank amid supply shortages and transport kinks, service economies grew as vaccination campaigns progressed and more people returned to gyms, hotels, restaurants, and stores, The Wall Street Journal reported. Service-sector strength powered net economic growth in Australia, Japan, and the U.S. However, Europe’s overall GDP has shrunk in recent weeks, due...
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WORLD’S LONG-TERM FISCAL OUTLOOK BLEAK
This is old news to Trends Journal subscribers, but new news in the mainstream state of mind. Public debt shouldered during the COVID Wars is only a portion of the financial perils facing the world in coming decades, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), whose members are the world’s 38 richest...