The Personal Consumption Expenditures Index (PCE), the U.S. Federal Reserve’s most closely watched inflation indicator, slowed to an annual rate of 2.4 percent in January, matching analysts’ expectations and within a short reach of the central bank’s 2-percent overall inflation target.
In 2023, $541 billion in loans against commercial real estate came due, data service Trepp reported, the highest amount ever for a single year.
The U.S. Federal Reserve’s inspector general (IG) has cleared two former Fed bank presidents of any illegal activities in questionable trades they made in 2020. However, the watchdog office scolded them for tarnishing public confidence in the central bank.
U.S. consumer prices grew by 3.4 percent in December, the Labor Department reported, surpassing November’s 3.1 percent and beating economists’ forecasts of 3.2 percent.
In November, builders began work on new homes at a clip that translates to an annual rate of 1.6 million housing units and filed permits to construct 1.5 million more, news service Quartz reported.
In a 1 December speech at Spelman College, U.S. Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said interest rates are “well into restrictive territory” and doing their job of slowing the economy to tamp down inflation.
Investors are selling dollars at the fastest clip in the past 12 months on the belief that the U.S. Federal Reserve has stopped raising interest rates and will begin cutting them next year, the Financial Times reported.
Investors abroad, especially those in China and Japan, have been eager buyers of U.S. treasuries as the U.S. Federal Reserve scaled up interest rates over the past 18 months.
U.S. inflation is not yet tamed and the U.S. Federal Reserve is more likely to raise interest rates than cut them if any change is needed, Fed chair Jerome Powell said in a 9 November speech to a conference of the International Monetary Fund.