The U.S. Senate is debating a bill brokered by President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy that lifts the government’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling while imposing spending caps and cuts on Biden’s plan to boost funding for the IRS to audit wealthy Americans, among other things. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed the bill on Wednesday evening in a bipartisan 314-117 vote. Here’s a summary of the deal: A CAP ON DISCRETIONARY SPENDING The deal would suspend the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling until Jan. 1, 2025, allowing the U.S. ...

Bank borrowing from the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending programs slipped in the week ended Wednesday, the latest Fed data released Thursday showed. Total borrowing from the Fed’s three emergency lending programs slipped to $285.7 billion on Wednesday from $288.7B last week, well below the peak of $343.7 seen in March, when banks were in a race to build shore up balance sheets as the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank triggered bank run fears. In the week ended May. 24, banks borrowed an average of $3.97B each night, down from $4.21B ...

After months of negotiations, Finland’s Nokian Tyres (TYRES.HE) was on the cusp late last year of finalising a 400-million-euro ($440.32 million) sale of its Russian business. Then Moscow changed the rules again. The government in December demanded that companies leaving Russia sell their operations for at least half price and claimed 10% of the sale for the federal budget, termed an “exit tax” by the U.S. Treasury. Nokian Tyres dropped the agreed sale price to Russian oil major Tatneft (TATN.MM) to 286 million euros, finally securing the approval of the ...

Russia will hold its key lending rate at 7.5% next week, a Reuters poll showed on Thursday, with persistent inflation risks seen preventing the central bank from easing the cost of borrowing and limiting Russia’s growth this year to 0.7%. Last year, the Bank of Russia gradually reversed a late February emergency rate hike to 20% after Moscow despatched tens of thousands of troops to Ukraine, which led to increasingly wide-ranging Western sanctions. Since September the bank has kept its key rate at 7.5%, where analysts expect it to stay ...

Federal Reserve officials, whose hike, skip or pause messaging on interest rates has become a high-stakes word puzzle for investors, seem ready to end the U.S. central bank’s run of 10 straight rate increases later this month while leaving the door open to a future rise in borrowing costs. But after weeks in which Fed policymakers tried hard to keep their options open – with those inclined towards more hikes acknowledging a case to hold steady, and those worried about higher rates acknowledging stubbornly high inflation may require them – ...

A fall this week in euro zone inflation is “very welcome” but not definitive with underlying pressures and prices for services remaining quite strong, European Central Bank governing council member Gabriel Makhlouf was quoted as saying on Friday. “So I think for me, what it says is that our next meeting, which is in just under two weeks, we’re likely to see another increase” in ECB interest rates, Makhlouf told Irish national broadcaster RTE in an interview. “We decided last month to move to a 25-basis point (rise) and I ...

Philadelphia Federal Reserve President Patrick Harker on Thursday said that while high inflation is coming down at a “disappointingly slow” pace, the U.S. central bank may not need to raise interest rates much to hurry the process along. “I am closely monitoring incoming data, listening to our contacts and audiences, and evaluating economic conditions to assess whether additional tightening will be needed,” Harker said in remarks prepared for delivery to a National Association for Business Economics webinar. “I do believe that we are close to the point where we can ...

China has signed a cooperation agreement with Argentina on promoting the joint construction of the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’, China’s state planner said on Friday. The agreement will deepen China and Argentina’s cooperation on areas including infrastructure, energy, economy and trade, as well as finance, the National Development and Reform Commision said in a statement. Source: Reuters (Reporting by Beijing newsroom Editing by Christina Fincher)

U.S. job growth accelerated in May, but a jump in the unemployment rate to a seven-month high of 3.7% suggested that labor market conditions were easing, which could give the Federal Reserve cover to forgo an interest rate hike this month. The increase in the unemployment rate from a 53-year low of 3.4% in April reported by the Labor Department on Friday was mostly driven by Blacks. It was also partly the result of more people entering the labor force, an increase in supply that is reducing pressure on businesses ...

U.S. President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign promise to make wealthy Americans and corporations pay more in taxes to finance a range of social priorities breathed its last gasp, at least for this presidential term, with the debt ceiling deal he struck with Republicans on Saturday. The deal to cap discretionary spending and suspend the debt ceiling contains no tax rate changes to raise revenue; it also slashes new funding Biden had allocated to the hollowed-out Internal Revenue Service. The agreement caps Republicans’ successful defense of the debt-boosting 2017 Trump tax ...

The economic airplane hasn’t reached the runway yet and has hit some more heavy turbulence in 2023 – but investors suspect a relatively gentle touchdown may be back on the cards. It’s not even midyear yet, but the full gamut of scenarios has been juggled in just five months. World markets have swung from “hard landing” fears of late 2022 to the “soft landing” hopes of the new year and then even unnerving thoughts of “no landing” at all – just before the banking stress hit of March forced them ...

Japan’s economy likely grew more than initially estimated in the first three months of this year, thanks to solid investments by manufacturers, a Reuters poll showed. Revised real gross domestic product (GDP) data is expected to show the world’s third-largest economy expanded at an annualised rate of 1.9% in the first quarter, higher than a preliminary reading of 1.6%, according to the poll of 18 economists. A forecast 1.3% increase in capital expenditure, larger than the provisional estimate for a 0.9% rise, would be the main driver of upgrade, analysts ...

Many European Central Bank policymakers preferred a larger rate hike last month but agreed to a 25 basis-point move as long as the bank signalled that further increases are still coming, given stubborn inflation, the accounts of the meeting showed. The ECB slowed the pace of rate hikes to 25 basis points in May from 50 basis points in the previous three meetings and only Austria’s Robert Holzmann held out for a bigger increase, according to sources close to the discussion. “Most of these members indicated that they could accept ...

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits increased modestly last week, pointing to continued labor market tightness that could push the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates elevated. Labor market resilience was underscored by other data on Thursday showing private payrolls increased more than expected in May, boosted by hiring in the leisure and hospitality industry as well as the natural resources and construction sectors. Demand has remained strong despite 500 basis points worth of interest rate increases from the Federal Reserve since March 2022, when the ...

France prides itself on taking its food seriously, but many consumers are now tightening their belts or skimping on quality, hit by a record inflation rate that threatens to serve up another political headache for the government. Adjusted for inflation, household spending on food fell year on year by a record 10% in April, to its lowest since March 2009, data from statistics agency INSEE showed on Wednesday. That followed a near 16% annual increase in food prices – another record – in March. The rate eased back in May, ...