Euro zone wage growth could keep pushing up inflation for years but this does not signal a permanent shift in wage dynamics and current indicators underlying inflation may be misleading, European Central Bank chief economist Philip Lane said on Friday. Wage growth has been a key focus of policymakers this year due to fears that firms will be forced to boost compensation to offset rapid inflation, setting off a hard-to-break wage-price spiral that could force the ECB to keep rates high for long. While no such spiral is evident for ...

Turkey and Qatar are in the final stages of talks for Doha to provide up to $10 billion in funding for Ankara, including up to $3 billion by the end of this year, two senior Turkish officials and one other source told Reuters. One of the officials said the total funding could take the form of a swap, eurobond or other method, and that the Turkish and Qatari leaders had discussed the issue. The foreign funding could help shore up forex reserves to backstop President Tayyip Erdogan’s unorthodox policy of ...

This event, hosted by the Stockholm Environment Institute, will present their initiative on governing bioeconomy pathways, and will provide a platform for UNCTAD’s circular economy programme, to present lessons drawn from the UNCTAD-FCDO Sustainable Manufacturing and Environmental Pollution (SMEP) programme. In the past decade or so, the circular economy and bioeconomy have moved from academic discussions and analysis into more tangible programmes, policies and business practices in different countries and world regions. Both concepts are fundamental elements within broader sustainable development aims but it has taken time to articulate the ...

Retailers ranging from Walmart WMT.N to Barnes & Noble are installing cameras or locking away items to deter shoplifters and thieves as they brace for a post-pandemic rush of holiday shoppers this year. Some, including Walmart, J.C. Penney and Walgreens WBA.O, put in place new surveillance systems or more security guards. Others, like Target TGT.Nand Barnes & Noble, sealed merchandise behind plexiglass or tethered it with steel cables to store shelves. The retail industry has decried theft this holiday season as it struggles with excess inventories and a pullback in ...

American venture capitalist Doug Leone doesn’t think the tech wreck is going away anytime soon. The Sequoia Capital partner gave a gloomy outlook for the global economy, warning that today’s downturn was worse than recessions in 2000 and 2008. The situation today I think is more difficult and more challenging than either ’08, which was really a protected financial services crisis, or 2000, which was a protected technology crisis,” Leone said, speaking onstage at the Slush startup conference in Helsinki. “Here, we have a global crisis. We have interest rates ...

A “substantial majority” of policymakers at the Federal Reserve’s meeting early this month agreed it would “likely soon be appropriate” to slow the pace of interest rate hikes as debate broadened over the implications of the U.S. central bank’s rapid tightening of monetary policy, according to the minutes from the session. The readout of the Nov. 1-2 meeting, at which the Fed raised its policy rate by three-quarters of a percentage point for the fourth straight time, showed officials were largely satisfied they could move rates in smaller, more deliberate ...

Risks in the German financial system are building as the economy heads for a recession and struggles with rising interest rates and sky-high energy prices, but a correction in the housing market is not imminent, the Bundesbank said on Thursday. Europe’s largest economy has been among the top losers of Russia’s war in Ukraine because of its excessive reliance on Russian gas and the economy is now set to suffer a significant downturn starting in the fourth quarter of 2022. “The macro-financial environment has deteriorated substantially,” the Bundesbank said in ...

JP Morgan remains the world’s most systemically important bank according to the latest rankings from the G20’s Financial Stability Board published on Monday. The FSB began the annual rankings after the global financial crisis over a decade ago, requiring the world’s biggest lenders to hold an extra buffer of capital, calibrated across five ‘buckets’, and undergo tougher scrutiny of operations. JP Morgan remains in bucket 2 – there is still nobody in the top category with most capital requirements. “The 30 banks on the list remain the same as the ...

Growing risks of a global economic slowdown will likely prevent the Bank of Japan (BOJ) from phasing out its stimulus programme, at least until 2024, former BOJ executive Kazuo Momma told Reuters on Thursday. With central banks around the world raising interest rates to cope with soaring inflation, markets are rife with speculation the BOJ, too, will adjust yield curve control (YCC) and allow long-term interest rates to rise more when dovish Governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s term ends in April next year. Given the rising cost of prolonged easing, the BOJ ...

Japan’s government left the overall assessment of the nation’s economy unchanged in its monthly report for November, noting a moderate recovery but remaining cautious over risks from a global economic slowdown and financial market fluctuations. The economic report from Japan’s Cabinet Office comes after data showed last week the economy unexpectedly shrank for the first time in a year in the third quarter, as sluggish global growth and import costs hurt consumption and business activity. It also follows data showing that manufacturing activity in Japan contracted at the fastest pace ...

Among 56 major items and services, including electronics, batteries, and shipbuilding, Korean companies ranked first in the world in five product categories, including semiconductors and smartphones, according to a survey. The No. 1 items were all produced by Samsung Electronics. The Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei) of Japan surveyed the global market shares in 56 product categories in 2021. Samsung Electronics took first place in five categories — DRAM, NAND flash, organic light emitting diode (OLED) panels, ultra-thin TVs, and smartphones. Samsung’s share of the world DRAM market stood at 42.7 ...

China reported a record high number of COVID-19 infections on Thursday, with cities nationwide imposing localised lockdowns and other curbs that are darkening the outlook for the world’s second largest economy. The surge in the number of infections, at record highs not seen since an outbreak in Shanghai earlier this year, is diminishing investors’ hopes that China will soon ease the rigid zero-COVID policy that, along with a downturn in the property market, is battering the economy. The restrictions have also extracted a toll on China’s increasingly frustrated residents, as ...

Bank of England Deputy Governor Dave Ramsden backed more interest rate hikes on Thursday, but said he would consider cutting rates if the economy and inflation pressures panned out differently to his expectation. Ramsden is the latest member of the Monetary Policy Committee to mention the possibility of cutting interest rates at some point, after the BoE earlier this month said market expectations for interest north of 5% were too high. “Although my bias is towards further tightening, if the economy develops differently to my expectation and persistence in inflation ...

India is headed for slower growth next year more in line with its long-term potential, Moody’s Analytics said in its latest report ‘APAC Outlook: A Coming Downshift’ on Thursday. The rating agency said that inward investment and productivity gains in technology and agriculture could accelerate growth in the country. However, in case of inflation persists, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) would increase the repo rate above 6%, causing GDP to falter, Moody’s claimed. In August, Moody’s projected India’s growth to slow to 8% in 2022 and further to 5% ...

More than 400 industrial and business elites, including representatives from over 300 Chinese and South Korean enterprises attended an economic forum in Seoul on Tuesday to discuss ways to promote pragmatic economic cooperation, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported. The gathering came at a time when Washington is pushing for policies that exert US influence over global technology and supply chains in its attempt to choke off China’s access to advanced semiconductor technologies. Obviously, some do not want to see China-South Korea relations will maintain healthy and keep their stable ...