Chinese government spending in August declined for the first time in seven months, suggesting that the government may be running low on fiscal firepower to stabilize economic growth. China’s total fiscal spending slipped 0.2% from a year earlier, after rising 3.5% in July, according to calculations by Wind based on Ministry of Finance data released on Tuesday. Fiscal revenue was up 3.3% last month, after rising 1.8% in July, according to Wind. To counter the impact of rising trade tensions and stoke sluggish domestic demand, officials front-loaded spending this year ...

As long as inflation in the euro zone does not converge to the European Central Bank’s (ECB) target, interest rates in the bloc will not rise, ECB Vice President Luis De Guindos said on Wednesday. De Guindos was speaking a week after the ECB cut rates deeper into negative territory and promised bond purchases with no end-date in a bid to reverse a renewed slowdown in the euro zone’s economy nearly a decade after a debt crisis. Economics risks remain tilted to the downside, De Guindos added at an event ...

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York saw huge demand from banks Wednesday morning, as they rushed to bid on the $75 billion on offer in a second day of intervention to ease a crunch in overnight funding markets. Banks bid for $80.5 billion in funding in the auction — $5 billion above the maximum amount offered by the Fed. Tuesday’s auction, the first in a decade, saw banks take $53 billion of the $75 billion on offer. Overnight rates remained elevated before Wednesday’s auction at about 2.8%. Soon after, ...

The new age in the labor market is shaping up as a missed opportunity in the poorer parts of Europe to stem the outflow of skilled labor. Hundreds of thousands of Serbians, Ukrainians and Romanians make a living through global freelance platforms, working for international clients that pay better than local companies. It could be a perfect way to keep the best minds from leaving their homelands for better opportunities abroad. Instead, outdated regulations force them to live on the edge of legality, and may foil efforts to slow the ...

A growing number of consumers are over-indebted and ill-equipped to cope with an economic shock, Britain’s largest debt charity, StepChange, has warned after a record number of calls to its national helpline in the first half of this year. More than 331,000 people contacted StepChange for help with problem debts in the first six months of 2019, and the charity found those they advised were saddled with more unsecured debts. StepChange said its findings showed an increasing number of British households were struggling to cope financially and “living on a ...

Earlier this month, China instituted a 5% tariff on imports of American oil. According to the EIA, the U.S. exported 8.7 million barrels of crude oil to China in June. This is not a significant amount for China, which is the world’s largest oil importer. However, American oil exports are in their infancy and losing China as a customer would be significant. In fact, Unipec, the trading arm of Chinese oil giant Sinopec, scrambled to resell oil arriving in China from the U.S. on September 5–four days after the tariff ...

Earnings expectations for European companies for the third quarter have fallen slightly as the ongoing trade war takes a toll on corporate profits, according to data released late on Tuesday. Another drop in profits would mark the third straight quarter of deterioration confirming a corporate recession. Companies listed on the pan-European STOXX 600 <.STOXX> index are expected to report a 1.9% decline in earnings for the July-September quarter, compared with a 1.8% drop expected a week ago, according to the latest data from I/B/E/S Refinitiv. Second-quarter earnings are seen declining ...

Japan’s exports slipped for a ninth straight month in August as the Sino-U.S. tariff dispute hit demand from China and other Asian trading partners, heightening risks for the world’s third-largest economy. The negative reading adds some pressure to the Bank of Japan to expand stimulus at its policy meeting on Thursday to prop up business sentiment and manufacturing activity, which have been hit by global economic weakness. Exports in August slumped 8.2% from a year earlier, Ministry of Finance data showed on Wednesday, dragged down by autos, car parts and ...

European countries with fiscal scope should act in a coordinated manner to implement structural reforms in conjunction with the European Central Bank’s measures to revive the sluggish economy, ECB policymaker Pablo Hernandez De Cos said on Wednesday. “It is imperative that national and European authorities carry out structural reforms (…) to increase the growth potential of the euro area,” De Cos said during an event hosted by the University of Valencia. De Cos said that available data indicated that the economic activity in the euro area remained weak in the ...

Inflation in the U.K. cooled sharply in August, a slide driven by tumbling prices for computer games over the summer. The slowdown may be shortlived. Economists expect a fall in sterling and higher oil prices following an attack on a key refinery in Saudi Arabia to push up consumer prices in the coming months. Annual inflation in the U.K. slowed to 1.7% in August, the Office for National Statistics said Wednesday, the slowest rate of price growth since December 2016. Consumer prices rose 2.1% on the year in July. The ...

Stephen Schwarzman, the billionaire co-founder of investment powerhouse Blackstone, told CNBC on Tuesday that China knows it must change its trade and business practices but it’s reluctant to do so because of the spoils it’s reaped by protecting its economy. “China in the last 40 years had more growth, I think, than any country in history. It’s an astonishing miracle what they did. But they did it behind tariff walls. They did it behind markets that are not accessible. They did it with other approaches to intellectual property than are ...

Oil prices (CL=F) have shot up following the drone attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil production facilities over the weekend, which U.S. officials have blamed on Iran. Higher oil prices have never been popular in the U.S. – they lead to higher prices for gas and plane tickets. The consumer has been a “stalwart” of the latest expansion, as S&P Ratings’s U.S. Chief Economist Beth Ann Bovino wrote in a recent note. Consumer spending and sentiment has driven the economy’s growth considerably – and higher energy prices could impede that momentum. ...

Euro zone inflation was stable in August at its lowest level in nearly three years, the European Union’s statistics agency said on Wednesday, confirming its earlier estimates. Eurostat said inflation in the 19 countries sharing the euro was at 1% on the year in August, unchanged from the July reading and in line with expectations in a Reuters poll. On the month, inflation went up 0.1%, below market expectations of a 0.2% rise, new monthly data released by Eurostat showed. The rates of yearly price increases in July and August ...

EU nations are at odds on how to change rules on government spending in the 28-member bloc — an impasse that could potentially halt plans to revive the region’s economy. The European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, has started looking at ways to change its complex fiscal rulebook; but the initial debate between finance ministers at the weekend showed it will take time before any concrete proposals emerge. “I do believe that the simpler the rules are the better and the enforcement factor is essential, because if we do not ...

The Dutch economy is set to grow by 1.5 percent next year Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra said Tuesday, as officials warned of a slowdown blamed on Brexit and the ongoing US-China trade war. Speaking at the opening of the Dutch parliament, Hoekstra also announced that the Dutch government was loosening its purse strings to spend more on stimulating the economy, including the sluggish housing market, child care and defence. “Despite all the upheaval, the Dutch economy remains robust,” Hoekstra told MPs at the presentation of the 2020 budget. For the ...