The rapid decline in energy costs should help to tame inflation in Europe, Bank of Italy governor Ignazio Visco said on Saturday, urging companies not to seek to boost their margins by leaving prices higher for longer. Visco, a member of the European Central Bank’s governing council, said the key issue was what happened to inflation now that energy prices had retreated from peaks hit after last year’s Russian invasion of Ukraine. “I expect that at this point there will also be a cooling in the increase in core inflation, ...

The gain of 339,000 U.S. payroll jobs in May was a blockbuster number, nearly double what was normal before the pandemic and seeming confirmation that key parts of the economy motor along despite aggressive Federal Reserve interest rate increases. But details beneath the headline number may, if sustained, point to some of the first cracks in a labor market that has defied expectations through much of the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The unemployment rate rose by what is a comparatively large three-tenths of a percentage point, from 3.4% to ...

Ratings agency Fitch on Friday stuck with its negative outlook for Britain’s sovereign credit rating, citing a weak economy and lingering uncertainty around Brexit trade terms with the European Union. Fitch left the ‘AA’ rating itself unchanged as part of a regular review. It expects Britain to enter a mild recession this year and suffer higher inflation than its peers. “Strengths are set against high public and external debt, and remaining uncertainty regarding the final form of the UK-EU economic relationship post-Brexit,” Fitch said in a statement. While Britain has ...

Chinese Defence Minister Li Shangfu said on Sunday that conflict with the United States would be an “unbearable disaster” but that his country seeks dialogue over confrontation. Speaking at Asia’s top security summit, the Shangri-La Dialogue, dressed in the uniform of a general in the People’s Liberation Army, Li said the world was big enough for China and the U.S. to grow together. “China and the U.S. have different systems and are different in many other ways,” he said in a speech that marked his first significant international address since ...

The latest standoff over the U.S. debt ceiling, resolved just days before the government faced a devastating default, has prompted some to call for the country to ditch its self-imposed borrowing limit. That’s not likely to happen any time soon. Though the showdown unnerved investors and prompted threats of a second U.S. debt downgrade in a little over a decade, proposals to abolish the debt ceiling have gained little traction in Congress in recent years. Republicans have shown no interest in abandoning a point of leverage that they have used ...

JPMorgan increased its 2024 economic forecast for India — but only marginally — saying the country’s growth will be affected by a slowdown in global growth momentum. The investment bank raised its 2024 growth forecast from 5% to 5.5%. The revision follows the latest gross domestic product data this week which showed the Indian economy accelerated 6.1% in the January to March quarter, an increase from 4.5% the previous quarter. The economy started the year on a “very strong note as growth came in much faster, or much higher, than ...

U.S. President Joe Biden declared a “crisis averted” on Friday in his first address from the White House’s Oval Office, touting the passage of a bill to suspend the U.S. debt ceiling and avoid economic catastrophe. Biden used the moment to plead with Americans to bridge their divides, saying his compromise with top Congress Republican Kevin McCarthy showed what could be done. “No matter how tough our politics gets, we need to see each other not as adversaries but as fellow Americans,” he said, asking Americans to “stop shouting, lower ...

Federal Reserve policymakers will probably leave interest rates unchanged when they meet later this month, but keep the door open to a rate hike in July, after a government report on Friday showed employment surged in May, but pay gains cooled. Traders now see about a one-in-three chance that the Fed will deliver an 11th straight rate increase at its June 13-14 meeting, up from about one-in-four before the Labor Department report, which showed employers added 339,000 jobs in May, far more than the 190,000 economists had expected. Average hourly ...

Federal Reserve officials may still be fighting an inflation war, but they’ve opened the door to the possibility the U.S. central bank’s benchmark overnight interest rate won’t rise from the current 5.00%-5.25% range at the upcoming June 13-14 policy meeting. Here’s a guide to the data informing the debate and the most recent comments from Fed officials: JOBS: Current release on June 2 Jobs growth in May blew through expectations, with 339,000 positions added across a broad set of industries, and wage growth remaining at a robust 4.3% annual rate. ...

The World Bank has revised its 2023 economic growth projections for GCC countries, from 7.3 per cent last year to 3.2 per cent. This is based on the assumption that the windfall from rising oil prices will come to an end. While this might seem discouraging at first, it is a useful reminder for the region that economic diversification must remain a core priority in order for it to be less affected by fuel prices in coming years. Gulf nations have come a long way in the past few decades, ...

Jobs blast through expectations The May US jobs report showed the economy added 339,000 jobs in May, well above the 195,000 consensus expectation – the range of 100,000-250,000 was a narrow one. Upward revisions to the past two months totalled 93,000, underscoring the strength of job creation. This is a survey of employers and it shows that private employment rose 283,000 with private education & health yet again the key jobs engine, adding 97,000 while leisure and hospitality increased 48,000 and professional/business service added 64,000. Government employment rose by 56,000 ...

Turkey’s newly appointed Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek said on Sunday that the country has no choice but to return to “rational ground” to ensure predictability in the economy. President Tayyip Erdogan named Simsek to his cabinet on Saturday to tackle Turkey’s cost-of-living crisis and other strains, in a clear sign that his newly elected government would return to more orthodox economic policies. In a handover ceremony, Simsek said the main goal of the new government will be to increase social welfare. “Transparency, consistency, predictability and compliance with international norms will ...

President Joe Biden on Saturday signed a bill that suspends the U.S. government’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling, averting what would have been a first-ever default with just two days to spare. The House of Representatives and the Senate passed the legislation this week after Biden and House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached an agreement following tense negotiations. The Treasury Department had warned it would be unable to pay all its bills on Monday if Congress had failed to act by then. Biden signed the bill at the White House ...

After a series of much stronger-than-expected results this reporting period, S&P 500 companies look like they will end up with first-quarter earnings essentially unchanged from a year ago. Based on Refinitiv data Friday that included results from 494 of the S&P 500 earnings now are estimated to have dipped just 0.01% year over year. That was an improvement from a week ago, when the estimated earnings decline was at 0.1%. At the start of April, analysts had forecast a 5.1% drop in earnings for the quarter. If the estimate stays ...

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell held a phone call with the head of UBS Group AG (SIX:UBSG) in the days before the bank was propelled by Swiss authorities to buy smaller rival Credit Suisse, just one of the dozens of calls and meetings Powell held from mid-March as a banking crisis unfolded. Powell’s monthly meeting logs for March, released by the Fed on May 5, showed the U.S. central bank chief spoke with Ralph Hamers, then the UBS chief executive, for 30 minutes on March 14. That was five days ...