Month: July 2022

Brussels has responded fiercely to Vladimir Putin’s war plan by hammering Russia with a series of sanctions aimed at crippling the war-torn country’s economy and derailing its war effort altogether. But Putin has not been deterred by all this so far, and there are now fears that he may soon wage his own political war against the European Union as part of a cruel revenge plot. Hundreds of millions of Europeans are facing a bitterly cold winter and have been urged to ration gas as Putin faces the possibility of cutting off supplies to the continent entirely. The EU has…

This week, the bandwagon in the Conservative leadership contest moves from parliament to members of the country. Ballots are expected to go to the polls of 150,000 Conservative party members in the coming days, with finalists Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak facing off in another televised debate on Sky News at 8pm on Thursday. But have Conservative members already made up their minds? Polls have shown Truss pulling ahead of the former chancellor among the grassroots. Stephen Bush, who runs the Inside Politics newsletter, warns that Sunak has limited time to close the gap with Truss as “most Tory members…

Neel Kashkari, Minneapolis Federal Reserve Brendan McDermid | Reuters If you’re debating whether or not the U.S. is in a recession, you’re asking the wrong question, according to a senior Federal Reserve official. “Whether we’re technically in a recession or not doesn’t change my analysis,” Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “I’m focused on the inflation data. I’m focused on the wage data. And so far, inflation continues to surprise us on the upside. Wages continue to grow.” Last month, US inflation jumped to a four-decade high, rising 9.1%…

Stock futures fell slightly after the market’s best month since 2020 as investors await another week of key earnings reports and economic data. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures fell 67 points, or 0.2%. S&P 500 futures were down about 0.2% and Nasdaq 100 futures were down 0.3%. Friday, all major indexes gained, posting winning weeks and capping the best month of the year so far and then some. The Dow gained 6.7% in July, while the S&P 500 rose 9.1%. The Nasdaq Composite rose 12.4% as investors rushed to the tech stocks that took the biggest hit during this bear…

Beijing is stepping up efforts to derail House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in the coming days, and the Communist Party’s threatening rhetoric makes more sense against the domestic backdrop. China’s economy looks increasingly fragile, so it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if President Xi Jinping turned to the nationalist abyss as a distraction. The basic story is slowing economic growth. Beijing has set a GDP growth target of 5.5% by 2022, which is modest by historical standards. Even now the Party seems to admit that the country is not meeting this target, at least not honestly, as growth…