The Federal Reserve Bank

Another senior U.S. official is coming to China. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is visiting from July 6 to July 9. The New York Times, Associated Press, the U.K.’s Guardian, Reuters and many other media outlets all promptly followed up on this. The close attention of the foreign media showed that the world is looking forward to an improvement in...

American small-business confidence slightly climbed to a seven-month high last month, but concerns about inflation remain persistent, according to a recent report. Pessimism over the U.S. economy diminished sharply, while sales expectations improved, but a persistently tight labor market is continuing to concern analysts about future inflation rates. The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) Small Business Optimism Index, which...

Home prices hit a record high again in May, amid a worsening supply shortage in the housing market. The sharp jump in mortgage interest rates in last year caused an overheated housing market to slow down, but the slump did not last long. The cost for a home, which has been rising since the start of the year, rose 0.7...

LONDON—Global stocks traded around their highs for the year on Thursday as investors bet that the Federal Reserve was finally taming inflation and could end its rate hiking cycle as soon as this month. U.S. data on Wednesday showed consumer prices rose modestly in June, registering the smallest annual increase in more than two years as the economy shifted into...

The positive impact of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s “icebreaker trip” in June is now emerging: Another heavyweight member of President Joe Biden’s cabinet, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, will be on Chinese soil this week.* The first female chair of the Federal Reserve and the first female treasury secretary in U.S. history has the important task of further easing...

The major U.S. banks are set to report the biggest jump in loan losses since the COVID-19 pandemic, as rising interest rates put mounting pressure on borrowers across the country. America’s top lenders are expected to release their second quarterly earnings reports this week, with JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and BlackRock releasing theirs on July 14. Bank of America and...

Commentary “You will own nothing, and you will be happy.” This confronting statement emanates from the World Economic Forum (WEF), a non-governmental organisation established in 1971 by Klaus Schwab. By all appearances, the WEF is the most powerful organisation in the world. For decades, it has been at the centre of bringing together the world’s richest and most powerful in...

NEW YORK—Stocks ticked higher on Wall Street Monday ahead of a week with updates on where inflation and corporate profits are heading. The S&P 500 rose 10.58, or 0.2 percent, to 4,409.53, coming off just its second losing week in the last eight. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 209.52, or 0.6 percent, to 33,944.40, and the Nasdaq composite added...

Interest rates are likely to be raised a “couple” of more times this year as inflation is still far too high, says the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Despite price pressures slowing, San Francisco Fed Bank President Mary Daly believes the institution needs to continue raising interest rates, a policy decision that requires a balancing act...

SINGAPORE/LONDON—The dollar regained ground on Monday, partly recovering from a knee-jerk reaction to Friday data showing U.S. job gains were the smallest in two-and-a-half years, while disappointing inflation figures in China weighed on the yuan and proxies. The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of major peers, was up 0.15 percent at 102.44 having tumbled 0.87 percent...

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that a U.S. recession is still “not completely off the table” in the near future, but she claimed the country is on the right path in bringing down decades-high inflation. “It’s not completely off the table,” Ms. Yellen told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday about a possible recession after the Department of Labor’s...

U.S. home mortgage rates soared towards 7 percent this week, pushing away many potential home buyers as affordability pressures for some pushed home ownership further out of reach. The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage hit 7.22 percent on July 6, reaching its highest point since November, according data published by to Mortgage News Daily. Freddie Mac’s report showed...

Federal Reserve economists still expect a recession starting later this year, according to minutes from the June Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) policy meetings. The economic forecast put together by staff at the policy meeting “continued to assume that the effects of the expected further tightening in bank credit conditions, amid already tight financial conditions” would trigger a “mild recession”...

LONDON/SINGAPORE—The dollar fell slightly against the yen on Tuesday as markets remained on high alert for signs of Japanese intervention, but the broader market was placid with U.S. traders off for a public holiday. The greenback was down 0.18 percent at 1104 GMT to 144.44 yen, after rising 0.27 percent on Monday. However, the yen remained close to last week’s...

Commentary Estimates of U.S. growth have improved, but remain massively below the Federal Reserve’s projections. After the largest monetary and fiscal stimulus in recent years, growth remains well below trend and debt is significantly higher. It is interesting to hear Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen say that “trickle-down economics did not work,” when in reality this is the failed trickle down:...

KevinHyde/iStock/Getty Images Plus It’s a seductive appeal: “Soak the rich!” “Make them pay their fair share!” “Get your piece of the pie!” As Norway is proving with its “wealth tax,” however, there’s a simple reason why this doesn’t work: The rich will simply take their pie to greener (and less meaner) pastures. In fact, ever since Norway’s Labor Party won...

U.S. consumer spending stalled in May to the lowest growth rate this year as inflation remained elevated. Consumer spending or personal consumption expenditures (PCE) only rose by 0.1 percent in May, according to a June 30 news release (pdf) by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). This is the lowest growth rate so far in 2023, equal to that...

SINGAPORE/LONDON—The yen briefly weakened past the closely watched 145 per dollar level on Friday although traders’ fears of intervention by Japanese authorities kept it in check, while the dollar was also strong more broadly ahead of U.S. inflation data. Barring unexpected interventions, the day’s main event for FX markets is the U.S. personal consumption expenditure price index, which will be...

Nearly two thirds of the countries in the world are now “exploring” central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) at one level or another, a new report says. The report, published on Wednesday by Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council, reveals that a total of 130 countries—representing 98 percent of global economy—are taking steps to convert their central bank money into digital form....

LANCASTER, N.H.—As its motto suggests, the “Live Free or Die” state is already pretty friendly to liberty-minded Americans—enough that the Free State Project has enticed scads of libertarians to move there. It’s also one of the few places where a critical mass of Free Staters could influence politics. The population, though fast-growing, remains low, and its state legislature is a...