US central bankers remain committed to raising interest rates further to quell rising prices, but agreed it would be appropriate to slow the pace of the hikes "at some point," the Federal Reserve said Wednesday.. In the days since the last Fed meeting, financial markets have been cheered by comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who signaled that a slowdown in the rapid rate hikes would come eventually.
US central bankers remain committed to raising interest rates further to quell rising prices, but agreed that "at some point" it would be appropriate to slow the pace of such hikes, the Federal Reserve said Wednesday.. The central bank has raised the benchmark borrowing rate four times this year, including two massive three-quarter-point increases in June and July after US annual inflation spiked to 9.1 percent in June.
The Saudi economy is expected to grow 7.6 percent this year, up from 3.2 percent in 2021, on the back of soaring oil revenues, the International Monetary Fund said Wednesday.. Bumper oil revenues and increased tax revenues from the non-oil economy saw the overall fiscal balance improve by almost nine percentage points to a deficit of 2.3 percent of GDP last year, the IMF said.
US retail sales held steady in July as gas prices fell sharply, but the new data released Wednesday showed consumers are still spending, keeping the pressure on the Federal Reserve to continue its aggressive interest rate hikes.. "Despite the flat headline reading, the core retail sales figures in July show the consumer has staying power," Kathy Bostjancic of Oxford Economics said.
A stranded cargo ship caused traffic to be halted Wednesday at the Rhine river in western Germany after suffering a technical fault, authorities said, at a time when water transport was already ailing from a drought.. Transport on the Rhine has gained significance in recent months because among cargo moved on the river is coal, now all the more necessary as Germany seeks to wean itself off Russian gas.
Chinese tech giant Tencent on Wednesday posted its first drop in quarterly revenue since going public, as the company grapples with China's economic downturn, pandemic disruptions and ongoing scrutiny from regulators.. "Tencent has tightened its belt as the Chinese tech industry embraces a downturn," Analyst Willer Chen at Forsyth Barr Asia told Bloomberg News.
Norway's sovereign wealth fund, the world's largest, shrank by some 1.68 trillion kroner ($173.2 billion) in the first half of the year, weighed down by tech stocks, the Norwegian central bank said Wednesday.. On Wednesday, according to a counter on the central bank's website, the fund was valued at 12.3 trillion kroner ($1.26 trillion). phy/po/rl
A nuclear reactor in southern China has been reconnected to the electricity grid more than a year after it was shut down to repair damage, its operator said.. Operators reconnected the damaged reactor after months of "inspection and maintenance", China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN) said in a stock exchange filing late on Tuesday.
The co-founder of the failed Terra cryptocurrency, which collapsed and wiped out about $40 billion of investors' money in May, has admitted he was "wrong", but said that he was not talking to South Korean investigators.. You know, just admit that I was wrong," Kwon said.
British inflation surged to a new 40-year high in July on rising food prices, official data showed Wednesday, adding to a cost-of-living crisis as the country faces the prospect of recession.. It also projected that the country would enter a recession that would last until late 2023, with official data last week showing Britain's economy shrank in the second quarter.
