Xia Haijun was long considered the closest associate of China Evergrande Group founder Hui Ka Yan. He accompanied Hui for a Harvard University visit in 2018, bought company bonds to boost market confidence and was the one sent to Hong Kong last year to discuss the developer’s asset sales. All told, Xia was a valued member of the Evergrande family. […]

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen gave a glass-half-full assessment of the US economy, acknowledging a slowdown that she called necessary to tame inflation while rejecting the notion the country had entered a recession. “We do see a significant slowdown in growth,” Yellen said at a press conference on Thursday. But a true recession is a “broad-based weakening of the economy,” she […]

After reporting an unexpected rebound in U.S. new home sales in the previous month, the Commerce Department released a report on Tuesday showing new home sales pullback by more than expected in the month of June. The report said new home sales plunged by 8.1 percent to an annual rate of 590,000 in June after jumping by 6.3 percent to […]

Vladimir Putin is gaming and pressuring Europe by throttling, but not cutting off completely, the already-constrained supplies of Russian gas into Europe. Earlier this month Russia’s Gazprom cut supply into Europe by 60 per cent for 10 days, blaming the reduction on a turbine that had been sent for maintenance in Canada being stranded there by the West’s sanctions. Russia […]

video Market expert predicts recession is ‘all but inevitable’ Thru the Cycle President John Lonski joins Dagen McDowell to discuss the possibility of a recession in the coming months, predicting the end of Federal Reserve rate hikes could be coming soon. The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday slashed its global growth outlook for 2022 and 2023, warning the world economy […]

Shares of Canon Inc. (CAJ) were losing more than 1 percent in Japanese trading after the imaging equipment maker reported Tuesday weak profit in its second quarter, despite higher net sales. Further, the company lifted fiscal 2022 outlook. For the second quarter, net income was 59.03 billion Japanese yen or $430.84 million, down 3.5 percent from last year’s 61.15 billion […]

video Four stocks that will add inflation protection to your portfolio Independent Advisor Alliance CIO Chris Zaccarelli discusses if the Fed’s efforts to reduce inflation are working on ‘The Claman Countdown.’ It's a bad time for consumers looking to buy a used car.  Prices for used vehicles have skyrocketed over the past two years, with consumers shelling out an average […]

The European Central Bank raised its interest rates for the first time in over a decade on Thursday, by a bigger-than-expected 50 basis points, and unveiled an anti-fragmentation tool called the Transmission Protection Instrument, or TPI. ECB President Christine Lagarde had said in June that the bank would hike interest rates by 25 basis points in July and follow up […]

The Reserve Bank of Australia should chart a credible path to bring inflation back to 2-3 percent range without hurting the economy and the labor market, Governor Philip Lowe said Wednesday. Although it is possible to do this, but the path ahead is a narrow one and it is clouded in uncertainty, Lowe said at the Australian Strategic Business Forum […]

China’s economy is flatlining under the weight of its harsh response to COVID outbreaks. Without major fiscal and monetary stimulus it will be near-impossible for the economy to meet Beijing’s growth target for this year. The June quarter GDP data released on Friday showed an economy growing at a meagre 0.4 per cent, down from the 4.8 per cent recorded […]