https://www.scmp.com/rss/319817/feed Barry D. Wood is a journalist, author and educator. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Jim Grant, among the most astute observers of interest rates in the United States, has no doubt that the price of money is the most important price in a market economy. The publisher of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, he warns that the era of zero short-term rates makes the rapid rise to 5.5 per cent dangerous. The US Federal Reserve began raising interest rates to drive down inflation in March 2022. Since then, the Fed has raised rates almost a dozen times to take the short-term rate it... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3234413/us-inflation-fight-cant-afford-federal-reserve-lose-its-nerve-now?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3234413/us-inflation-fight-cant-afford-federal-reserve-lose-its-nerve-now?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 17 Sep 2023 12:30:14 +0000 Greatly limiting Russia’s participation in the global payments system is a significant escalation of sanctions. Several nations agreed on February 26 that selected large Russian banks would no longer have access to Swift, the messaging cooperative based in Belgium that is owned by 11,000 institutions worldwide, including 300 in Russia. In addition, the Russian central bank’s foreign exchange reserves being held abroad were frozen. Swift is an acronym for the Society for Worldwide Interbank... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3168831/swift-sanctions-russia-wont-stop-gas-flow-europe-will-they-blunt?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3168831/swift-sanctions-russia-wont-stop-gas-flow-europe-will-they-blunt?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 03 Mar 2022 00:13:43 +0000 Warning lights are flashing in the United States – petrol prices are up by more than 40 per cent, home prices are surging, the labour market is tight and supply disruptions are creating shortages. Inflation has risen to a 13-year high of 5.4 per cent. Unless the US Federal Reserve scales back monetary stimulus, the economy will move dangerously close to a treadmill of spiralling inflation. To be clear, since the Covid-19 pandemic struck early last year, the Fed has done the right thing. It acted... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/united-states/article/3155072/inflation-not-repeat-taper-tantrum-new-enemy?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/united-states/article/3155072/inflation-not-repeat-taper-tantrum-new-enemy?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 07 Nov 2021 08:00:11 +0000 Working from home “is really the biggest shift in how we work since the invention of the automobile”, says Marc Cenedella of Ladders, a job search website. Furthermore, the trend is here to stay. Others analysing the pandemic world use stronger superlatives. A Forbes article calls working from home as transformative as the Industrial Revolution of the 1700s. Futurist Mark Pesce says: “The pandemic appears to have reversed the migration toward urban centres that has been going on since the start... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3152436/work-home-revolution-force-change-better-or-worse?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3152436/work-home-revolution-force-change-better-or-worse?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 16 Oct 2021 17:30:10 +0000 US Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell is staking his reputation on the current spike in inflation being transitory. Powell and his colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee believe that the US economy is still reeling from the Covid-19 pandemic and requires continued, unprecedented monetary and fiscal support.  Powell is undeterred by first-quarter annualised GDP growth of 6.4 per cent, pointing instead to the economy being 7 million jobs short than before the pandemic. Accordingly,... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3136938/overstimulated-us-economy-will-inflation-really-be-transitory?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3136938/overstimulated-us-economy-will-inflation-really-be-transitory?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 12 Jun 2021 17:30:00 +0000 As Greeks voted on Sunday, the cover of the German financial daily Handelsblatt depicted Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras holding a gun to his head beneath the caption: "Give me the money or I'll shoot!" His defiance was endorsed by Greeks, who voted "no" to the bailout programme on offer from the International Monetary Fund, European Union governments and the European Central Bank. But although Tsipras' anti-austerity government survives, he will not quickly obtain the cash and debt relief his... https://www.scmp.com/comment/article/1833334/more-misery-and-turmoil-loom-greece?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/article/1833334/more-misery-and-turmoil-loom-greece?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 06 Jul 2015 06:12:19 +0000