Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell sees the U.S. economy generating highly optimistic expectations. The jobless rate is at 3.9% and inflation is around the Fed’s goal of 2%. Historically, low unemployment has fueled inflation and sometimes has forced the Fed into hiking interest rates rapidly. Many forecasters are predicting that these favorable conditions are likely …
India’s economy is currently at $2.6 trillion on an exchange rate basis. Hong Kong Shanghai Bank and forecasters agree that India will surpass Japan to become the number three economy in the world. India’s government has a target of a $10 trillion economy by 2030. The strength of the US dollar relative to the Indian …
The trade war is ramping to higher levels. President Trump’s new tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods start on Monday, and he has threatened more. China had already retaliated with tariffs of its own. China has canceled high-level talks planned for this week. Yukon Huang laid out a solution to the trade war. …
OPEC said world oil consumption will reach 100 million barrels per day (bpd) later in 2018. This milestone level will be reached sooner than previously forecast. Mohammad Barkindo told an energy conference in South Africa’s Cape Town that a stable environment was needed to encourage oil industry investment to meet the rising demand. Barkindo said …
China’s first quarter 2018 retail sales were 10% more than the US level. China was at $1.436 trillion and the US was at $1.306 trillion. China’s overall retail is growing at 9% per year or double the US rate. China’s ecommerce is growing at 21% per year. China Second phase of Urbanization China is creating …
A cubic mile of oil per year is about 5.084 Terawatts per year with continuous power generation. making current world energy use around 15 TW. The world is using about 3.9 cubic miles of oil per year in electricity. The world was using 3.19 cubic miles of oil per year in electricity in 2006. The …
The U.S. and Mexico struck a trade deal on Monday that paved the way to replace NAFTA, the current agreement between the two nations and Canada. Mexican officials promised the Latin American country would start buying as farm product as possible from the USA. Nextbigfuture notes that the USA was always the 800-pound gorilla in …
The U.S. economy is growing at a fast clip, and the bull market is entering its ninth year. Some economists are starting worry over rising interest rates and a negative signal from the bond market called a flattening yield curve. The yield curve—with one exception in 1966—has basically predicted every recession according to Natixis Chief …
Although there has been a lot of recovery from the 2008 financial crisis there are still many countries with fragile economies. Argentina has 29% inflation and 9.1% unemployment. South Africa has 27% unemployment and there were predictions that some cities were on the brink of collapse. Turkey’s currency has lost nearly 40% of its value …
A research paper claims that if the world stays at 2 degrees celsius of warming versus going up to 4 degrees celsius of warming then the world economy will be US$17.5 trillion per year stronger in 2100. At 4 degrees Celsius of global warming, the losses in income to the global economy are claimed to …
A cup of coffee in Venezuela costs 2 million Bolivars but the week before it was 1.4 million Bolivars. This means the prices are doubling every two weeks. 26 doublings in a year is 67 million which is 6.7 billion percent inflation. The Post-World War II hyperinflation of Hungary held the record where prices doubled …