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The world’s top central bankers have warned that the era of low interest rates and moderate inflation has come to an end following the “massive geopolitical shock” from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and from the coronavirus pandemic. Speaking at the European Central Bank’s annual conference, Christine Lagarde, its president, Jay Powell, chair of the Federal

ExxonMobil’s chief executive predicted a resurgence of investment in fossil fuel production as he blamed soaring oil and gas prices on an “optimistic view” about how quickly the energy transition can happen. Darren Woods, the head of the biggest western oil and gas supermajor, said pressure to reduce emissions by cutting production before addressing demand

G7 leaders meeting for a summit in the Bavarian Alps on Sunday are seeking a deal to impose a “price cap” on Russian oil as the group works to curb Russia’s ability to finance its four-month war in Ukraine. The goal would be for a broad range of countries going beyond the G7 to impose

The US Supreme Court has struck down Roe vs Wade, the legal decision that has enshrined the constitutional right to an abortion for nearly 50 years, in a dramatic ruling by the court’s conservative majority that will shake up American society, politics and jurisprudence for years to come. In the decision authored by Justice Samuel

British Airways is facing disruption at London’s Heathrow airport this summer after hundreds of staff voted to strike, the latest industrial action set to hit passengers in the UK as the railways ground to a virtual standstill again on Thursday. Both the Unite and GMB unions said their members had voted in favour of industrial

The UK government is collaborating with Boston-based Moderna to build the country’s first manufacturing centre for messenger RNA vaccines in a deal worth £1bn as it seeks a lead in responding to the current and future pandemics. The government is aiming to secure homegrown supplies of a technology that has proved a crucial weapon in

Strikes will spread across the UK unless the government acts on its promise to create a high wage economy, the leader of the country’s main movement for organised labour has warned. Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, said that workers all over the country were supporting striking rail employees and would in

Crypto enthusiasts have long lauded their currencies over fiat ones partly as protection from inflation. A surge in the latter, due to energy costs, has not only benefited the dollar this year but also swelled the costs of creating crypto staples such as bitcoin. Meanwhile, crypto prices have gone the other way. As key central

Shares in Asia followed Wall Street lower after the UK and Switzerland raised interest rates, adding to concerns that tighter monetary policies from central banks could undercut a global economic recovery. Japan’s benchmark Topix index and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 both shed 2 per cent, while South Korea’s Kospi fell 1.7 per cent. China’s CSI 300

The mammoth task of shrinking the Federal Reserve’s $9tn balance sheet has finally begun. On Wednesday, the US central bank will stop pumping the proceeds of an initial $15bn of maturing Treasuries back into the $23tn market for US government debt, the first time it has done so since it kicked off its bond-buying programme in the

Crypto exchange Coinbase plans to cut almost a fifth of its workforce, in the latest sign of the chill descending on the digital assets market as token prices tumble. The US-listed group’s plans to reduce its staffing by 1,100 employees comes as a sharp downturn in the crypto market threatens to deal a heavy blow

Boris Johnson has been accused by Tory MPs of “damaging the UK and everything the Conservatives stand for” as he prepares to publish a bill to rip up his 2020 Brexit deal with the EU covering trade with Northern Ireland. The legislation, to be published on Monday, will bring Johnson into conflict with many of

The Australian government has agreed to pay French defence company Naval Group A$830mn (US$585mn) to sever a submarine contract as it prepares to switch to nuclear-powered submarines as part of the Aukus alliance with the US and UK. Australia had spent A$3.4bn on the Attack-class programme, which did not deliver any submarines, and had budgeted

Rishi Sunak has been accused of squandering £11bn of taxpayers money by paying too much interest servicing the government’s debt. Calculations by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, the oldest non-partisan economic research institute in the UK, show the losses stem from the chancellor’s failure to take out insurance against interest rate rises

Economic growth in the UK will grind to a halt next year with only Russia, hobbled by western sanctions, performing worse among the G20 leading economies, the OECD forecast on Wednesday. The Paris-based organisation’s forecast highlighted the effects of high UK inflation still squeezing household and corporate incomes in 2023 alongside a further round of

Boris Johnson on Monday night survived a bruising no-confidence vote, but his victory by 211 to 148 in a ballot of Tory MPs left him badly damaged and exposed the scale of the division and animosity in his party. The result means that more than 40 per cent of Johnson’s MPs wanted to oust the

Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff on Sunday hit back at remarks by Emmanuel Macron in which the French president said it was important not to “humiliate” Russia over the war in Ukraine. In an interview with French regional newspapers on Saturday, Macron said maintaining dialogue with Vladimr Putin was crucial “so that the day when

The Crazy Bear in Stadhampton, an hour’s drive from London, was the perfect setting to celebrate Britain’s most successful investment company launch. Garish chandeliers hung between wooden beams as guests jostled for space among the ice buckets filled with magnums of champagne. At the centre of the bar was Neil Woodford, the UK’s best-known stockpicker.

Saudi Arabia has indicated to western allies that it is prepared to raise oil production should Russia’s output fall substantially under the weight of sanctions, according to five people familiar with the discussions. The kingdom has resisted calls from the White House to accelerate production increases despite oil prices trading near $120 a barrel, the

The UK and EU have agreed a co-ordinated ban on insuring ships carrying Russian oil, shutting Moscow out of the vital Lloyd’s of London insurance market and sharply curbing its ability to export crude, according to British and European officials. Lloyd’s has been the heart of the marine insurance industry for centuries and blocking its

The £150 council tax rebate that was part of February’s package to help with the cost of living crisis may not reach some people until September, the government has admitted, as local authorities grapple with the scheme’s logistics. The money for the payments, for which 80 per cent of British households are eligible, has been

Emerging market bonds are suffering their worst losses in almost three decades, hit by rising global interest rates, slowing growth and the war in Ukraine. The benchmark index of dollar-denominated EM sovereign bonds, the JPMorgan EMBI Global Diversified, has delivered total returns of around minus 15 per cent so far in 2022, its worst start

In his brief statement to the House of Commons on the UK’s cost of living crisis, Rishi Sunak managed to alleviate two economic problems, but at the cost of aggravating a third. The good news is that his actions are likely to lower the peak rate of inflation this year and will help UK households

Federal Reserve officials discussed the possibility of moving the US central bank to a “restrictive” policy stance that would better fight inflation through more aggressive interest rate increases, but worried that this could undermine the strong recovery in the jobs market.  According to minutes of the most recent FOMC meeting held in early May, most

Auditors and tax advisers in the UK are lobbying the government for exemptions from a ban on working for businesses in Russia imposed after the invasion of Ukraine. Foreign secretary Liz Truss this month announced plans to force British accounting, management consulting and public relations firms to cut ties with Russian clients as part of

This week, the global elite will convene once again in Davos, Switzerland, after a two-year pandemic break, for the World Economic Forum. The conversation will revolve around deglobalisation and its discontents. I expect the headlines will be that decoupling between China and the US is untenable, free trade always works just as David Ricardo thought

Joe Biden has decided to water down his Indo-Pacific Economic Framework in an eleventh-hour move to attract more countries to join the deal that he will unveil in Tokyo on Monday. Biden is using his first trip to Asia as US president to launch the IPEF, which is intended to respond to criticism from allies

British retail sales unexpectedly rose in April as shoppers bought more alcohol from supermarkets, suggesting people are reacting to rising prices by staying at home rather than going out. The quantity of goods bought in Great Britain rose 1.4 per cent between March and April, partially reversing declines in the previous two months, according to

Good morning. Yesterday, Rob landed in London just in time to hear that UK inflation there had hit 9 per cent. This turned out to be the best news of the day. Soon thereafter, markets descended into the worst session since the grim early weeks of the pandemic. A few days ago we wrote this:

Inflation has hit its highest level in decades for many countries, with the Ukraine conflict adding upward pressure on energy prices and squeezing households’ real incomes. Russia’s invasion of its neighbour has pushed up energy and food prices at a time when many countries were already registering near-record rates of consumer price growth, leading some