MILAN, Italy (Project Syndicate) entCentral banks’ efforts to contain high and rising inflation are fueling headwinds to growth and are threatening to tip the global economy into recession. But the proximate cause of today’s inflationary pressures is a large, broad-based, and persistent imbalance between supply and demand. Higher interest rates will dampen demand, but supply-side…
This year has been inescapably awful for investors, as this chart on first-half performance shows. So in an environment where every short-term move seems to be a bad one, it might be worth getting a longer-term perspective. Monish Pabrai, founder of both the Pabrai Investment Funds and the Dhando Funds and an author on investing,…
Commodities have performed well so far this year, buoyed by strength in oil on the back of tight supplies, but worries that the economy is headed for a recession has fed losses among the industrial metals. In Thursday dealings, the S&P Goldman Sachs Commodity index XX: SPGSCI trades more than 30% higher so far this…
Read More “Energy leads commodities surge with oil up roughly 50% in first half of 2022” »
Democratic lawmakers are scrutinizing whether the American dream of a suburban home and white picket fence is being seized upon by large institutional investors, costing working people a shot at property ownership. The House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held the virtual panel Tuesday, titled “Where Have All the Houses Gone? Private Equity,…
A little crustacean-flavored bourbon, anyone? It may sound like a crazed distiller’s idea of a joke – remember the SNL skit about wacky hard seltzers? – but it’s an actual thing. Specifically, it’s Crab Trapper, a green crab-flavored whiskey from New Hampshire’s adventuresome Tamworth Distilling. And guess what? It actually delivers on its crabby promise…
Read More “Review: We tried the crab-flavored whiskey that’s gone viral” »
As prices rise, everywhere, for pretty much everything, the prospect of the human suffering this will cause is deeply worrying. There are predictions that the number of people in the world experiencing acute hunger — currently 276 million — could soon rise by as many as 47 million. To address the problem, one thing that…
Read More “Opinion: Rising prices: why the global drive to keep food cheap is unsustainable” »
Nike Inc. is looking down at the heel, according to Seaport Research Partners, which downgraded the athletic giant to neutral from buy heading into fiscal fourth-quarter earnings, scheduled to be announced on June 27. “We do not believe an above-normal premium valuation is currently justified for three main reasons,” wrote Mitch Kummetz, senior analyst at…
After years of shareholder pressure that ratcheted up after the racial reckoning in summer 2020, some of the world’s most influential companies have agreed to independent racial-equity or civil-rights audits to consider how their policies, products and practices affect the civil rights of and equality among employees, customers and society. The biggest names expected to…
Read More “Amazon, Microsoft, Citi to examine their impact on civil rights, racial equity” »
There’s no escaping the ravages of inflation. Far from “peaking” as some hoped, the consumer price index accelerated in May, rising at a 12.3% annual rate, the government reported Friday. Not only are the costs of necessities becoming more unaffordable, so are the costs of escaping by taking a vacation or by curling up on…
I’m being taken advantage of by my own husband. I have been married for almost 10 years. When my husband and I were first married, he convinced me to stop working after the first year or so, which I regret. A couple of years ago my mom died, leaving me a very small inheritance of…
