标题: 2022.06.16 美国联邦储备委员会将利率提高了四分之三个百... [打印本页] 作者: shiyi18 时间: 2022-6-16 19:16 标题: 2022.06.16 美国联邦储备委员会将利率提高了四分之三个百... America’s Federal Reserve raised interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point, the largest rise since 1994. Its target rate is now between 1.5% and 1.75%—and it expects it will rise to at least 3% this year. The Fed took action after disappointing data on inflation. In response, the S&P 500 index rose by 1.5% after five days of losses on Wednesday, but looked set to reverse those gains in early trading on Thursday as investors worried about a potential recession.
The leaders of France, Germany and Italy arrived in Kyiv in a show of support for Ukraine. It is the first time any of them have visited the capital since Russia’s invasion began. Ukraine once again asked the West for more weapons; America has promised another $1bn in military aid. Meanwhile, Russian forces continued to attack Severodonetsk as it seeks to capture the entire Donbas region.
The European Central Bank said it would speed up work on a new tool to tackle fragmentation in the euro zone, the phenomenon in which bond yields in some countries rise much higher than in others. The announcement came at an unscheduled meeting on Wednesday to “discuss current market conditions”, after yields for Italian and Spanish bonds reached their highest level in years. News of the new tool helped calm the trading.
Police in Brazil extracted a confession from a man arrested in connection with the disappearance of two men in the Amazon’s Javari valley on June 5th: Dom Phillips, a British journalist; and Bruno Pereira, an expert on the region’s “uncontacted” peoples. The suspect admitted to shooting and killing them both, having clashed with Mr Pereira over the locals’ fishing rights.
The European Union resurrected legal proceedings against Britain over plans to override the Northern Ireland protocol, part of the Brexit deal agreed in 2020. Britain’s government plans to give ministers the power to rewrite parts of the protocol, which keeps Northern Ireland in the single market and creates a border with the rest of the United Kingdom; the EU says the unilateral breach of an international treaty is illegal.
Advisers to America’s Food and Drug Administration recommended that it approve covid-19 vaccines for babies and young children. The committee found both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines to be safe and effective for infants aged between six months and four years old. The FDA is likely to accept the recommendation. The White House said vaccinations could start as early as Tuesday.
A synagogue in Florida is suing the state over a new law banning abortions after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy, arguing that it violates religious freedoms guaranteed by Florida’s constitution. Jewish law requires abortion if deemed necessary to protect a mother’s physical or mental health. Florida’s law, which goes into effect in July, does not allow exemptions for rape or incest.
Fact of the day: 100, the number of countries that back China’s Global Development Initiative. Read the full story.
Russia’s resilient economy
PHOTO: AFP
Most commentators expected Russia’s economy to collapse in the face of unprecedented Western sanctions. Indeed, in the opening days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine the rouble fell sharply, and banks looked wobbly. Since then, though, the economy has proved surprisingly resilient. GDP figures published on Thursday are expected to show that the economy grew in the first quarter of the year.
Russia can thank a series of smart interventions by its central bank. The bank raised interest rates immediately after the invasion began but quickly cut them again, stabilising the currency and thus keeping inflation from spiralling out of control. Many countries, including Western ones, have continued to buy huge quantities of Russian oil and gas, guaranteeing a steady supply of foreign currency. And Russian consumers and businesses seem to have an uncanny ability to keep going despite the country’s international pariah status. Unemployment has barely budged. Hopes that economic collapse will force Vladimir Putin to back down are likely to be dashed.
Britain’s interest rates rise, slowly
PHOTO: DAVE SIMONDS
The Bank of England meets on Thursday with inflation well above its 2% target. In April, prices rose at an annual rate of 9%. But that does not mean a large interest-rate increase is imminent. The bank’s monetary policy committee is supposed to look beyond temporary shocks and consider the wider economic environment.
Recent data suggest there is no need to panic. Employee earnings do not yet point to a wage-price spiral. In the three months to April, pay excluding bonuses fell by 2.2%, after adjusting for inflation. If anything Britain’s slow economy is more of a worry. In April GDP fell by 0.3% relative to the month before, with manufacturing hurt by soaring costs and supply-chain disruption. Increasing rates too quickly could depress growth and medium-term inflation too much. So although some at the bank may push for an increase in the official interest rate of 0.5 percentage points, most expect it to raise interest rates by just half that.
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The great uprooting
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
Over 100m people have been forced from their homes by war and persecution, the first time that figure has hit the grim milestone. The number is just one of many depressing figures from the UN refugee agency’s Global Trends report, which was published on Thursday. The report shows that the number of displaced people worldwide has risen in each of the past ten years, reaching 89.3m by the end of 2021—more than double the figure in 2001. Since last year things have worsened further, largely because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as fallout from the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan and civil war in Ethiopia.
Before Russia’s invasion, most refugees came from Syria, Venezuela and Afghanistan. Those that fled abroad tended to go to low- and middle-income countries: Turkey, Uganda and Pakistan hosted the world’s biggest refugee populations. But many more people are internally displaced: 53.2m worldwide. That is true of Ukrainians, too. Some 4.9m Ukrainians are registered as refugees in other European countries, but more than 8m are displaced within their own country.
Tunisians go on strike
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
It is a rare summer holiday that no one wants. Tunisia’s main public union, the UGTT, called a one-day strike on Thursday. With 1m members, it brought the country to a standstill. All flights have been cancelled and public transport is not running. The union is angry about rising inflation, which hit 7.5% in April, as well as government talks with the IMF about a $4bn loan that may require subsidy cuts, wage freezes and other painful measures.
Always a fractious union, the UGTT has never met an economic-reform plan it likes. But while Tunisia’s debt-to-GDP ratio of 88% means it does need external help, the union is right to worry about what an IMF deal might mean for its struggling members. Kais Saied, the country’s increasingly authoritarian president, has spent little time on economic policy since his election in 2019. Instead he is busy writing a new constitution ahead of a referendum few Tunisians care about. He will probably be at the office on Thursday, even if no one else is.
An exhibition of broken objects
PHOTO: COURTESY OF SOMERSET HOUSE
During the pandemic Ellen Sampson, a British artist and curator, reassessed her relationships with the objects around her. “We brought them into the world, so we need to look after them,” she says. The idea inspired her to curate “Eternally Yours”, an exhibition about repair and healing that opens on Thursday at Somerset House in London.
The most striking works are by Aya Haidar, who fled Lebanon in 1982. In “Soleless” she embroiders the tattered shoes of refugees with depictions of their experiences. One is a record of a Syrian mother whose three-month-old baby was thrown off a dinghy by a human trafficker because he wouldn’t stop crying. “I couldn’t return function to those shoes”, writes Ms Haidar. “But I could tell their story.”
John Ruskin, a British art critic, wrote that the traces of damage on a building—“the golden stain of time”—could imbue them with grandeur. As “Eternally Yours” shows, the same can be true of objects.
Daily quiz
Our baristas will serve you a new question each day this week. On Friday your challenge is to give us all five answers and, as important, tell us the connecting theme. Email your responses (and include mention of your home city and country) by 1700 BST on Friday to QuizEspresso@economist.com. We’ll pick randomly from those with the right answers and crown one winner per continent on Saturday.
Thursday: Which jazz musician appeared in the films “High Society” and “Hello Dolly”?
Wednesday: Which rock star wrote books such as “In His Own Write” and “A Spaniard in the Works”?
Hatred and anger are the greatest poison to the happiness of a good mind.