August 16, 2023
United States:
Fed Minutes Set to Show Only a Minority Saw End of Tightening
A record of the Federal Reserve’s July policy meeting due Wednesday is set to show only a minority of officials favored holding interest rates steady over the remainder of the year, according to Bloomberg Economics.
At the same time, a majority “likely maintained cautious optimism” that the US economy is in for a soft landing, Bloomberg economists Anna Wong and Stuart Paul wrote Tuesday in a preview of minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee’s July 25-26 meeting.
Europe:
Hungary’s Recession Drags On as East EU Economies Struggle
Hungary unexpectedly plunged deeper into recession for the longest economic contraction in at least 28 years as the war in Ukraine still undermines economic growth across the European Union’s eastern wing.
Hungary’s economy shrank 0.3% from April to June compared with the previous three months, a fourth consecutive contraction that defied expectations of analysts in a Bloomberg survey for 0.2% growth. The economy contracted 2.4% from a year earlier, the statistics office said Wednesday. Four quarterly contractions in a row is the most since records began in 1995.
Asia:
China Is Hiding More and More Data From the Rest of the World
China’s abrupt decision to pause releasing data on its soaring youth jobless rate this week was the latest sign the Asian giant is increasingly restricting sensitive information — especially when it’s unflattering to the nation’s faltering economy.
The unemployment rate of people aged 16-24 fell into that prickly category, after hitting a record of 21.3% in June. One fifth of young people being out of work is a troubling statistic for a ruling Communist Party obsessed with maintaining social stability.
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