Israel Continues to Pound Southern Lebanon as Hezbollah Drones Wound IDF Troops

IMF Warns Australia Set For One Of Highest Inflation Rates In Developed World Authored by Rex Widerstrom via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says Australia is on track to have one of the highest inflation rates in the developed world. Australian dollars coins in Melbourne, Australia, on April 4, 2024. AAP Image/Joel Carrett In the latest edition of its World Economic Outlook, the global lender said economies around the world “face repercussions [from] the direct impact of higher commodity prices, indirect second-order effects on inflation expectations—which tend to...

American Airlines Shuts Down United Merger Talk As Wells Fargo Signals Another Possible Tie-Up Certainly this past week saw several key stories in the aviation world. First came the story that Spirit Airlines could be liquidated at any moment, only to be followed later in the week by reports that the budget carrier had asked the Trump administration for an emergency bailout. Then, of course, came the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz late in the week, which sent jet fuel prices in New York sharply lower and airline stocks soaring... It now...

UBS Finds Global Trade Structure "Surprisingly Stable" As AI Emerges As Growth Engine Despite ongoing Gulf-related energy shocks, mounting concerns over a potential energy cliff (read here), and UBS last month reactivating its supply chain stress-watch coverage, another UBS analyst noted Wednesday that the overall structure of global trade remains "surprisingly stable." Analyst Arend Kapteyn pointed out that the structure of global trade remains far more structurally stable than recent growth trends suggest, even as technology and AI-related categories have driven nearly 80% of recent trade growth while accounting for only...