The latest coverage of the banking and financial sectors.
Festering discontent with President Biden among America’s business titans has burst into the open, with CEOs ridiculing the White House for turning them into boogeymen instead of accepting responsibility for inflation and an economy that might be headed for recession.
Even as Western allies grapple with how to counter Russia’s assault on Ukraine, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned Tuesday that they also must take a wary and united approach to checking China and its business practices.
Stocks plunged Thursday amid lingering concerns of a recession, wiping out the big gains of a day earlier that followed the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates to curb inflation.
The Federal Reserve raised a key interest by half a point on Wednesday to combat soaring inflation, a move that critics say came too late and which some economists say now risks a recession.
President Biden on Wednesday touted his efforts to reduce the federal budget deficit, saying his economic plans would further pay down the national debt by creating jobs and reduce the cost of household goods such as prescription drugs and utility bills.
Several Senate Republicans called Friday for dropping Citibank as the Senate’s credit-card provider, citing the company’s decision to pay for employees to travel out of state to obtain abortions.
Conservatives have claimed a series of victories as they escalated their assault on “woke” corporate culture with a campaign of letters, boycotts and shareholder activism.
The U.S. economy shrank in the first quarter amid record-high inflation, a sharp reversal that President Biden blamed on “technical factors” as he tried to tamp down concerns of a recession in the midterm election year.
Bank of America and Citigroup shareholders rejected proposed audits of the companies’ anti-racism policies Tuesday during their annual meetings.
The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday downgraded the outlook for the world economy this year and next, blaming Russia’s war in Ukraine for disrupting global commerce, pushing up oil prices, threatening food supplies and increasing uncertainty already heightened by the coronavirus and its variants.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that President Biden plans to do more to ease the burden of student debt after the current moratorium for borrowers ends in late August.
Senate Democrats are calling for a probe of a federal student loan cancellation program to ensure that individuals paying $0 a month still qualify for forgiveness.
President Biden said Friday he intends to nominate Michael Barr as the Federal Reserve’s bank regulator after his last pick for the job ran into opposition from centrist Democrats.
President Biden’s handling of the current inflation is beginning to sour on even voters in one of the nation’s most Democratic states: California.
Sen. Joe Manchin III blamed President Biden on Tuesday for skyrocketing inflation, saying the White House failed to take rising prices seriously for months.
Inflation soared by 8.5% over the past 12 months, the federal government reported Tuesday amid fears of a looming recession.
The White House is preparing for “extraordinarily elevated” inflation numbers in Tuesday’s Labor Department report on consumer prices, a critical measure of rising costs.
The Standard & Poor’s credit rating agency has downgraded Russia’s foreign currency rating to “selective default” signaling increased risks that Moscow is poised to default on foreign debt for the first time in more than a century.
Congress on Thursday gave final approval to a suspension of normal trade relations with Moscow, giving President Biden broader leeway to slap tariffs on Russian products and further weaken Russia’s economy as punishment for invading Ukraine.
New weekly unemployment insurance claims fell to their lowest level since 1968, according to data released Thursday by the Labor Department.
Recession fears are beginning to spike across Washington and Wall Street, complicating President Biden’s agenda heading into the midterm elections.
White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese announced Wednesday that the administration would be imposing a new round of sanctions specifically targeting the adult children of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
One of the world’s largest investment banks is warning that the Federal Reserve System’s efforts to lower inflation will likely trigger a recession throughout the U.S. in 2023.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said new forms of digital money such as cryptocurrencies and stablecoins present risks to the U.S. financial system and will require new rules to protect consumers.
Senate Republicans are proposing U.S. sanctions against China should it provide a financial safe haven to Russian firms.
The Federal Reserve raised a key interest rate by a quarter point Wednesday and signaled six more hikes are planned this year in an effort to cool record-high inflation that is squeezing family budgets and bedeviling Democrats and the White House before the midterm elections.
Sarah Bloom Raskin, President Biden’s pick for the Federal Reserve Board, withdrew her candidacy on Tuesday, according to reports, after opposition from Republicans and one Democrat over her positions on energy and climate change.
Prices paid to U.S. producers rose at an annual rate of 10% in February on higher costs of goods, further highlighting record-setting inflation as the Federal Reserve prepares to raise a key interest rate this week.
Sen. Joe Manchin III signaled his opposition on Monday to President Biden’s nominee for vice chair of the Federal Reserve System, making confirmation all but impossible in the evenly split Senate.
Inflation soared by 7.9% over the past 12 months, the federal government reported Thursday, with Americans besieged by higher gasoline, food and housing prices in a tumultuous election year for Democrats.
President Biden is slated to sign an executive order Wednesday directing the federal government to study the regulation of cryptocurrencies and central bank digital currency.
The British government Friday announced a new round of sanctions against Russia as the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine escalates.
The family of former President Donald Trump has reached a deal with the New York attorney general’s office to delay depositions in a civil investigation into Mr. Trump’s business and financial dealings.
Some of Vladimir Putin’s oligarch backers are calling for an end to the war in Ukraine as global sanctions clamp down on the Russian economy.
Business owners and executives are increasingly concerned about the impact of record-high inflation and supply-chain constraints on their companies, according to two new surveys.
Bitcoin prices have surged as investors again appear to view the volatile cryptocurrency as a safe haven for their money and Russians and Ukrainians seek alternatives to their country’s financial institutions.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome H. Powell told Congress on Wednesday that he will recommend a short hike in interest rates in two weeks in a bid to hold down record-high inflation, testifying in a hearing where Republicans blamed Democrats and President Biden’s high spending for the steepest price increases in four decades.
The world’s two biggest international financial bodies have condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and announced a multibillion-dollar emergency financing package for the beleaguered Ukrainian government.
Service dogs, police dogs and military war dogs will be getting a commemorative coin series from the U.S. Mint in 2023 if canine advocates have their way.
A New York man has beat the odds, winning $10 million from a lottery scratch ticket for the second time in three years.
The Treasury Department on Monday prohibited any persons in the U.S. from engaging in transactions with Russia’s central bank to “effectively immobilize” certain assets as Moscow scrambles to pull levers that would blunt the crippling impact of sanctions on its economy.
Russians awoke to an economy in shambles on Monday as an overwhelming wave of western sanctions over the Ukraine invasion began to bite.
The U.S. and Europe on Saturday kicked a number of Russian banks off the SWIFT banking system, cutting the country off from a swath of international financial transactions in the strongest sanction imposed so far for its invasion of Ukraine.
Germany’s finance minister said Friday that his country is open to cutting Russia off from the SWIFT interbank payment system, the crackdown on financial transactions that some have described as the “nuclear option” of sanctions.
The European Union is planning to freeze the assets of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as punishment for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to a report Friday.
An inflation gauge that is closely monitored by the Federal Reserve jumped 6.1% in January compared with a year ago, the latest evidence that Americans are enduring sharp price increases that will likely worsen after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine caused a tumultuous day on Wall Street as stocks took a dive before major indexes recovered to positive territory, buoyed by investors buying the dip on tech stocks and gains in defense stocks amid the upheaval. Meanwhile, Russia’s markets had to suspend trading as stocks plunged as much as 45% before closing 33% down, and the ruble dropped to a record low against the dollar.
Conservative activists are criticizing the “woke” virtue-signaling trend of U.S. corporations implementing diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the workplace, singling out retail giant Walmart for scrutiny and scorn.
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday called on President Biden to “dramatically escalate” sanctions to penalize Russia for “this act of naked aggression by the Kremlin dictator.”
Federal Reserve Governor Michelle Bowman said Monday that she was open to lifting interest rates by more than the traditional quarter-point at the central bank’s next meeting in March.
Wholesale prices jumped last month at a rate 9.7% higher than a year ago, the Labor Department said Tuesday in another sign that inflation remains high.
The conservative Heritage Foundation says economic freedom is at an all-time low under President Biden.
Inflation soared 7.5% over the past 12 months, the steepest spike since 1982, further eroding worker wage gains and posing deepening election-year peril for Democrats.
A cadre of Republican senators is moving to overturn requirements that third-party internet platforms report transactions of more than $600 to the Internal Revenue Service.