MUMBAI: RBI’s monetary policy committee began its meeting on Wed and is expected to end its longest pause with a rate cut on Friday, the first in nearly five years.The last rate cut was in May 2020 when RBI lowered the repo rate to 4% to support the economy during the Covid-induced lockdown. It later raised rates seven times to …
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High Inflation and New Tariffs Will Make the Fed’s Job Tougher
High inflation is stoking fresh debate about how the Federal Reserve should respond to President Trump’s sweeping plans to reorder the world economy through tariffs, leading to questions about whether old playbooks still apply. On Saturday, Mr. Trump is poised to impose 25 percent tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada as well as an additional 10 percent tariff on …
Read More »Federal Debt Is Now Worrying Even Progressives
The 119th Congress began, as it so often has in recent years, with calls from Republican politicians for wrestling down the national debt, which is near a record level relative to the size of the economy. But this time, the G.O.P. had company: Progressive economists and budget wonks, who have often dismissed finger-wagging about debt levels as a pretext for …
Read More »US Federal Reserve leaves key lending rate unchanged in first decision after Trump inauguration – The Times of India
The Federal Reserve kept its benchmark lending rate unchanged at between 4.25 percent and 4.50 percent on Wednesday, despite pressure from President Trump for further cuts in the first rate decision following his return to office.The central bank said that the unemployment rate has “stabilized at a low level in recent months, and labor market conditions remain solid,” while admitting …
Read More »Existing-Home Sales in 2024 Were Slowest in Decades Amid High Mortgage Rates
High interest rates kept U.S. home sales in a deep freeze for much of last year. It could be a while before the market experiences much of a thaw. Americans bought just over four million previously owned homes last year, the National Association of Realtors said on Friday. That was the fewest since 1995 and far below the annual pace …
Read More »What Did Trump’s Tax Cuts Do?
Seven years ago, when Republicans passed the most significant overhaul of the tax code in a generation, they were sure the law would supercharge investment, raise wages and shift the American economy into a higher gear. So did it? The answer, at least for now, is largely lost to history. A pandemic and a surge in inflation convulsed the global …
Read More »CPI Rose in December, a Sign the Fed’s Inflation Fight Has Stalled
Consumer prices rose more quickly in December, the latest sign that the Federal Reserve’s fight against inflation may have stalled. The Consumer Price Index rose 0.4 percent from November, and was up 2.9 percent from a year earlier, the Labor Department said on Wednesday. It was the fastest one-month increase in overall prices since February, driven in part by another …
Read More »U.S. Employers Add 256,000 Jobs in December
Employers stuck the landing in 2024, finishing the year with a bounce of hiring after a quarter filled with disruption. The economy added 256,000 jobs in December, seasonally adjusted, the Labor Department reported on Friday. It was a better-than-expected number amid a labor market that has been slowly cooling for two years. The unemployment rate edged down to 4.1 percent. …
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