Money Talks

After a long Easter weekend, markets in Asia are trading mostly higher as investors mull the US Federal Reserve's path going forward. Fears of further tightening by the Fed have been tempered by last week's US jobs report that showed modest growth, but not the kind of so-called overheating that would prompt significantly higher rates. The Shanghai Composite fell .44 percent as the Nikkei, Kospi and Hang Seng all showed gains. But Chinese investors have more reason to worry about the long-term future of their domestic economy, as a new report showed a continuing decline in the country's population. It will soon lose its top spot to India.

#AsianMarkets #ChinaPopulation #ChinaEconomy

The holy month of Ramadan has fostered joy around the world. But in Lebanon, a country in the grip of a crippling economic and political crisis, there's not much happiness to go around. Priyanka Navani reports

#Ramadan #LebanonEconomy #LebanonInflation

The UK has some of the highest childcare costs in the world, according to the OECD, standing out among its European neighbors. As the country grapples with a cost-of-living crisis, many parents are struggling to make ends meet. Lape Olarinoye has more

#UKEconomy #UKChildcare #UKCostOfLiving

Officials in Baghdad and Erbil have reached a preliminary agreement that ends the Kurdish regional government's ability to carry out independent oil exports. Turkiye had halted flows via a pipeline to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan from Iraq's Kirkuk fields. That's after the International Chamber of Commerce ordered Ankara and Baghdad to pay each other compensation in a long-running arbitration dispute. Iraq's central government, which considers independent Kurdish oil exports illegal, accused Turkiye of violating their 1973 agreement by trading oil with the KRG without its consent. Turkish Energy Ministry said the ICC ordered Iraq to compensate for several violations concerning the case.

#IraqPolitics #TürkiyePolitics #OilDeal

The Egyptian pound has plunged 20 percent against the dollar since the start of the year. It became the sixth-worst-performing currency in 2023, with analysts predicting it will decline further. As it falls, the people of Egypt feel the heat. Emre Boz reports.

#EgyptianEconomy #EgyptianPound #IMF

The video-sharing platform TikTok has a billion active users. If those people were citizens of a country, it would be the third largest in the world. But regulators in some of the app's biggest markets, like the United States, fear it will allow the Chinese government to intrude into their citizens' privacy, interfere in their political systems and induce psychological harm among young people. And it's not just the US. A few years ago, Australia enjoyed a cordial trade relationship with China. Now, as relations sour, officials in Canberra are taking aim at the app and drawing the ire of their counterparts in Beijing. Is there any solution? Wilson Dizard has more.

#AustralianPolitics #TikTokBan #ChinaPolitics

US monetary policymakers have spent the last year trying to tame inflation with higher interest rates to slow hiring, and shed jobs. and curb spending. That may finally be happening, and with it, fears of a recession. Private sector job growth rose by 145,000 in March. That's below analyst expectations. Meanwhile, annual pay went up by 6.9 percent, down from 7.2 percent in February. New hires were evenly split between the services and manufacturing sectors, despite the dominance of the service sector in the US labor market. Leisure and hospitality saw additional hires, while the financial industry lost workers. US Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has pushed to put the US economy in a medically induced coma to ease price increases. Waking it back up is another question, and some analysts worry he won't be able to.

#Payrolls #USEconomy #USJobs

Google's finance chief Ruth Porat has announced the company is making cuts to employee services, the latest in a string of efforts to trim the fat within the tech sector. The company said it's cutting back on fitness classes, staplers, tape, and the frequency of laptop replacement for employees. The cost-cutting measures come as Google goes through its most severe era of austerity in almost two decades. Google's employees can count themselves lucky that they're not victims of layoffs, which have claimed more than 300 thousand jobs across the tech sector since the start of 2022, according to industry tracker layoffs.fyi, A third of those were in January alone, with the pace of pink slips slowing since then.

#TechSector #Google #USEconomy

Oil prices are surging after OPEC+ unexpectedly announced it was slashing output by 1.16 million barrels per day. This is fueling new fears of higher consumer prices, as central banks are hoping to reverse inflationary trends. The move comes just after Russia decides to cut oil production by 500,000 barrels per day until the end of the year. International benchmark Brent futures have jumped 5% to $84 a barrel, and US benchmark WTI is trading at nearly $80 a barrel. In March, oil tumbled to its lowest level since December 2021 amid a banking rout.

#OPEC #OilPrices #Brent

A draw for the first owners of Turkiye's first domestically built fully electric car was held on Wednesday. Turkish carmaker, Togg, has received more than 170,000 pre-orders for its first model T10-X. The firm had announced that the number of deliveries in 2023 would be at 12,000 but after the high demand, it raised that figure to 20,000. The standard range model T10-X starts from around 50, 000 dollars, while the long-range model was priced at about 64, 000 dollars. Togg plans to produce one million vehicles in five different models by 2030 in its 1.2 million square meter facility in Turkiye.