The Federal Reserve announced a significant change Thursday in how it manages interest rates by saying it plans to keep rates near zero even after inflation has exceeded the Fed’s two per cent target level. The change signifies that the Fed is prepared to tolerate a higher level of inflation than it generally has in […]
The economic outlook of U.S. business economists has improved over the past three months, though their sunnier view may be jeopardized by the resurgence of the coronavirus. A survey released Monday by the National Association for Business Economics finds a “significant snap-back in expectations from the depths reached across nearly all categories in April,” according […]
The International Monetary Fund has sharply lowered its forecast for global growth this year because it envisions far more severe economic damage from the coronavirus than it did just two months ago. The IMF predicts that the global economy will shrink 4.9 per cent this year, significantly worse than the three per cent drop it […]
The U.S. Treasury Department is detailing how it plans to borrow a record-breaking $2.99 trillion in debt this quarter, which will include issuing a 20-year bond for the first time since 1986. The Treasury faces an unprecedented need for credit because of the trillions of dollars the government is spending to deal with the impact […]
Devastated by the coronavirus, the U.S. economy is sinking. And the plunge is accelerating. Now, as some businesses in a few states start to trickle back to work, hopes are beginning to arise that the economy, damaged as it is, might be poised to rebound by the second half of the year. If more employees […]
U.S. business economists are slightly more optimistic about economic growth than they were three months ago, and most foresee sales at their companies remaining solid. Those findings emerge from the latest survey by the National Association for Business Economics being released Monday. It found that 67 per cent of the business economists who responded to […]
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen cautioned Thursday that global economic pressures pose risks to the U.S. economy but said it’s too soon to know whether those risks are severe enough to alter the Fed’s interest-rate policies. Yellen said the Fed will determine at its next meeting in March how much economic weakness and falling markets […]
The Federal Reserve is raising interest rates from record lows set at the depths of the 2008 financial crisis, a shift that heralds modestly higher rates on some loans. The Fed coupled its first rate hike in nine years with a signal that further increases will likely be made slowly as the economy strengthens further […]