Economy

Photograph: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock Just in: Microsoft is buying computer games developer Activision Blizzard in a $68.7bn blockbuster deal. Microsoft has announced it will pay $95 per…

At a minimum, the Fed is playing catch-up when it comes to inflation."The Fed is behind the curve," Aditya Bhave, senior US and global economist at Bank of America, told CNN. "Wherever you look, you have very strong inflation. It's a worrying picture for the Fed."The question is not whether the Fed can catch up. It can. The tricky part is…

Gold prices slipped on Friday amid a broader decline in commodities, but the market avoided an even steeper sell-off as Treasury yields dropped and the U.S. Dollar edged lower. Nonetheless, the market was lifted for a second consecutive week by inflation concerns and geopolitical risks. On Friday, April Comex gold futures settled at $1834.10,…

A "Now hiring" sign is displayed on the window of an IN-N-OUT fast food restaurant in Encinitas, California, May 9, 2022.Mike Blake | ReutersWhen it comes to salary, small business owners generally don't play in the same league as larger companies.It's even trickier now in a tight labor market with rising wages and with more states and…

Japan’s economy, the world’s third largest, unexpectedly shrank in the three-month period from July to September, as a weak yen and high inflation eroded Japanese consumers’ buying power and sapped businesses’ strength.The economy contracted at an annualized rate of 1.2 percent during the third quarter, government data showed on Tuesday, ending…

A year ago Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were selling at record prices, with a combined market value of around $3 trillion; glossy ads featuring celebrities — most infamously Matt Damon’s “Fortune Favors the Brave” — filled the airwaves. Politicians, including, alas, the mayor of New York, raced to align themselves with what seemed to be…

Covid-19 testing booths were removed in Beijing on Friday, while Shenzhen followed other cities in announcing it would no longer require commuters to present their test results to travel, as an easing of Covid restrictions in China gathered pace.As daily cases hovered near all-time highs, some cities took steps to loosen coronavirus testing…

The likelihood that the eurozone will fall into a deep recession this winter is receding according to economists who have scaled back their projections as greater fiscal support from governments, lower gas prices and a mild autumn help to improve the bloc’s outlook. Most forecasters still expect eurozone output to contract in the coming…

The Omicron variant has dragged UK company growth to its slowest since the lockdowns nearly a year ago. British business activity cooled to an 11-month low in January, led by a slowdown in the services sector, a closely-watched survey of UK purchasing managers from IHS Markit shows. Customer-facing parts of the economy were,…

The billionaire said in a speech at Stanford University's Hoover Institution Monday that President Xi Jinping may not be able to restore confidence in the troubled industry, which has been hit by a series of defaults by developers and falling prices for land and apartments. China's real estate boom was based on an "unsustainable" model that…