The U.S. Commerce Department has added a dozen Chinese companies to a trade blacklist, citing national security concerns and some of the firms’ involvement in aiding the Chinese military’s quantum computing efforts.
Central banks have not merely inflated the bejesus out of assets prices. They have also caused the very foundations of financial markets to metastasize, yielding an endless array of new products that have no real economic function except to facilitate new forms of pure wagering.
Democrats persuade a slim majority to approve the centerpiece of President Biden’s economic agenda, though the bill now faces an evenly divided Senate.
Inflation outstripped forecasts and surged above 4 per cent last month to hit its highest level in almost a decade as spiralling energy prices pushed up the cost of living.