Central bankers and government officials around the world are scrambling to convince both the financial markets and the general public that recent spikes in price inflation are temporary, and don’t signal a period of prolonged price hikes. But many are skeptical of their analysis.

Inflation is marked by the increase in prices across all sorts of different goods and services in an economy. While some inflation is normal, a high rate of inflation makes it difficult for people to afford essential things like cars, food, clothing and shelter.

Typically, people tend to blame the government for rising prices, which makes managing inflation an important task for politicians. In the U.S., for example, evidence of rising prices is currently being used by the Republican Party to criticize President Joe Biden, a Democrat, for his handling of the economy.

With the exception of much of Asia, most of the world has seen a significant surge in the cost of living since the coronavirus pandemic began in early 2020. The food price index maintained by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization is up 32.8% from last year. The cost of fuel of all sorts — gasoline, natural gas and coal — is on the rise globally. 

On Thursday, data was released showing that Spain is experiencing an annualized inflation rate of 5.5%, and Germany is seeing 4.6% inflation. On Friday, a report covering the entire euro zone will be released, and economists expect it to show a regional 3.7% rate of inflation, the highest since the global financial crisis in 2008. 

Across the globe, countries including Russia, Nigeria, Brazil and Turkey have reported inflation above — sometimes well above — 4%. In the United States, the Consumer Price Index maintained by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that overall prices increased by 5.4% in the 12 months ending in September. 

Europe stays the course 

Despite all this, most central bankers insist that the price spikes are a transitory reaction to the global economy opening up again after being largely shut down in the early stages of the pandemic. 

“Recovering demand related to the reopening of the economy is outpacing supply,” European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said in a virtual press conference on Thursday. “While the current phase of higher inflation will last longer than originally expected, we expect it to decline in the course of next year.” 

She added, “We really looked and very deeply tested our analysis of the drivers of inflation, and we are confident that our anticipation and our analysis is actually correct.” 

Lagarde’s remarks came after the European Central Bank signaled that it will keep interest rates at their current very low levels through next year. 

That cuts against the advice of some high-profile economists, like former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who has called on the Federal Reserve and other central banks to begin tightening monetary policy, which was relaxed in response to the pandemic, in order to avoid a situation in which inflation gets out of control. Government bonds are currently trading at prices that suggest that markets believe interest rate hikes are inevitable. 

Higher interest rates make borrowing more expensive and inhibit economic activity, slowing demand for goods and services. With reduced demand, prices tend to fall or moderate. 

Bank of Japan unconcerned 

In Japan, where the inflation spike affecting other countries has not materialized, Bank of Japan head Haruhiko Kuroda said that he doesn’t expect that to change. “I believe that the sort of inflation acceleration risk that’s been a cause of concern abroad is extremely limited in Japan,” indicating that he also expects the bank’s efforts to stimulate the economy to continue indefinitely.

Not all central bankers are as calm about inflation risks, though. Early this month, New Zealand’s central bank raised interest rates for the first time in seven years. In the United Kingdom, the Bank of England has signaled it is about to raise rates in order to keep inflation in check. 

Around the world, bond markets are setting prices that suggest that market participants don’t believe most central banks will be able to stick to their promises that rates will remain at current low levels for a long time. 

The situation in the U.S.

Federal Reserve board Chairman Jerome Powell admitted last week that the factors driving inflation, and particularly a global supply chain crisis, have not subsided as quickly as the Fed had expected.

“The risks are clearly now to longer and more persistent bottlenecks and thus to higher inflation,” he said at a virtual event hosted by the South Africa Reserve Bank. “We now see higher inflation and the bottlenecks lasting well into next year.”

He said that while the Fed will begin “tapering” a bond-buying program that was designed to push more cash into the U.S. economy during the pandemic, he doesn’t anticipate raising interest rates any time soon.

“I would say our policy is well-positioned to manage a range of plausible outcomes,” he said. “I do think it’s time to taper and I don’t think it’s time to raise rates.”

Joseph E. Gagnon, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said that he thinks the Fed is right to keep interest rates where they are for the time being, and that people who are warning that the U.S. is headed toward 1970s-style out-of-control price increases need a history lesson.

“Everyone remembers the bad old ’70s, when no one had any idea what inflation was going to be and every time inflation stepped up, people expected more and it just got out of control,” he said.

However, he said, “If you look at what led to that, it took five years of the Fed never fully responding to inflation, not talking about inflation, not doing its job, before that happened. In other words, it was a gradual process that took many years. And the Fed is just not going to let that happen. If inflation doesn’t come down next year, they are going to raise rates.” 

 
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Some American solar energy companies are calling on the U.S. Commerce Department to expand tariffs on Chinese solar components to include Chinese-linked products from Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand. VOA’s Mike O’Sullivan reports on a debate that has divided the solar industry.

 Camera: Roy Kim for port shots
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his company is rebranding itself as Meta in an effort to encompass its virtual-reality vision for the future — what Zuckerberg calls the ” metaverse.” 

Skeptics point out that it also appears to be an attempt to change the subject from the Facebook Papers, a leaked document trove so dubbed by a consortium of news organizations that include The Associated Press. Many of these documents, first described by former Facebook employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen, have revealed how Facebook ignored or downplayed internal warnings of the negative and often harmful consequences its social network algorithms created or magnified across the world.

“Facebook is the world’s social media platform and they are being accused of creating something that is harmful to people and society,” said marketing consultant Laura Ries. She compared the name Meta to when BP rebranded to “Beyond Petroleum” to escape criticism that it harmed the environment. “They can’t walk away from the social network with a new corporate name and talk of a future metaverse.”

What is the metaverse? Think of it as the internet brought to life, or at least rendered in 3D. Zuckerberg has described it as a “virtual environment” you can go inside of — instead of just looking at on a screen. Essentially, it’s a world of endless, interconnected virtual communities where people can meet, work and play, using virtual reality headsets, augmented reality glasses, smartphone apps or other devices.

It also will incorporate other aspects of online life such as shopping and social media, according to Victoria Petrock, an analyst who follows emerging technologies.

Zuckerberg says he expects the metaverse to reach a billion people within the next decade. It will be a place people will be able to interact, work and create products and content in what he hopes will be a new ecosystem that creates millions of jobs for creators.

The announcement comes amid an existential crisis for Facebook. It faces heightened legislative and regulatory scrutiny in many parts of the world following revelations in the Facebook Papers.

In explaining the rebrand, Zuckerberg said the name “Facebook” just doesn’t encompass everything the company does anymore. In addition to its primary social network, that now includes Instagram, Messenger, its Quest VR headset, its Horizon VR platform and more.

“Today we are seen as a social media company,” Zuckerberg said. “But in our DNA, we are a company that builds technology to connect people.”

Facebook the app, along with Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, are here to stay; the company’s corporate structure also won’t change. But on December 1, its shares will start trading under a new ticker symbol, “MVRS.”

Metaverse, he said, is the new way. Zuckerberg, who is a fan of classics, explained that the word “meta” comes from the Greek word “beyond.”

A corporate rebranding won’t solve the myriad problems at Facebook revealed by thousands of internal documents in recent weeks. It probably won’t even get people to stop calling the social media giant Facebook — or a “social media giant,” for that matter.

But that isn’t stopping Zuckerberg, seemingly eager to move on to his next big thing as crisis after crisis emerges at the company he created.

Just as smartphones replaced desktop computers, Zuckerberg is betting that the metaverse will be the next way people will interact with computers — and each other. If Instagram and messaging were Facebook’s forays into the mobile evolution, Meta is its bet on the metaverse.
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U.S. economic growth slowed markedly in the July-to-September period, weighed down by a summer surge in the coronavirus pandemic and a snarled supply chain for consumer products, the country’s Commerce Department reported Thursday.

The agency said the world’s biggest economy grew at an annualized rate of 2% in the third quarter, down from the 6.7% figure recorded in the April-to-June quarter. It was the weakest quarter of growth since the pandemic recovery began in mid-2020.

As the delta variant of the coronavirus spread through the U.S. in recent months, many Americans curtailed summer vacation travel plans and cut back on family outings to restaurants and other activities. At the time, more than 150,000 new coronavirus cases a day were being recorded; the figure now has dropped to less than half that.

As a result, some economists said they expected U.S. economic output to expand more rapidly in the coming months. But worries remain over the supply chain as container ships full of consumer goods from Asia remain anchored and unloaded off the U.S. Pacific coast.

Meager job growth is another worry. In September, only 194,000 new jobs were added to the U.S. labor force, down from the August figure of 235,000. The jobless rate fell to 4.8%, but that was because 5 million workers dropped out of the labor force.

Those monthly figures compared with more than 2 million jobs added during June and July.

About 8.4 million workers remain unemployed in the United States. There are 10.4 million available jobs in the country, but the skills of available workers often do not match what employers want, or the job openings are not where the unemployed live. In addition, many of the available jobs are low-wage service positions that the jobless are shunning.

The supply chain slowdown has left many U.S. retailers with dwindling stocks of clothes to sell and shelves empty of other products just ahead of the busiest annual holiday shopping season. Car dealers are often short of vehicles to sell.

The dwindling number of products to sell has boosted consumer prices in the U.S., pushing inflation up 4.3% in the third quarter from a year ago.

But the number of first-time claims for unemployment compensation continued to fall, the Labor Department said Thursday, as businesses avoid layoffs.

The agency said 281,000 claims were filed last week, down 10,000 from the week before. It was the third straight week the total was the lowest since the coronavirus pandemic started its sweep through the country in mid-March 2020.

The Federal Reserve, the country’s central bank, has said it could start reducing its support for the pandemic recovery in November, eventually increasing its benchmark interest rate to curb inflationary pressures.
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Thousands of Nigerians are expressing concern about the country’s new digital currency after its user app was temporarily removed from the Google Play store this week. The app has recorded tens of thousands of downloads since its launch on Monday.

Central Bank authorities said a system glitch unable to handle the huge amount of traffic on the download site led to the temporary removal of the eNaira Speed Wallet.

They say the problem has been resolved.   

The eNaira app has recorded over 100,000 downloads on the Google Play store alone since launching on Monday. But thousands of early users say they encountered many difficulties.

Among them was Ogunbiyi Olubiyi, who runs a Lagos-based digital company.

“It’s a great initiative by the Central Bank, they’re positioning for the future which means they’re heading somewhere with this. But the execution could have been better,” Olubiyi said.

Nigerian authorities restricted cryptocurrency transactions in the country earlier this year and promised to create a safer option for citizens – the eNaira. 

The government expects to leverage the blockchain technology to improve financial inclusion, ease cross-border trades, increase remittances and boost the economy. 

But users like Abuja stock trader Leonard Nwankwo worry about hacking.  Nwankwo says the Central Bank’s terms offer no insurance in the event of losses of revenues or profits.

“Whether it’s an error that is caused by them or an error that is not caused by them, so that is to tell you that only the consumers of this product or investors in this currency are bearing 100% risk, so an agent can decide to do something dubious and he’s free to go because by limitations of liability he’s not to be held accountable,” Nwankwo.

Olubiyi says more awareness is needed to boost user confidence on the eNaira platform.

“I don’t think that people downloaded and tried the app before they began to report it. You see that is due to mistrust. I think the CBN (Central Bank of Nigeria) needs to go on a campaign, introducing and educating people about the eNaira and how it’s going to be solving problems in their lives,” Olubiyi.

Central banks around the world are adopting digital versions of their legal tenders. The Nigerian government hopes that the eNaira will boost Nigeria’s gross domestic product by $29 billion in the next 10 years.

But experts say that goal can only be achieved if end users have confidence in authorities and the currency itself. 
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Торги на українському міжбанківському валютному ринку відбуваються на рівні 26 гривень 32–34 копійки за долар
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Нині в Україні внутрішньо переміщеними особами офіційно є понад 1,4 мільйона осіб
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Three U.S. retail giants have pulled products made by tech surveillance specialists Lorex and Ezviz, following revelations by the tech press that the companies are linked to human rights abuses in China’s Xinjiang region, home to Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups.

According to reports from American online news outlet TechCrunch and video surveillance news site IPMV, big-box retailers Best Buy, Home Depot and Lowe’s terminated contracts with Lorex and Ezviz after the two news outlets questioned their partnerships.

In an email statement to VOA Mandarin, Home Depot said it has stopped selling products from both Lorex and Ezviz. “We committed to upholding the highest standards of ethical sourcing and we immediately stopped selling these products when this was brought to our attention,” said the statement, which is also on the company website.

Best Buy told TechCrunch that it was “discontinuing its relationship” with both Lorex and Ezviz. Lowe’s did not respond to a request from VOA Mandarin for comments, but a recent search shows neither Lorex nor Ezviz surveillance products are available on its website.

Lorex is a subsidiary of Dahua Technology. Ezviz is a brand of video surveillance cameras owned by Hikvision. Dahua and Hikvision were added to the U.S. government’s economic blacklist in 2019 for supplying Beijing with technology it uses to surveil ethnic groups.

Yet because the 2019 sanction covered only sales to the U.S. federal government, Lorex and Ezviz remained free to sell to private-sector buyers.

The proliferation of Chinese companies in the surveillance equipment sector reflects Beijing’s growing reliance on advanced technological tools to monitor the lives of its citizens in Xinjiang and to expand an already extensive surveillance infrastructure throughout China.

According to Human Rights Watch, the Xinjiang Bureau of Public Security uses what it calls the Integrated Joint Operations Platform, a system that gathers data on residents through iris scanners, digital cameras with face recognition, DNA samples and cellphone data.

In the China section of its 2020 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, the U.S. State Department said that Hikvision and other tech companies are related to the development of a “Uyghur alarm” based on a face-scanning camera system.

The report said the Chinese government is conducting significant human rights abuses against Uyghurs, including “mass detention of more than one million Uyghurs and other members of predominantly Muslim minority groups in extrajudicial internment camps and an additional two million subjected to daytime-only ‘re-education’ training.”

China, which contends that Uyghurs hold extremist and separatist ideas, denies the allegations, saying that Xinjiang’s camps are “re-education” facilities aimed at combating terrorism.  

 
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New figures from the U.N.’s International Labor Organization indicate the global labor market has been slow to bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic, with the economies of lower-income countries faring worse than those of the wealthier countries.

Early this year, ILO economists had anticipated a fragile, but steady recovery in the global job market. However, they acknowledge this relative optimism now has faded due to new waves of the pandemic and slower than expected economic recovery.

Based on its findings, the U.N. agency now projects the number of global hours worked this year will be 4.3% below pre-pandemic levels. This is the equivalent to a loss of 125 million full time jobs.

ILO Director-General Guy Ryder says more worrying still is what he sees as the two-speed recovery between higher and lower-income countries.

“This is reflected in the fact that the higher income countries, with more resources managed to recover in 2021 at least to some extent, whilst lower income countries continue to suffer very severely from the pandemic…The pandemic has exacerbated inequalities between countries, as well as within them,” he expressed.

Ryder blames this growing divergence on differences in the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccinations and fiscal stimulus packages. He says the pace of each nation’s recovery depends heavily on its ability to vaccinate its population and it will also depend on the ability of countries to provide a financial cushion to protect workers and businesses from the economic impact of the pandemic.

“In low and middle-income countries, fiscal constraints and slow vaccination progress are expected to continue to hinder progress. And without concrete financial and technical support, the great divergence between developed and developing countries will persist,” he insists.

The ILO reports the prospects for labor market recovery for the rest of the year remain weak and uncertain. Ryder says no country or region will get out of this crisis alone. He says the only sustainable path out of this health and socio-economic dilemma is for all nations to work together.
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U.S. holiday sales could rise over 10% this year, a trade body said on Wednesday, as major consumer goods makers and retailers work to prevent supply chain disruptions from leaving shelves empty of in-demand toys and games. 

The National Retail Federation (NRF) forecast sales to increase between 8.5% and 10.5%, to between $843.4 billion and $859 billion, during November and December, compared with a previous high of $777.3 billion last year. 

Rising income and household savings have never been stronger and would help people pay more for goods at a time when companies have raised prices to deal with inflation, the NRF said. It added there is exceptional demand for holiday products this year, although a survey last week showed customers were worried about availability. 

“If retailers can keep merchandise on the shelves and merchandise arrives before Christmas, it could be a stellar holiday sales season,” NRF Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz said. 

NRF also said the arrival of international travelers to the United States amid relaxed COVID-19 restrictions would further drive sales higher. 

“That’s going to give a jolt to the retail side, because there is a high correlation between international travelers and tourism in the U.S., and retail sales,” NRF President Matthew Shay told reporters. 

Several retailers had also begun their holiday selling as early as September, warning their customers their favorite items could sell out or delivery could take longer than usual. 

“There may be some categories in which there will be some shortages or which consumers will need to do some switching or trading … they won’t go home empty-handed,” Shay said. 

Amazon.com, Inc. has secured more shipping storage, while Levi Strauss & Co and Crocs Inc. have been redirecting their goods to come in through East Coast ports, away from the congested West Coast. 

 
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Торги на українському міжбанківському валютному ринку завершуються на рівні 26 гривень 35,5–37,5 копійки за долар
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