Tausi Insider

New York Federal Reserve President John Williams said on Friday it remains possible the U.S. central bank raises interest rates more than it currently expects next year, adding that he’s not expecting the economy to fall into recession as Fed policy-makers press forward with action to tame unacceptably high inflation. “We’re going to have to do what’s necessary” to get inflation back to the Fed’s 2 per cent target, Mr. Williams said in an interview on Bloomberg’s television channel. He said monetary policy will need to become restrictive and the peak federal funds rate next year, which Fed policy-makers projected this week at 5.1 per cent, “could be higher than what we’ve written down.” Mr. Williams, who is also vice-chair of the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee, noted that “inflation has been stubbornly high … and we’ve seen the economy remain very resilient to higher interest rates.” But when it comes to some Wall Street forecasts that argue the Fed may need to go as high...

Oil prices rose over 1 per cent on Monday after China’s move to reopen its borders boosted the outlook for fuel demand and overshadowed global recession concerns. The rally was part of a wider boost for risk sentiment supported by both the reopening of the world’s biggest crude importer and hopes for less-aggressive increases to U.S. interest rates, with equities rising and the dollar weakening. Brent crude was up $1.29, or 1.6 per cent, at $79.80 a barrel by 1:29 p.m. EST (1829 GMT). U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude rose $1.32, or 1.8 per cent, to $75.09. “The gradual reopening of the Chinese economy will provide an additional and immeasurable layer of price support,” said Tamas Varga of oil broker PVM. The rally followed a drop last week of more than 8 per cent for both oil benchmarks, their biggest weekly declines at the start of a year since 2016. As part of a “new phase” in the fight against COVID-19, China opened its borders over the weekend for the first time in three years....

A worker arranges slabs in the factory at IceStone, a manufacturer of recycled glass countertops and surfaces, in New York, on June 3, 2021. ANDREW KELLY/Reuters New York State manufacturing contracted sharply in January as orders collapsed and employment growth stalled, pointing to continued weakness in national factory activity, and little improvement was expected over the next six months. The survey from the New York Federal Reserve on Tuesday offered an early read of conditions in one of the sectors hardest hit by the Federal Reserve’s fastest interest rate hiking cycle since the 1980s. It showed slumping demand and improved raw material supplies slowing inflation at the factory gate. National manufacturing has been shrinking since November, according to data from the Institute for Supply Management. “A variety of manufacturing surveys have been weak across recent months and the Empire State survey suggests that this weakness continued, or perhaps intensified, early this year,” s...