Aurelia Butler

Positive approval of the government rose to 42% of respondents from 37% in June, while negative views fell 3 points to 24%, the poll found.Approval of Lula’s performance as president has risen to 60% from 56%, and is at its highest since a February poll, the first survey one month after he took office.”The 60% is good news for Lula, particularly given the political polarization of Brazil,” said analyst Andre Cesar at Hold Assessoria Legislativa consultancy. But he warned that the government cannot rest on its laurels and should watch out for the impact fuel price rises will have.After dipping in April to 23%, the number of Brazilians who now see the economy improving rose to 34% in August, and the main reason has been the drop in food prices, the poll showed. Negative views of the economy have decreased again after starting to fall in June, the polling firm found.Optimism over the economy’s future has grown, from 56% to 59% of Brazilians who believe it will improve in the next 12 months.The poll showed that Lula’s approval rating has improved among sectors of society and regions of Brazil that mostly voted against him in last year’s election.For the first time more Evangelical Christians approve of the leftist leader than disapprove, and his ratings rose in the south of Brazil, where his Workers Party has faced electoral defeats.Lula’s policies that have most pleased voters, including those who did not vote for him, are his Plano Safra – a financing program for farming – and his plan to help people reduce their debt. Least popular is his tax reform proposal, the poll said.Genial/Quaest interviewed 2,029 people of voting age between August 10 and August 14. The poll has a 2.2 percentage point error margin. More

The U.S. Treasury Department in a statement said that Russia has increasingly been forced to turn to North Korea and other allies to sustain its war in Ukraine as it expends munitions and loses heavy equipment on the battlefield.The action is the latest by Washington, which has imposed rafts of sanctions targeting Moscow and Russian President Vladimir Putin since the start of the war, which has killed tens of thousands of people and turned cities to rubble.“The United States continues to root out illicit financial networks that seek to channel support from North Korea to Russia’s war machine,” Treasury’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Brian Nelson, said in the statement.“Alongside our allies and partners, we remain committed to exposing and disrupting the arms trade underpinning Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine.”Russia’s embassy in Washington and North Korea’s mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The entities targeted in Wednesday’s action are Limited Liability Company Verus, Defense Engineering Limited Liability Partnership and Versor S.R.O.The Treasury said Slovakian national Ashot Mkrtychev, already under U.S. sanctions, is the president of Versor, founder and owner of Verus and director of Defense Engineering.Washington accused Mkrtychev of negotiating with North Korean and Russian officials to organize potential plans to transfer over two dozens kinds of weapons and munitions to Russia in exchange for goods to North Korea.Wednesday’s action freezes any US assets of those designated and generally bars Americans from dealing with them. Those that engage in certain transactions with the sanctioned entities can also be hit with punitive measures. More

Today’s top storiesRussian president Vladimir Putin is to discuss ramping up currency controls with authorities after an extraordinary 3.5 percentage point rate rise failed to halt the rouble’s slide. A container ship left Odesa port for Istanbul, the first vessel to depart from Ukraine’s ports since Russia threatened to attack civilian shipping in the Black Sea last month. Wheat prices rose over the heightened risk to Ukrainian exports.The US is pushing Iran to stop selling armed drones to Russia as part of discussions on a broader understanding between Washington and Tehran to de-escalate tensions and contain a long-running nuclear crisis.For up-to-the-minute news updates, visit our live blogGood evening.Ministers welcomed today’s data showing UK inflation falling more than expected in July but an unchanged “core” figure keeps the pressure on the Bank of England to continue with its programme of interest rate rises.Headline CPI fell from 7.9 per cent to 6.8 per cent, the lowest rate of increase since February last year, driven by lower gas and electricity costs. However, once volatile food and energy prices are stripped out, core inflation is unchanged at 6.9 per cent, while the annual rate for services, which officials see as the best indicator of underlying domestic inflation, actually increased, from 7.2 per cent to 7.4 per cent.Inflation concerns were also fuelled by labour market data yesterday that showed record wage growth of 8.2 per cent in the three months to June. This was further highlighted by a survey on Monday showing that employers were increasingly resorting to bidding wars to retain staff.On the positive side, it did mean that annual growth in regular pay exceeded price increases for the first time since March 2022, marking the end of Britain’s “painful pay squeeze”. Earnings are now finally higher than before the 2008-09 global financial crisis, but at the expense of what Nye Cominetti, economist at the Resolution Foundation think-tank, described as a “15-year stagnation [that] has cost average workers £230 a week — and left Britain a far poorer country”.Other cost of living pressures remain. Home rental prices in July rose at their fastest rate ever, according to new data, while mortgage rates are expected to stay high for some time. Today’s data did show a welcome stabilisation of food prices in July, rising just 0.1 per cent in the month, bringing the annual rate down from 17.3 per cent to 14.9 per cent. Separate survey data yesterday showed grocery price inflation falling sharply in the four weeks to August 6 to hit 12.7 per cent, the second-largest monthly drop since research company Kantar began monitoring in 2008.A fascinating FT Big Read details the changes in UK consumer behaviour since the financial crisis, when recession was followed by a long period of very low interest rates and weak wage growth. The middle classes became more likely to buy from value retailers such as Primark, Aldi and Lidl while the rise of the smartphone boosted online shopping and bargain-hunting. The era was also defined by a move from buying things to doing things (at least until the pandemic struck) or as one executive at Swedish furniture retailer Ikea put it, the world “hit peak stuff”.See how your country compares on rising prices with our global inflation trackerNeed to know: UK and Europe economyThe head of Norway’s $1.4tn oil fund told the FT he was worried that political resistance to environmental policies was spreading from the US to the UK. “You have a big country in Europe that is slowing down the work on climate at a time where it’s more important than ever,” he said. Green energy plans are also being jeopardised by locals’ objections to new power infrastructure. Italy’s deputy prime minister Antonio Tajani joined in the criticism of the government’s controversial bank windfall tax, arguing it should not apply to smaller lenders. Italy has also proposed price caps on flights between the mainland and the islands of Sicily and Sardinia: airlines have called for Brussels to step in.Need to know: Global economyChina unexpectedly cut a benchmark interest rate by the biggest margin since the start of the pandemic as policymakers attempted to address the country’s faltering recovery. They have also come up with a novel solution to the problem of youth unemployment: stop reporting the figures.China is becoming more trouble than it’s worth for US investment banks, says Asia financial correspondent Kaye Wiggins. Beijing put the brakes on offshore listings in a 2021 crackdown, then announced new rules in February that gave mainland regulators far more influence than before. Argentina is struggling to avoid economic collapse after the shock victory of radical rightwinger Javier Milei in a primary poll ahead of the country’s presidential election. The black-market dollar, a staple of Argentine life, has jumped to almost double the new official exchange rate. Whoever becomes president faces a daunting challenge, says the FT editorial board.Gabon closed the first debt-for-nature swap in continental Africa, highlighting how developing countries are turning to deals that funnel money to conservation and ease their debt burdens. The deal lowers the interest rate on its debt and extends payment deadlines in return for improving a nature reserve and strengthening fishing regulations.Lord Jim O’Neill, creator of the Brics acronym, said the idea that the group of emerging nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) might develop a common currency was a “ridiculous” idea. The FT editorial board said India needed reform to capitalise on the country’s economic potential.Need to know: BusinessIntel’s attempt to buy Israeli chipmaker Tower Semiconductor became the latest victim of geopolitical tensions after failing to secure regulatory approval in China for the $5.4bn deal. A deal on that scale needs the go-ahead from regulators around the world, including from Beijing.Carlsberg said it was “shocked” at the Russian seizure of its Baltika Breweries subsidiary last month. The company raised its 2023 profit forecast after strong first-half sales, bucking the wider trend in the beer industry.Vietnamese electric vehicle start-up VinFast is worth more than Ford or GM after shares of the lossmaking company soared on its US stock market debut. Billions more of investment in US charging infrastructure is needed for electric vehicles to be more widely adopted.Chinese pharma companies are developing copycat versions of “miracle” western weight-loss drugs. China has the world’s largest overweight and diabetic population. Here’s our deep dive on the “skinny jabs”.UK retail bellwether Marks and Spencer lifted its annual forecast after reporting higher sales in its clothing and food businesses. The announcement follows recent upbeat statements from other UK retailers including Primark and Next.Concerns about the Chinese economy and the fact that US interest rates might have to stay higher for longer to curb inflation have turned investors gloomier on the outlook for European stock markets.The World of WorkFormer Goldman Sachs managing director Maeve DuVally told the FT that corporate America needed to “step up” for transgender staff. DuVally’s coming out in 2019 was seen as a watershed moment for Wall Street.The debate over the “right to disconnect” has created lots of noise but how is it being reflected in real life? Columnist Sarah O’Connor says the trend has had less impact than proponents hoped or critics feared, offering a handy lesson in the perils of performative policymaking.When good intentions aren’t enough: the Working It podcast discusses why diversity strategies fail — and how to fix them.Podcast host Isabel Berwick is also your go-to for Office Therapy. The latest problem: should you manage your team the way your boss expects you too or stick to what you believe is the right way? You can sign up for Isabel’s Working It newsletter here.Some good newsScientists have shown that machine learning can accurately predict different types of Parkinson’s disease using images from patients’ stem cells, raising hopes that personalised drugs may soon become a reality. More

Almost a decade ago, the economists Francesco D’Acunto, Ulrike Malmendier and Michael Weber examined the responses given by 18,000 Americans to the Chicago Booth Expectations and Attitudes Survey. The study, by the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, tracked consumer attitudes to the economy and showed that, measured overall, on average women expected future price growth of 5.1 per cent while men projected inflation of “only” 4.6 per cent. Women tended to base their expectations on grocery shopping; when asked what item they tracked most closely, their top choice was milk. By contrast, men watched gasoline prices, as they did far less grocery shopping on average. In families where men did an equal amount of grocery shopping, the inflation projections of the men and women were found to be more similar. “Traditional gender roles . . . expose women to different signals about prices than men,” the group concluded, noting that this generated “divergent beliefs about future inflation”. And while a gap of less than 1 percentage point does not seem enormous, it is more striking when you learn that at the time of the study (2015) actual reported inflation in the US was less than 2 per cent.We are, of course, all creatures of our own environments. But the above distinction seems worth noting again now, when central banks are scrambling to bring spiralling prices under control. After all, if consumers think that price growth will stay high, they may demand higher wages, creating a possible inflationary spiral; but if they are confident prices can be contained, it should be easier for central bankers to do their jobs. So it’s more important than ever to understand what is happening inside consumers’ heads as they project future prices.It’s a tough task. In past decades, free-market economic theory tended to assume that economies were shaped by a “rational man” (sic) — the name given to an economic actor with a clear-headed, self-interested vision of the future. As behavioural economists have long pointed out, however, humans are never entirely rational, in the sense of being consistent and neutral in their views.The inflation gender gap is one example of this, but not the only one. Take the Michigan University consumer survey of inflation expectations, arguably the best known of its kind in America. This suggests that five-year inflation expectations have recently fallen from 3 per cent to 2.9 per cent. That looks encouraging, and economists such as Richard Clarida, former vice-chair of the Federal Reserve, have taken it as a sign that expectations remain “well anchored” (meaning “low”).But, as investment analyst Jim Bianco has noted, an odd thing about this survey is that consumers did not seem to change their expectations last year, even as prices surged. That might be because the Fed is so credible (as Clarida argues); but it might also be because consumers are simply telling pollsters what they think they want to hear. “The survey is total crap,” Bianco tweeted.Another possible explanation is that consumers’ focus on economic data fluctuates. Recently, a dozen economists in the US collaborated on a massive series of randomised controlled studies to explore the question of consumer “attention” to information. Although the “attention” factor is usually ignored, the research suggests it matters enormously. Their paper, Tell Me Something I Don’t Already Know: Learning in Low and High-Inflation Settings, argues that since inflation began rising again in advanced economies, “both households and firms have become more attentive and informed about inflation”. Ironically, this has actually seen them react less to fresh data than they do in quieter times.A separate study by the St Louis Federal Reserve shows that, when investors are confronted by “abnormal GDP and inflation regimes”, they pay far more attention to speeches from central bankers, even between monetary policy meetings. Meanwhile, another recent project from a trio of economists from Israel (Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Rafi Melnick and Ari Kutai) argues that companies confronted with an inflation shock tend to raise their inflation expectations for the next year — even when other future data looks benign.To put it another way, how consumers imagine the future is not just shaped by their own recent past, but also by how focused on the issue they are in the first place. All of which makes the central banks’ tasks doubly hard in the coming months. So with the Bank of England warning that grocery shopping prices are likely to stay above 10 per cent in the UK even as other inflation falls, all eyes should be on the price of milk. Follow Gillian on Twitter @gilliantett and email her at [email protected] @FTMag on Twitter to find out about our latest stories first More

“We agreed we should do a CR … where you just extend the existing funding for a few months so we could work this out, and I thought that was a good sign,” the chamber’s top Democrat told MSNBC, referring to a temporary spending measure known as a continuing resolution. Current government funding is due to expire Sept. 30 with the fiscal year beginning Oct 1, and no action to fund the federal government could trigger a shutdown. Any spending measures would have to pass both the Democratic-led Senate and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Schumer warned against McCarthy, a Republican, following hardline members of his party who may be pushing for a shutdown over Ukraine funding and other issues, and noted that there is bipartisan support in the Senate to pass regular appropriations bills to fund the U.S. government. More