Aurelia Butler

Lending via the central bank’s discount window stood at $3.4 billion on Wednesday from $3.2 billion on June 28, while “other credit” tied to the wind down of failed banks stood at $164.8 billion from June 28’s $168.3 billion. Bank Term Funding Program lending was $102 billion as of Wednesday, versus $103.1 billion on June 28. Total lending via the three programs stood at $270.2 billion, from $274.7 billion the week before. More

Investors sold stocks and bonds across the world on Thursday as US borrowing costs touched a 16-year high, following strong jobs figures that intensified expectations of further rate rises by the Federal Reserve.Europe’s Stoxx 600 index closed down 2.3 per cent, its biggest one-day drop since March, as the yield on the two-year US Treasury note — which tracks interest rate expectations — reached its highest level since 2007.The moves came after the US gained 497,000 private sector jobs last month — roughly double economists’ expectations and the biggest rise in more than a year — according to data from ADP Research Institute.“The global economy will break eventually, and the higher rates go, the bigger the cracks will be,” said Mike Riddell, a bond fund portfolio manager at Allianz.As the two-year US Treasury hit 5.12 per cent, the benchmark 10-year reached 4.08 per cent, with the sell-off by investors pushing up yields.On Wall Street, the S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite both tumbled more than 1 per cent after the data was released, but recovered to each close 0.8 per cent lower.The Vix volatility index, popularly known as “Wall Street’s fear gauge”, jumped to a high of 17.1 as investors fretted that a prolonged period of high borrowing costs could soon weigh on the US economy.London’s FTSE 100 dropped 2.2 per cent, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index earlier fell 3 per cent.Two-year German debt yields, a eurozone benchmark, also jumped, rising 0.07 percentage points to 3.36 per cent, while two-year UK Gilts rose 0.19 percentage points to 5.56 per cent, their highest level since 2008. The shifts underscored a growing consensus that the Fed would soon resume rate rises after pausing its tightening campaign in June for the first time in more than a year. Lorie Logan, president of the Dallas Fed, called on Thursday for an immediate resumption of rate rises.“If we lose ground in our effort to restore price stability, we will need to do more later to catch up,” she warned. “We have already had a fair amount of time to see the overall effects of monetary tightening.”The central bank has raised the federal funds rate more than 5 percentage points since early 2022. But according to minutes released this week from June’s meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, “almost all” officials who participated said “additional increases” in the Fed’s benchmark interest rate would be “appropriate”.

The US labour market has remained extraordinarily strong, despite the Fed’s sustained interest rate rises. Thursday’s private sector employment data showed big increases in the hospitality and leisure sectors, as well as in construction and transportation.“This was very, very strong hiring data,” said Ben Jeffery, a US rates strategist at BMO Capital Markets.He added that some wage data “was encouraging for the Fed, but there is nothing in here that would make them hesitant to hike at the end of the month”. In contrast to the ADP figures, the government’s own data on Friday is expected to show that hiring growth slowed in June. Economists polled by Bloomberg have forecast that the labour department will report that the US added 200,000 jobs last month, down from 339,000 in May. However, the median forecast has underestimated jobs data for 14 consecutive months.Additional reporting by Taylor Nicole Rogers and Colby Smith in New York More

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Federal Reserve forecasts released at the June monetary policy meeting laid out an outlook that was more hawkish than what Wall Street’s biggest banks had penciled in ahead of the gathering. According to the June survey of primary dealers, who underwrite Treasury debt auctions, the banks forecast a 5.38% stopping point for the federal funds target rate range, which is lower than the 5.6% that Fed officials ended up penciling in at the gathering. The Fed’s outlook implies another half percentage point increase from the current target of between 5% and 5.25%, which the Fed held steady at the Federal Open Market Committee meeting held on June 13-14. The primary dealer survey was released on Thursday by the New York Fed and was joined by the survey of market participants, most of whom are large money managers. Respondents to that poll were also caught off guard by the Fed outlook and had projected the same Fed stopping point as the primary dealers. Both surveys were done ahead of the FOMC meeting. The primary dealers expect a full percentage point’s worth of rate cuts in 2024, starting in the first quarter of that year, while the market participant survey sees a move down to 4.25%. At the Fed meeting, officials eyed a 4.6% funds rate by the end of next year. The dealers were also polled on their expectations for the drawdown of the Fed’s balance sheet. The Fed has been allowing just under $100 billion per month in Treasury and mortgage debt to mature and not be replaced, complementing a rate rise campaigns that began in March 2022, when short-term rates were at near zero levels. Fed officials have given little guidance about when the central bank would stop the drawdown. The pre-FOMC survey of dealers projected the Fed would stop shedding Treasuries in the second quarter of 2024 but will continue unloading mortgage debt at least into the fourth quarter of 2025, which is as far as the survey sought answers. Dealers in the survey offered a range of views as to why the balance sheet drawdown would stop. Some said it would accompany the start of rate cuts, while others said it would stop when Fed officials determined a recession was likely. Speaking Thursday, Lorie Logan, who managed the Fed’s holdings of cash and securities before becoming the Dallas Fed president last year, said the view shown in past surveys pointing to an end of the drawdown in the second quarter of next year ‘surprised me.” Logan, at an event at Columbia University, said it was likely wrong to think the drawdown would stop just because the Fed was lowering rates. She explained the Fed could be lowering rates simply because inflation was coming down and it was trying to balance monetary policy to that shift. Logan said in her view, the Fed has a long way to go reducing its holdings. The dealer and market surveys also offered projections about the size of the Fed’s reverse repo facility. This tool exists to put a floor underneath short-term rates and has seen very high usage by those eligible to use it. Mainly used by money funds, this tool finally saw inflows fall below $2 trillion per day last month, and they are widely expected to fall further as private market rates become more attractive and the Treasury ramps up issuance. Primary dealers reckon the daily reverse repo inflow will hit $1.119 trillion by the fourth quarter of 2024. More

Diplomats are nearing an agreement to target net zero emissions from shipping by “close to 2050” after almost two weeks of talks highlighted deep divisions over cleaning up the highly polluting industry.The goal would significantly strengthen existing ambitions set by the UN’s International Maritime Organisation, which has committed to establishing a new target when negotiations between member states conclude this week. But it will also disappoint environmentalists hoping for a concrete commitment to eliminate shipping’s greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century. A firm target to reach net zero by 2050 would align the industry more closely with existing global commitments on limiting climate change.A draft plan seen by the Financial Times on Thursday states that international shipping should “reach net zero GHG emissions by or around, ie close to, 2050”, although it adds that “different national circumstances should be taken into account”. The strategy, which upgrades an existing ambition to halve emissions between 2008 and 2050, is expected to be finalised by Friday.The caveats underline the struggle for developing and wealthier nations to reach a compromise and intensify concerns whether the fuel-intensive sector, which delivers up to 90 per cent of traded goods globally, can make substantial progress on decarbonisation.“There’s a lot of distrust in the room between north and south,” said Faig Abbasov, director of shipping at climate group Transport & Environment, who is present at the IMO talks. “Compromise often reflects the lowest possible denominator. That is the big concern.”Ahead of the IMO talks France rallied 22 allies behind calls to impose a levy on shipping emissions and align the industry with the 2015 Paris Agreement’s aim to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. But these efforts were countered by China, which urged poorer countries to oppose a flat levy and the “unrealistic” ambitions of wealthy nations, according to a diplomatic note seen by the FT.Abbasov added: “This is pretty much the last strategy for the next decade. This is the moment . . . The UN had the opportunity to set an unambiguous and clear course towards the 1.5C goal but all it came up with is a confusing fudge.” The proposed plan falls short of targets laid out by the UN, which has said global emissions must fall 45 per cent by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050, if the world is to meet ambitions set out in the Paris accord. The draft strategy sets “indicative” targets for shipping, believed to be responsible for almost 3 per cent of greenhouse gases according to the IMO, to cut its emissions “at least 20 per cent” by 2030 and “at least 70 per cent” by 2040.It adds that zero or near-zero alternatives should make up at least 5 per cent of shipping’s energy supply by 2030.Member states have not agreed economic measures to reach the stated ambitions. Some, but not all, developing nations oppose a levy that they fear would impose additional costs on trade. The draft states that such measures should be approved by 2025 before entering into force in 2027.The IMO declined to comment on an “informal document”, adding the final draft will be presented on Friday. More

What on earth is going on in the minds of American consumers right now? That is a question many investors want the answer to. After all, those US shoppers have long been an important driver of the global economy, since private consumption accounts for two thirds of America’s gross domestic product. But recently their behaviour has looked very odd.For more than a year, polls have consistently painted a picture of profound popular pessimism. A survey of 3,000 adults in the second quarter by TransUnion, for example, suggests that 75 per cent of consumers think we will be in recession soon — and 44 per cent think we are already in one. Meanwhile, the Michigan survey of consumer confidence went to just over 60 in June — better than the ultra gloomy level of 50 seen a year ago, but well below the levels that hovered at just under 100 for several years before the pandemic.Yet, even amid this gloom, the US economy continues to grow at a strong(ish) pace, partly because retail sales have remained surprisingly resilient. And household economic fundamentals look surprisingly healthy in the official statistics.The San Francisco Federal Reserve recently analysed the impact of the US government’s $5tn-odd Covid-19 stimulus and concluded that American households had an eye-watering $2.1tn excess savings in 2021, due to that largesse.Consumers have subsequently run down this cushion. But the research notes that “there is still a large stock of aggregate excess savings in the economy [of] some $500bn . . . households on average, including those at the lower end of the distribution, continue to have considerably more liquid funds at their disposal compared with the pre-pandemic period.” Moreover, it predicts that “these excess savings could continue to support consumer spending at least into the fourth quarter of 2023.” Meanwhile, if you look at the so-called “misery index” — a metric that tracks consumer stress — the picture looks more cheerful than “in 83 per cent of the months since 1978”, according to David Kelly, a strategist at JPMorgan. That is because one key component of this index is inflation, which is now falling, after surging last year; the other is unemployment, which is at a 50-year low.More striking still, another composite sentiment index that JPMorgan tracks, using “inflation, unemployment, stock prices, gasoline prices and payroll job gains”, is displaying a “reading for June 2023 [that] at 64.4 is the biggest outlier of all, more than . . . 3.8 standard errors below its predicted value of 98.6.” In plain English, consumers are telling pollsters they are gloomy; the data, however, says they are not.Why? One potential explanation is that the data is wrong or, more accurately, incomplete. It is possible that the aggregate calculations of surplus savings in the San Francisco Fed research, for example, fail to capture the pain now being felt by some socio-economic groups, or is simply out of date. Indeed, research by economists at the Washington Fed that uses a different methodology, implies that excess savings might already be depleted.Similarly, it is also entirely possible that the lived experience of consumers is worse than official employment and inflation data imply. Research by the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity, a Washington think-tank, suggests that poor people face a real inflation rate of 5.8 per cent — not the official 4.7 per cent — because the goods they consume are rising faster in price than the average. It also argues that functional unemployment rate is above 20 per cent — not the official 3.7 per cent — because so many “jobs” are deeply insecure and low-paying. If so, that might explain the gloom.However, a second potential explanation is that it is the polls — not the data — that are skewed. More specifically, it is possible that consumers are extrapolating a wider fear of rising interest rates, geopolitical risks and/or political gridlock on to their assessment of the economy, creating biases. One clue that this skew might be happening is that the Michigan survey shows that consumers are more cheerful about their personal finances than the macroeconomy. Another is that Republicans are dramatically more pessimistic than Democrats, even when they hail from the same socio-economic group. If nothing else, this shows the folly of creating economic models around the concept of the consistently “rational man”.Of course, it is also entirely possible — and indeed probable — that both explanations are correct, namely that the polls and data are both incomplete. That is my guess. But as the mystery bubbles on, there are two tangible lessons. The first is that a hefty dose of humility is currently needed when judging the future trajectory of America’s economy; the past is not necessarily a good guide to future trends, given the Covid shock. Second, this uncertainty also shows why the Fed (and others) need to conduct far more on-the-ground, ethnographic research to see how consumer culture is changing, and whether this gloomy sentiment will damp animal spirits later this year. There are hints it might: recent data on restaurant spending and durable purchases has softened, from previous highs. But right now those shoppers are a baffling tribe. So much for America being the land of optimism. [email protected] More

Dressed in double denim, thick-rimmed black glasses and shiny leather boots, Mujinga Tshikuta Asamoah bears few signs of the hardship he endured as a child. From as young as 14 years old, he went down narrow holes as deep as 25 metres, carried 50kg bags and washed ore to produce the cobalt essential to the batteries used in the world’s laptops, phones and electric cars.“I was bound and obliged as I had no options,” Asamoah says, shuffling three mobile phones powered by the very material responsible for both the death of some of his closest friends and his escape from poverty.Now 30, a teacher and interpreter, Asamoah says he is one of the lucky few in the surreal, almost otherworldly, reddish-brown landscapes of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s copper and cobalt capital Kolwezi, in the south of the country.But his fresh start was not through his own toil. It was his aunt’s husband working nearby at global natural resource powerhouse Glencore’s vast Mutanda mine who paid for him to go to university and leave the mines behind.Mujinga Tshikuta Asamoah, a teacher and interpreter, was once a child labourer in a cobalt mine in Kolwezi © Harry Dempsey/FTCobalt, the silver metal so abundant in the DRC that miners can dig it out with basic tools, is essential for the world’s transition to clean energy. Demand for the resource is projected to triple by 2035, mainly for electric vehicle batteries, according to the Cobalt Institute, an industry body.Asamoah’s story encapsulates the uneasy coexistence of the two faces of the DRC’s cobalt industry: on one side, the industrial mines run by multinationals like Glencore that are sealed off by concrete walls and wire fences and, on the other, the informal mines with hellish, unsafe conditions that feed underground Chinese trading networks. The practice is known as “artisanal” mining; a name that belies its rudimentary and hazardous nature. Yet this small-scale mining generates about 15 to 30 per cent of the DRC’s cobalt supply, which in turn produces about 70 per cent of global output. “Demand growth for battery metals is intensifying,” says James Nicholson, head of social responsibility at Trafigura, one of the world’s largest commodity traders. “Large-scale mines are going to be under significant pressure to produce, so the mid-tier as well as small-scale and artisanal producers will increasingly be depended upon.”If the world is to meet its need for cobalt — and do so in a sustainable and equitable way — then the artisanal mining sector will have to be cleaned up to meet international standards. While artisanal mining extends far beyond the DRC, supporting the livelihoods of almost 1 in 20 people on the planet, and includes commodities such as copper, gold, tin and lithium, it was in 2016 that Amnesty International drew attention to child labour and inhumane working conditions in the country’s informal cobalt mining sector. Since then, Washington and Brussels have become more serious about bolstering the security of raw material supply — and loosening China’s stranglehold on critical mineral supply chains. They are also introducing due diligence and human rights legislation in the global supply chain.

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Down in the dusty tracks of Kamilombe, an artisanal mining site near Kolwezi, home to hundreds of precarious man-made holes and trading depots there is little sign of those changes. A hundred or so miners start the morning brawling over a scant number of hard hats. No children appear to be present — although they can be seen washing ore and carrying soaked red sacks through a nearby stream. Extreme danger and exploitation remains: most miners wear nothing beyond sandals, jeans and T-shirts, some shafts sink 100 metres deep — three times the legal limit — and the prices paid by Chinese traders are unfair.After witnessing Congolese people in Kamilombe going through the same ordeal he once did, Asamoah is decisive about what should happen next: “These mines should be formalised.”The glacial pace of change is also seen at the end of the supply chain. The $7.7tn club of miners, car manufacturers and electronics makers — including Glencore, Volkswagen, Microsoft and Apple — who belong to the Responsible Minerals Initiative continue to rigidly exclude artisanally mined cobalt from what they consider “responsible” sources.Some in the industry say this exclusion helps the companies protect their supply chains and indeed their reputations, but does little to improve conditions for those risking their lives in unregulated mines or bring development to one of the world’s poorest nations.Governments and multinational corporations are under increasing pressure to do more to improve safety at informal mines and find a way to incorporate them into ethical supply chains. A chastening but unsuccessful attempt by families of children killed or injured while mining to sue Apple, Google, Microsoft, Dell and Tesla in 2019 has added further scrutiny. In February, Microsoft called for “a coalition” to advance formalisation of artisanal mining, which would involve a collective effort to enforce standards such as eliminating deep tunnels, alcohol abuse and child labour. But given the challenge ahead, some critics wonder why safeguarding artisanal mining is taking so long.Blurred linesDriving through Tenke Fungurume, on track to be the world’s largest cobalt mine, a child can be seen carrying a sack of ore on their back in the rubble between a dirt road and a vast open pit mine cut out of the ground. On top of huge man-made mountains of crushed ore, children and young men are sifting with their bare hands for rocks containing valuable metal.These are not employees of CMOC, the Chinese operator that bought the mine from US rival Freeport-McMoran in 2016. They belong to the local community that has swollen from 30,000 to 400,000 people in 15 years. Some came looking for a well-paid job with CMOC, while others were lured by the 10 active giant open pits that signal there is plenty of cobalt to be found nearby. The collision of those two worlds poses reputational, legal and operational risks to miners and their customers. It also threatens to grant China, which has looser human-rights standards than western rivals, the upper hand in securing critical minerals, while keeping the populations of resource-rich nations hostage to kleptocrats and international criminal gangs.Mining companies such as Glencore and CMOC, which churned out 43,800 and 20,300 tonnes of cobalt last year, respectively, insist that their products do not get mixed with artisanal supplies during transportation or at processing sites and smelters in the DRC, China or elsewhere. Some experts dispute that the separation is so clear cut. Michael Posner, director of the Centre for Business and Human Rights at NYU’s Stern School of Business, says that “the idea that you can separate artisanal mining from industrial mining nicely and neatly is a fiction”.The reality on the ground is that mining companies tolerate artisanal mining as long as it does not disrupt their operations but stop short of attempting to regulate it or improve safety as the practice is technically illegal.

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One of the ways large miners have attempted to curb the pervasiveness of artisanal mining is to create alternative jobs by building schools, hospitals and infrastructure. “The ultimate solution is to convince the [artisanal] miners that there’s something better outside of the mine,” says a CMOC executive.That pushes the onus on the government but leadership in the DRC is too weak for that to be an immediate path forward. Plus, the incentives to mine are high. Men can earn upwards of $400 a month digging for cobalt compared with $100 a month for a teacher. Chloris, a 22-year-old digger at Kamilombe, reluctantly gave up his teacher training to earn more money in the mines in order to support seven family members. “I want to do something else. It doesn’t matter what,” he says. In a local village near Mutanda, another of the country’s largest mines, its owner Glencore doubles take-home pay for teachers and pays hundreds of millions of dollars in tax payments to DRC authorities annually. Anne-Marie Fleury, cobalt responsible sourcing director at Glencore, says that the complexity and scale of the challenge means that formalising artisanal mining would be helpful, but not sufficient to solve the problem.

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“To address artisanal mining, a number of factors need to be considered, including root causes, livelihood development and improved co-ordination of support and development efforts,” she says.How far companies like Glencore should go in formalising artisanal mining raises tough questions about the extent to which, and for how long, they should take on government responsibilities in a so-called failed state. The Swiss commodity trader’s role in the DRC is also complicated by the fact that it is under investigation by Dutch authorities for potential corruption in the country. “If mining companies develop new projects in places where needs aren’t being met, then responsibility and pressures will fall on them,” says Rohitesh Dhawan, chief executive of the International Council of Mining and Metals, a global industry association. “But it’s not a healthy or sustainable model for mining companies to become shadow service providers and can create tension with other stakeholders including investors.”The upshot is mining companies are more comfortable improving safety standards at artisanal mines the further away they are from their own pits and machinery. Artisanal miners must sometimes navigate holes as deep as 100 metres © Olivier Delafoy/Fair Colbalt AllianceKamilombe is one such project. Led by the Fair Cobalt Alliance, an NGO funded by Tesla, Google, Glencore and CMOC, the pilot offers protective equipment and child labour remediation services. Similar schemes have come and gone. Trafigura and UAE miner Chemaf ran a pilot project involving 5,000 miners at Mutoshi that used machines to create open pits and eliminate dangerous tunnels. The project, widely hailed as a success, ceased in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. While a blueprint may have been left, the legacy at the site has faded.“We’ve been working bottom-up for a long time with the donor community but we’re not getting sustained results,” said Martin Lokanc, senior mining specialist at the World Bank. “A top-down approach is needed.”Curbing Chinese interestsWhat needs to be done to formalise artisanal mining is clear: offer an alternative trading structure to break the dominance of an exploitative network of intermediaries. This alternative, such as a national buyer, would pay vulnerable miners more in return for putting up fences and installing security guards to keep children out of sites as well as banning deep tunnels and providing protective equipment.Four years ago, the DRC created Entreprise Générale du Cobalt to buy all cobalt supplies from informal mining sites, but action has been snail’s pace as evidenced by the vacant Musompo Trading Centre in Kolwezi. Almost 100 pastel blue warehouses have been ready since early last year to take artisanal cobalt supplies for an entity such as EGC, which would then use lab equipment to measure the weight, purity and humidity of the ore, three properties on which diggers are often cheated.Artisanal miners carry sacks of ore at the Shabara mine near Kolwezi © Junior Kannah/AFP/Getty ImagesDown Kamilombe’s litter-strewn warren of tracks, rows of Congolese workers stand outside a dozen corrugated shacks in coloured uniforms. Behind them in the shadows, Chinese traders linger, waiting to aggregate and launder ore alongside that produced from some large-scale mines.Bruno, a 35-year-old grizzled miner, shrugs off the dangers at Kamilombe, calling his job “the best”. But like everyone there, he wants the current sales system to change. “The Chinese steal from us,” he shouts through the crowd.Eric Kalala, the newly appointed boss of EGC, says it is “more than urgent” to roll out the agency’s action plan, but many doubt much progress will be made before the country’s general election expected in December.EGC’s stalling start can be attributed to local political factions and powerful Chinese interests behind the co-operatives and trading networks.That does not stop the DRC government from calling on the west to rethink its approach and make bigger commitments if it is serious about bringing lasting change and competing with China. “When you guys are coming with a pilot project, it’s just a drop in the ocean,” says Paul Mabiola Yenga, adviser to the DRC Ministry of Mines. “When the Chinese come and say ‘we are going to build’, this is a big investment. The Europeans come and say ‘we need to have good governance and then we will come’. The issue is we see the government but we don’t see the private companies.”Between the DRC government, mining companies, their end customers and NGOs, there is constant finger pointing over who is responsible for the failure to reform and safeguard artisanal mining.Some experts argue that companies talk a good game on responsible sourcing, but turn a blind eye to the knock-on effects of their policies. “There’s a way and not the will,” says Dorothée Baumann-Pauly, director of the Geneva Center for Business and Human Rights. “The peak of cynicism is to put in your contract, as all the car companies do, that we don’t source from artisanal mines.” Many say pragmatism is sorely needed. The London Bullion Market Association, an industry body, has recognised that responsible sourcing standards for gold have marginalised smaller producers from international markets. Its chief executive, Ruth Crowell, says deeper engagement is needed from consumers and investors.Floods add to the hazards of artisanal mining for local people in Kamilombe © David Sturmes/the Impact facility“The bigger challenge is people in the west not wanting to get into the detail of how you will make a difference to peoples’ lives by sourcing the metal, instead just wanting it to be issue-free,” she adds.For the DRC’s cobalt, car manufacturers, electronics producers and mining firms’ efforts to improve artisanal mining and the communities involved are done at arm’s length through various platforms, which have been criticised as smokescreens. The Fair Cobalt Alliance — Tesla, Google and Glencore’s flagship initiative that supports Kamilombe — has a paltry $1.8mn of annual funding. Similarly, BMW, Volkswagen and others help fund Cobalt for Development.Formalising artisanal mining may appear as irresolvable as sweatshops did for garment manufacturers in the 1990s, says Posner of NYU. But he adds that there are encouraging differences. Back then, the White House convened Nike and other apparel giants to get them to start dealing with exploitation and establish standards that led to some improvement. Tackling sweatshops, Posner argues, is “relatively more complicated” than artisanal mining in one part of the DRC. “If western governments start to say, ‘these are our expectations’ and we have supply chain laws to back it up, then that would certainly be better than today’s free-for-all,” he adds.For men and women at Kamilombe like Françoise, who washes ore for $5 to $10 a day to support six children and three brothers, that change would make a world of difference. “I cannot simply stop this work today”, she says, “because this is all I have.”Data visualisation by Chris Campbell More