Aurelia Butler

“We still have a problem with long-term inflation expectations, which are high. We understand that they should start to fall too,” Campos Neto said at an event hosted by a regional coffee growers cooperative.The central bank has kept Brazil’s Selic benchmark interest rate steady at a cycle-high of 13.75% since September, which has attracted frequent criticism from President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.While the central bank has stressed the importance of persisting in the fight against inflation, citing concerns over increased inflation expectations deviating from official targets, Lula has deemed the policy approach unjustifiable as consumer prices have cooled.Campos Neto, who has recently highlighted more favorable price trends in his speeches, said Brazil’s current inflation rates are significantly better than in rich nations.”It’s because we have here an upward revision of growth, which is also very much led by agriculture … and at the same time, we have a downward revision of inflation while the world is going in the opposite direction,” he said.Despite the slow improvement in inflation, Campos Neto said recent dynamics have been a little better, including core inflation and service inflation, two aspects the central bank monitors closely.The central bank’s next rate-setting meeting is scheduled for June 20-21.Brazilian inflation reached 4.07% in the 12 months to mid-May, with the inflation target set at 3.25% this year and 3.00% next year.According to the central bank’s latest weekly survey of private economists, market expectations for inflation have dropped to 5.69% for this year and 4.12% for 2024. More

(Reuters) – A look at the day ahead in Asian markets from Jamie McGeever.The Reserve Bank of Australia delivers its latest interest rate decision on Tuesday, undoubtedly the centerpiece event for Asian and Pacific markets but potentially of interest to U.S. Fed watchers too. The RBA is expected to keep its benchmark cash rate on hold at 3.85% even though inflation is running well above target, with economists united in thinking rates will rise further this year but divided on when and how high they will peak.Sound familiar?This is the general path investors think the Federal Reserve will take: pause or ‘skip’ on another rate hike next week, but leaving the door open to tightening again later in the year if, as the consensus suggests, the economic data warrant it.This would not be the RBA’s first pause in its tightening cycle. It raised rates last month after pausing in April, confounding financial markets and a majority of economists who were expecting the central bank to stay hold. Interest rate futures markets currently attach a 66% chance the RBA pauses, and a one-in-three chance it raises the cash rate by a quarter point to 4.10%. Rates are seen peaking at around 4.20% this year, according to current pricing.This isn’t too dissimilar to current pricing around the Fed – a 75% probability of staying on hold next week and a 50% chance of raising by a quarter point in July. Holders of Australian assets will be pay particularly close attention to policymakers’ statement and RBA governor Philip Lowe’s (NYSE:LOW) press conference after the decision for guidance. Fed watchers will too, as it’s a position U.S. central bankers might find themselves in soon enough.After sliding to a six-month low of $0.6450 last week, the Australian dollar goes into the meeting on a slightly stronger footing, last trading just above $0.66.Asian markets more broadly could struggle for direction on Tuesday after a fairly mixed global session on Monday – Wall Street gave back gains to close in the red, although U.S. mega tech rose and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) briefly hit a new record high; bond yields fell, but oil prices rose. Here are three key developments that could provide more direction to markets on Tuesday:- Australia interest rate decision – Australia current account (Q1)- Japan household spending (April) (By Jamie McGeever) More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. regulators sued Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao on Monday for allegedly operating a “web of deception,” piling further pressure on the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange and sending bitcoin to its lowest in almost three months. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) complaint, filed in a federal court in Washington, D.C., listed 13 charges against Binance, Zhao and the operator of its purportedly independent U.S. exchange. The SEC alleged that Binance artificially inflated its trading volumes, diverted customer funds, failed to restrict U.S. customers from its platform and misled investors about its market surveillance controls. The SEC also claimed that Binance and Zhao, its billionaire founder and one of the crypto industry’s highest-profile moguls, secretly controlled customers’ assets, allowing them to commingle and divert investor funds “as they please.”Binance created separate U.S. entities “as part of an elaborate scheme to evade U.S. federal securities laws,” the SEC also alleged, citing a number of practices first reported by Reuters in a series of investigations into the exchange published this year and in 2022.From almost three years ago until June 2022, a trading firm owned and controlled by Zhao, Sigma Chain, engaged in so-called wash trading that artificially inflated the trading volume of crypto asset securities on the Binance.US platform, the SEC also alleged. Sigma Chain spent $11 million from an account on a yacht, the SEC said. “We allege that Zhao and Binance entities engaged in an extensive web of deception, conflicts of interest, lack of disclosure, and calculated evasion of the law,” SEC Chair Gary Gensler said in a statement.In a blog post, Binance said: “We intend to defend our platform vigorously,” adding that “because Binance is not a U.S. exchange, the SEC’s actions are limited in reach.””All user assets on Binance and Binance affiliate platforms, including Binance.US, are safe and secure,” the blog post said. In a statement, Binance said it had “actively cooperated” with the SEC “from the start” and “respectfully disagree” with the SEC’s allegations. Binance had been trying to find a “reasonable resolution” with the SEC but the agency “at the eleventh hour” issued new requests and went to court. Binance said the SEC’s actions appeared to be an effort to “claim jurisdictional ground from other regulators.” Binance.US, which is ultimately controlled by Zhao, said in a tweet that the lawsuit was “unjustified by the facts, by the law, or by the Commission’s own precedent.”Bitcoin, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency, fell as much as 6% on the news to its lowest in almost three months. Binance’s own cryptocurrency BNB, the world’s fourth-largest by market size, dropped more than 5%. Market players said the SEC’s allegations could hobble Binance, with the lawsuit likely to reverberate through the crypto industry. Binance dominates crypto trading, last year processing trades worth about $65 billion a day. A March report from CCData showed that Binance’s spot market share across top-tier exchanges fell in March for the first time in five months to 57.7% from 62.0% in February. Its derivatives trading volume, however, rose. “I think that there’s a big risk here that this could be crippling to Binance,” said Ed Moya, senior market analyst at Oanda. LEGAL HEADACHES The SEC complaint is the latest in a series of legal headaches for Binance, which was also sued by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in March for operating what the regulator alleged were an “illegal” exchange and a “sham” compliance program. Zhao called those an “incomplete recitation of facts.” Binance is also under investigation by the Justice Department for suspected money laundering and sanctions violations, according to people familiar with the probe.The holding company of Binance is based in the Cayman Islands. It was founded in Shanghai in 2017 by CEO Zhao, a Canadian citizen born and raised in China until age 12. The exchange says it does not have a headquarters and has declined to state the location of its main Binance.com exchange.The SEC alleged that Zhao designed and implemented a plan to “surreptitiously evade U.S. laws.” The agency said Binance’s chief compliance officer admitted that: “We do not want [Binance].com to be regulated ever.” It said Zhao directed Binance.US even though the U.S. entity has long said it operates independently.The SEC said billions of dollars in Binance customer funds were commingled, or mixed with corporate funds, in breach of U.S. laws, in a bank account of an entity controlled by Zhao, then transferred to a trading firm, Merit Peak, also controlled by Zhao. Last month, Reuters reported that Binance commingled its customers’ funds with its corporate revenues in a U.S. bank account belonging to Merit Peak. Binance denied mixing customer deposits and company funds, saying users who sent money to the account were not making deposits but rather buying Binance’s bespoke dollar-linked crypto token.Reuters reported on Monday before the SEC lawsuit that a senior Binance executive was the main operator for five bank accounts belonging to BAM Trading, the operator of Binance.US, including an account that held American customers’ funds.The SEC wrote that the executive had at least until December 2020, also had “signatory authority over BAM Trading’s U.S. Dollar accounts.” More