Aurelia Butler

If it becomes law, the bill would make it easier for the FTC, which also enforces antitrust law, to sue deceptive companies and scammers to recover the money that they took from consumers, Cantwell’s office said in a statement on Monday. The FTC had been suing companies and scammers for decades to recover ill-gotten gains but was stopped in April 2021 by the Supreme Court, which found that the agency went further than it could legally in its practice of seeking court orders to make fraudsters return money. Given the court decision, the FTC needs Congress to expressly give it authority to demand disgorgement of ill-gotten gains. The House of Representatives passed similar legislation last year.Business groups had complained that the FTC aggressively extracted billions of dollars in monetary awards from companies in recent years.”If the FTC remains disarmed of this critical authority, millions of consumers and small businesses who’ve been scammed, swindled, or locked out of competitive marketplaces will never be made whole,” Cantwell said in a statement. The senator also released a committee report to support the need for the legislation.The legislation that Cantwell will introduce will authorize relief for consumers hurt by violations of consumer protection law, her office said in a statement. It also would put a 10-year statute of limitations on lawsuits, the statement said. More

Benjamin Harris, assistant secretary for economic policy, said in a statement to the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee that there may be downward revisions to private GDP forecasts for 2.3% growth on a fourth-quarter comparison after the 1.4% first quarter decline in real GDP. “Although this estimate may be revised down — and downside risks remain to the outlook — the U.S. economy is expected to continue its expansion this year,” Harris said. “Waning fiscal and monetary stimulus along with recovering labor supply should help balance labor markets and relieve some inflationary pressures.”The statement was issued as part of the Treasury’s May quarterly refunding process. The Treasury said on Monday that it expects to pay down $26 billion of debt in the second quarter, compared to a January estimate of $66 billion in net borrowing, primarily due to an increase in receipts. Harris said that while lower exports, higher imports and low inventory investment caused the decline, private consumption and fixed investment remained strong.He said that supply-demand mismatches have driven headline and core inflation higher so far in 2022, with further increases in headline inflation driven by higher energy and grain prices due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”Still, core inflation may have peaked in spring 2022 and started to ebb, given a further waning of the pandemic, government efforts to contain energy prices, and an easing of supply bottlenecks in some markets,” Harris said. More

The yield on the US 10-year Treasury note touched 3 per cent for the first time in more than three years on Monday, as traders prepared for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates again at a time of soaring inflation and slowing growth. The yield on the government bond has profound effects on the economy, feeding into home mortgage rates and borrowing costs for companies. The higher yield, which rises when bond prices fall, is tightening financial conditions after two years of the coronavirus pandemic.The US 10-year yield edged just above 3 per cent in early afternoon trading in New York, according to Bloomberg data — double its level at the start of the year and the highest since December 2018. It later dipped back to 2.99 per cent, up 0.05 percentage points on the day. Yields have risen this year as the Fed takes action to try to stem US inflation, which hit 8.5 per cent on an annual basis in March — its fastest rate of increase in 40 years. The combination of high inflation and a weakening global economic outlook — the US economy shrank 1.4 per cent year on year in the first quarter — has raised questions about how far the Fed will be able to lift interest rates without overburdening the economy. Alex Roever, US rates strategist at JPMorgan, said the Fed was facing a “thick stew of uncertainties”, including rising labour costs, supply-chain problems and commodity prices that have leapt since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.“While it’s clear that this economy doesn’t need stimulative monetary policy, what is less clear is the speed at which this stimulus should be removed, and the reasons for choosing that speed,” he added.The Fed is widely expected to announce an extra-large interest rate rise of half a percentage point at the end of its May policy meeting on Wednesday, and futures markets are pricing in similar half-point rises at the next two meetings. Short-term US interest rates are now expected to be close to 2.5 per cent by the end of 2022, up from the current range of 0.25 to 0.5 per cent.As investors brace for higher interest rates, there are signs of pressure in national economies. Surveys of industry executives released at the weekend showed activity in China’s sprawling factory sector contracted last month at the fastest pace since February 2020 as the country’s economy reels from coronavirus lockdowns. At the same time, purchasing managers’ indices released on Monday pointed to slowing activity growth in the eurozone and US factory sectors. The rapid increase in bond yields this year has weighed on stock markets by reducing the appeal of riskier investments, and the combination of higher rates and gloomy economic data hit shares earlier in the day. However, US equities indices closed higher as traders took advantage of the recent slides to “buy the dip”. The tech-dominated Nasdaq Composite, which in April suffered its worst monthly drop since the global financial crisis in 2008, rose 1.6 per cent. The broader S&P 500 index closed 0.6 per cent higher, having dropped as much as 1.7 per cent earlier in the afternoon.Meanwhile, in Europe, the regional Stoxx 600 index slid as much as 3 per cent before trimming its losses to trade 1.5 per cent lower.The initial fall for the regional gauge reflected brief — but steep — drops for Nordic gauges including Sweden’s benchmark OMX 30, which tumbled as much as 7.9 per cent before recovering to close 1.9 per cent lower. One trader attributed the move to Citigroup bungling a trade of a basket of shares that included many Swedish names. Citi declined to comment.Rising Treasury bond yields helped the dollar index, which measures the US currency against a basket of six others, gain 0.7 per cent to a fresh 20-year high. More