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    Mortgage mayhem sparks fears of a housing market crash in Britain

    There are growing fears of a housing market crash in the U.K., after a swathe of tax cuts announced by the government sent interest rate expectations soaring, driving up lending rates for homebuyers.
    A number of banks suspended mortgage deals for new customers, and many have now returned to the market with significantly higher rates.
    Oxford Economics estimates that if interest rates remain at the levels currently being offered, house prices are approximately “30% overvalued based on the affordability of mortgage payments.”

    U.K. mortgage rates have skyrocketed since Finance Minister Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget on Sept. 23, prompting banks to pull mortgage products threatening a deepen an expected housing market downturn.
    Dan Kitwood | Getty Images

    LONDON — There are growing fears of a housing market crash in the U.K., after a swathe of tax cuts announced by the government sent interest rate expectations soaring, driving up lending rates for homebuyers.
    Finance Minister Kwasi Kwarteng’s so-called mini-budget on Sept. 23 spooked markets with £45 billion ($50.5 billion) of debt-funded tax cuts, triggering a massive spike in government bond yields. These are used by mortgage providers to price fixed-rate mortgages.

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    The Bank of England responded to the market mayhem with a temporary purchase program of long-dated bonds, which brought some fragile stability to the market. However, Oxford Economics Chief U.K. Economist Andrew Goodwin suggested that there could be more pain ahead — particularly when it comes to the housing market.

    “Though the BoE’s temporary bond buying programme triggered falls in swap rates, they remain high, and a number of banks have already responded by significantly increasing interest rates on their mortgage products,” Goodwin said in a note Friday.
    “A scenario whereby house prices crash, adding to the already-strong headwinds on consumer spending, is looking increasingly likely,” Goodwin added.

    ‘30% overvalued’

    Oxford Economics estimates that if interest rates remain at the levels currently being offered, house prices are approximately “30% overvalued based on the affordability of mortgage payments.”
    “The high prevalence of fixed rates deals will help to cushion the blow in terms of existing mortgagors, but it’s hard to see how a sharp drop in transactions and a marked correction in prices can be avoided,” Goodwin said.

    Kallum Pickering, senior economist at Berenberg, noted that the housing market had already begun a downturn in recent months, owing to a broad-based demand slowdown linked to rising borrowing costs and a hit to real incomes.
    “But following the panic selling in the gilt market and fears that the BoE could raise the bank rate to 6.0% by early next year, banks have started to pull mortgage deals in a rush,” Pickering said in a note Monday.
    A number of banks suspended mortgage deals for new customers, and many have now returned to the market with significantly higher rates.
    “Some banks have upped the rate offers on their five year fixed 75% loan-to-value mortgages to the 5.0-5.5% range, with close to 6% for new mortgages. That is almost 200bp above the August average for comparable mortgages,” Pickering added.

    Interest rate expectations

    Looking ahead, whether the fixed rates on mortgages remain elevated or begin to moderate will depend on the trajectory of interest rates expectations.
    These have come off previous highs of over 6% after the government U-turned on its plan to scrap the top rate of income tax, but analysts do not expect this to quell the market’s skittishness.

    The Bank of England has already hiked interest rates six times so far this year, from 0.25% at the end of 2021 to 2.25% currently. Markets are now pricing in an eventual rate of over 5% for most of 2023.
    This is likely to come as a shock to many households after years of low interest rates.
    DBRS Morningstar Senior Vice President Maria Rivas noted that given the combination of expected further interest rate rises and a slowing economy, banks will likely remain cautious when underwriting and pricing residential mortgages and other loan products in the months to come.
    “For U.K. borrowers in particular, we consider the challenges may become evident sooner rather than later, given the nature of the U.K. market, where the majority of mortgages are based on short-term fixed rates of 2 to 5 years,” Rivas said.
    Berenberg expects the eventual hike to average mortgage rates to be close to two percentage points. Pickering argued that this should not pose any “serious financial stability risks” to the U.K., given that British banks are well-capitalized and average household finances remain “solid” for now.
    “However, higher mortgage rates will amplify the housing downturn in the near term – hurting consumption via negative wealth effects – and drag on the recovery thereafter as households continue to pay a higher interest burden,” he said.

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    Less Turnover, Smaller Raises: Hot Job Market May Be Losing Its Sizzle

    Unemployment is low, and hiring is strong. But there are signs that frenzied turnover and rapid wage growth are abating.Last year, Klaussner Home Furnishings was so desperate for workers that it began renting billboards near its headquarters in Asheboro, N.C., to advertise job openings. The steep competition for labor drove wages for employees on the furniture maker’s production floor up 12 to 20 percent. The company began offering $1,000 signing bonuses to sweeten the deal.“Consumer demand was through the roof,” said David Cybulski, Klaussner’s president and chief executive. “We just couldn’t get enough labor fast enough.”But in recent months, Mr. Cybulski has noticed that frenzy die down.Hiring for open positions has gotten easier, he said, and fewer Klaussner workers are leaving for other jobs. The company, which has about 1,100 employees, is testing performance rewards to keep workers happy rather than racing to increase wages. The $1,000 signing bonus ended in the spring.“No one is really chasing employees to the dollar anymore,” he said.By many measures, the labor market is still extraordinarily strong even as fears of a recession loom. The unemployment rate, which stood at 3.7 percent in August, remains near a five-decade low. There are twice as many job openings as unemployed workers available to fill them. Layoffs, despite some high-profile announcements in recent weeks, are close to a record low.But there are signs that the red-hot labor market may be coming off its boiling point.Major employers such as Walmart and Amazon have announced slowdowns in hiring; others, such as FedEx, have frozen hiring altogether.Americans in July quit their jobs at the lowest rate in more than a year, a sign that the period of rapid job switching, sometimes called the Great Resignation, may be nearing its end. Wage growth, which soared as companies competed for workers, has also slowed, particularly in industries like dining and travel where the job market was particularly hot last year.More broadly, many companies around the country say they are finding it less arduous to attract and retain employees — partly because many are paring their hiring plans, and partly because the pool of available workers has grown as more people come off the economy’s sidelines.The labor force grew by more than three-quarters of a million people in August, the biggest gain since the early months of the pandemic. Some executives expect hiring to keep getting easier as the economy slows and layoffs pick up.“Not that I wish ill on any people out there from a layoff perspective or whatever else, but I think there could be an opportunity for us to ramp some of that hiring over the coming months,” Eric Hart, then the chief financial officer at Expedia, told investors on the company’s earnings call in August.Taken together, those signals point to an economic environment in which employers may be regaining some of the leverage they ceded to workers during the pandemic months.The State of Jobs in the United StatesEconomists have been surprised by recent strength in the labor market, as the Federal Reserve tries to engineer a slowdown and tame inflation.August Jobs Report: Job growth slowed in August but stayed solid, suggesting that the labor market recovery remains resilient, even as companies pull back on hiring.Factory Jobs: American manufacturers have now added enough jobs to regain all that they shed during the pandemic — and then some.Missing Workers: The labor market appears hot, but the supply of labor has fallen short, holding back the economy. Here is why.Black Employment: Black workers saw wages and employment rates go up in the wake of the pandemic. But as the Federal Reserve tries to tame inflation, those gains could be eroded.That is bad news for workers, particularly those at the bottom of the pay ladder who have been able to take advantage of the hot labor market to demand higher pay, more flexible schedules and other benefits. With inflation still high, weaker wage growth will mean that more workers will find their standard of living slipping.But for employers — and for policymakers at the Federal Reserve — the calculation looks different. A modest cooling would be welcome after months in which employers struggled to find enough staff to meet strong demand, and in which rapid wage growth contributed to the fastest inflation in decades.Too pronounced a slowdown, however, could lead to a sharp rise in unemployment, which would almost certainly lead to a drop in consumer demand and create a new set of problems for employers.Leila and David Manshoory have struggled for months to recruit workers for their fast-growing skin care and beauty brand, Alleyoop. In recent weeks, however, that has begun to change. They have begun to get more applications from more qualified candidates, some of whom have been laid off by other e-commerce companies. And notably, applicants aren’t demanding the sky-high salaries they were last spring.“I think the tables are turning a little bit,” Mr. Manshoory said. “There are people who need to pay their bills and are realizing there might not be a million jobs out there.”Alleyoop, too, has pared its hiring plans somewhat in preparation for a possible recession. But not too much — Mr. Manshoory said he saw this as a moment to snap up talent that the three-year-old company might struggle to hire in a different economic environment.“You kind of want to lean in when other people are pulling back,” he said. “You just have more selection. There’s a lot of, unfortunately, talented people getting let go from really large companies.”The resilience of the labor market has surprised many economists, who expected companies to pull back on hiring as growth slowed and interest rates rose. Instead, employers have continued adding jobs at a rapid clip.Klaussner Home Furnishings, which has about 1,100 employees, is testing performance rewards to keep workers happy rather than racing to increase wages.Eamon Queeney for The New York Times“There are some signs in the labor market data that there’s been a bit of cooling since the beginning of the year, or even the spring, but it’s not a lot,” said Nick Bunker, director of North American economic research for the career site Indeed. “Maybe the temperature has ticked down a degree or two, but it’s still pretty high.”But Mr. Bunker said there was evidence that the frenzy that characterized the labor market over the past year and a half had begun to die down. Job openings have fallen steadily in Indeed’s data, which is more up to date than the government’s tally.And Mr. Bunker said the decline in voluntary quits was particularly notable because so much recent wage growth had come from workers moving between jobs in search of better pay.Recent research from economists at the Federal Reserve Banks of Dallas and St. Louis found that there had been a huge increase in poaching — companies hiring workers away from other jobs — during the recent hiring boom.If companies become less willing to recruit workers from competitors, and to pay the premium that doing so requires, or if workers become less likely to hop between jobs, that could lead wage growth to ease even if layoffs don’t pick up.There are hints that could be happening. A recent survey from another career site, ZipRecruiter, found that workers had become less confident in their ability to find a job and were putting more emphasis on finding a job they considered secure.“Workers and job seekers are feeling just a little bit less bold, a little bit more concerned about the future availability of jobs, a little bit more concerned about the stability of their own jobs,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter.Some businesses, meanwhile, are becoming a bit less frantic to hire. A survey of small businesses from the National Federation of Independent Business found that while many employers still had open positions, fewer of them expected to fill those jobs in the next three months.More clues about the strength of the labor market could come in the upcoming months, the time of year when companies, including retailers, traditionally ramp up hiring for the holiday season. Walmart said in September that this year it would hire a fraction of the workers it did during the last holiday season.The signs of a cool-down extend even to leisure and hospitality, the sector where hiring challenges have been most acute. Openings in the sector have fallen sharply from the record levels of last year, and hourly earnings growth slowed to less than 9 percent in August from a rate of more than 16 percent last year.Until recently, staffing shortages at Biggby Coffee were so severe that many of the chain’s 300-plus stores had to close early some days, or in some cases not open at all. But while hiring remains a challenge, the pressure has begun to ease, said Mike McFall, the company’s co-founder and co-chief executive. One franchisee recently told him that 22 of his 25 locations were fully staffed and that only one was experiencing a severe shortage.A Biggby Coffee store in Sterling Heights, Mich. Until recently, staffing shortages at some locations were so severe that many of the chain’s 300-plus stores had to close early some days.Sarah Rice for The New York Times“We are definitely feeling the burden is lifting in terms of getting people to take the job,” Mr. McFall said. “We’re getting more applications, we’re getting more people through training now.”The shift is a welcome one for business owners like Mr. McFall. Franchisees have had to raise wages 50 percent or more to attract and retain workers, he said — a cost increase they have offset by raising prices.“The expectation by the consumer is that you are raising prices, and so if you don’t take advantage of that moment, you are going to be in a pickle,” he said, referring to the pressure to increase wages. “So you manage it by raising prices.”So far, Mr. McFall said, higher prices haven’t deterred customers. Still, he said, the period of severe staffing shortages is not without its costs. He has seen a loss in sales, as well as a loss of efficiency and experienced workers. That will take time to rebuild, he said.“When we were in crisis, it was all we were focused on,” he said. “So now that it feels like the crisis is mitigating, that it’s getting a little better, we can now begin to focus on the culture in the stores and try to build that up again.” More

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    How Gautam Adani became the world's fourth richest person while billionaires like Jeff Bezos lost tens of billions

    Gautam Adani has had a very good year.
    The Indian billionaire briefly surpassed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the second-richest person in the world in September, according to Bloomberg. He’s now ranked as the world’s fourth wealthiest person.

    Outside Southeast Asia, Adani is hardly a household name. That might be changing now that he’s richer than Microsoft founder Bill Gates and iconic investor Warren Buffett.
    “The kind of rise that you have seen is truly phenomenal and probably unprecedented in the world that in such a short time a single individual has been able to acquire assets across industrial sectors and has emerged as one of the largest billionaires in the world,” said Hemindra Hazari, an independent research analyst based in Mumbai, India.
    Coming from a middle-class family background, Adani began his entrepreneurial journey in the country’s financial capital, Mumbai, as a diamond sorter in the late 1970s. Adani is now chair of the Adani Group, one of the three largest industrial conglomerates in India.
    Adani’s company representatives did not respond to several requests for comment from CNBC.
    Why is Adani’s wealth on the rise? Watch the video above to learn more about how Adani’s political connections may have boosted the success of his many companies. 

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    August PCE Inflation Data Shows Prices Are Stubbornly High

    The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge remained elevated in August, data released on Friday showed, further evidence that the central bank is contending with a stubborn problem as it tries to choke off the worst inflation in four decades.The Personal Consumption Expenditures inflation measure, which is the measure the Fed officially targets as it tries to achieve 2 percent annual inflation, climbed 6.2 percent over the year through August. While that was a slowdown from 6.4 percent in July, it was higher than the 6 percent that economists in a Bloomberg survey had expected.The details of the report were even more concerning. Price increases have been moderating somewhat on an overall basis, partly because gas prices have been declining. But after volatile fuel and food prices were stripped out to get a sense of underlying inflationary pressures, the index climbed 4.9 percent over the year through August, an acceleration from 4.7 percent the month before. And on a monthly basis, the core index picked up by 0.6 percent, the fastest increase since June.Consumers also continued to spend in August, particularly on dining, travel and other services, the report showed, though the pace was slowing. Incomes rose, buoyed by a hot job market.The data underlined the challenging path the Fed faces as it tries to guide the U.S. economy toward slower inflation. Both the economy and price pressures have retained momentum, even as central bankers raise interest rates to try to cool demand. As a result, the Fed has become steadily more aggressive in its efforts to constrain spending and temper inflation, and it is likely to keep raising rates and keep them elevated for a while.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5What is inflation? More

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    Liz Truss’ Woes Multiply After Media Blitz

    In a round of interviews, the prime minister showed little sympathy for the pain that high interest rates could inflict on mortgage holders, critics said.LONDON — For Prime Minister Liz Truss, it was a chance to steady the waters after days of turmoil in the financial markets over her new fiscal plan: eight rapid-fire interviews with local BBC radio stations from Leeds to Nottingham.By the time Ms. Truss signed off from the last one on Thursday morning, her political woes had multiplied, leaving her new government in a state of disarray almost without precedent in recent British politics.She was, critics said, robotic in defending a tax-cut plan that had been eviscerated by the markets, and showed little sympathy for the pain that high interest rates could inflict on mortgage holders. One host described her as a “reverse Robin Hood.” A listener on another station asked, “Are you ashamed of what you’ve done?”Barely three weeks into her job, Ms. Truss has suffered a dizzying loss of public support. Her Conservative Party now trails the opposition Labour Party by 33 percentage points, according to a new poll by the market research firm YouGov. That is the largest Labour lead since Tony Blair’s early days as prime minister in 1998, and the kind of gap that usually results in a landslide election defeat.Her plunging poll numbers have badly damaged Ms. Truss’s standing in her party, which is gathering on Sunday in Birmingham for what promises to be an anxious annual conference. Some speak openly of the party ousting her before the next election, though the mechanics for doing that remain complicated.“This is by far the biggest and swiftest hit to a party’s opinion poll rating that British politics has ever seen,” said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London. “For Tory MPs, this is like realizing on your wedding night that you’ve made a truly terrible mistake.”Matthew Goodwin, a politics professor at Kent University and an expert on the Tory Party, said, “I can’t think in my lifetime of any British prime minister who has mismanaged her first few weeks in office like Liz Truss.”What makes Ms. Truss’s predicament so difficult is that none of the escape hatches are appealing. Reversing some of her tax cuts — particularly the one for the top income bracket of people earning more than 150,000 pounds, or about $164,000, a year — would mollify the markets and probably some voters.Tax cuts announced last week by Kwasi Kwarteng, Britain’s chancellor of the Exchequer, threw the markets into turmoil.Clodagh Kilcoyne/ReutersBut it would be a heavy psychological blow for a leader who ran her campaign, and has built her government, on the conviction that tax cuts and supply-side policies will reignite growth. Giving that up, Professor Bale said, would vitiate the ideological rationale of her government and potentially turn her into a lame-duck leader until the next election, which she will have to call by early 2025.Sticking to her guns, which has been Ms. Truss’s response so far, leaves open the chance that Britain’s economy will pick up by the time she faces voters. But the stubborn threat of inflation all but guarantees that the Bank of England, Britain’s central bank, will keep raising interest rates. That will hurt people who need to refinance home mortgages and likely throw the broader economy into a recession.More on Politics in BritainPrime Minister Liz Truss was chosen by a divided British Conservative Party to lead a country facing the gravest economic crisis in a generation.A Domestic Push: After a period of mourning for the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the new government led by Ms. Truss began to work in earnest, announcing several initiatives to address Britain’s economic and social problems.A Turn Toward Thatcherism: Ms. Truss bet on a heavy dose of tax cuts, deregulation and free-market economics to reignite growth. The negative reaction from financial markets underscored the extent of the gamble.Seizing the Moment: Accusing Ms. Truss of losing control of Britain’s economy, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Keir Starmer, staked his claim as the guardian of sound fiscal policy.Energy Policies: The British government said it would freeze electric and gas bills for households and cut energy costs for companies in an effort to mitigate the effects of Russia’s restriction of gas supplies to Europe.When she was asked by BBC Radio Stoke about her fiscal plan’s impact on the housing market, Ms. Truss paused before saying, “Interest rates are a matter for the independent Bank of England.” She added that “interest rates have been rising around the world” and blamed much of the crisis on Russia’s war in Ukraine.For the last few days, the bank has actually helped Ms. Truss by intervening in the market to buy British government bonds. That brought down interest rates and strengthened the pound, which had tumbled to its lowest level against the dollar since 1985. On Friday, the pound traded up to $1.11.But the intervention, which was driven by fears of the damage done to British pension funds by the turbulent market, has put the Bank of England in an awkward position, economists said. It runs counter to the bank’s monetary policy of raising interest rates to cool inflationary pressures.“The bank has had to reverse course on its objectives practically overnight,” said Eswar Prasad, a professor of economics at Cornell University. “It looks like the bank is being forced to clean up the adverse consequences of the U.K. Treasury’s actions.”“This could have some longer-term implications for the bank’s independence, credibility, and effectiveness,” Professor Prasad continued. “That really hampers it in its ability to fulfill its objectives.”Once the Bank of England completes its bond-buying program on Oct. 14, economists said they expected it to revert to its tighter monetary policy, which would suggest another increase in interest rates at its November meeting. The only government action that could forestall, or even moderate a sharp spike in rates, economists said, would be if the government reversed one of more of its tax cuts.“Absent that U-turn, the bank is going to have to raise interest rates a lot,” said Adam S. Posen, who served on the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee. He said the bank needed to curb both the inflation from an expansionary fiscal budget and the additional inflation caused by a devalued pound.Once the Bank of England completes its bond buying program, economists expect it to revert to its tighter monetary policy by possibly raising interest rates at its November meeting.Hannah Mckay/ReutersBeyond the tug-of-war between fiscal and monetary policy, critics say Ms. Truss faces a more elemental problem: her chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, has lost the faith of the markets in his economic stewardship.That is partly because when Mr. Kwarteng announced the tax cuts last week, he did not submit the package to the scrutiny that a government budget normally receives. That fed fears that the tax cuts were “unfunded,” meaning that they would not be matched with cuts in spending and so would require massive borrowing.On Friday, Mr. Kwarteng and Ms. Truss met at Downing Street with officials from the government’s forecasting agency, the Office of Budget Responsibility — a move designed to signal they now welcomed the scrutiny. The office will submit its projections for the cost of the fiscal program and its effect on Britain’s growth on Oct. 7, but the government will not publish the numbers until Nov. 23.For Ms. Truss, the political fallout from her program’s botched rollout has been profound. Political analysts point out that she won the support of only a third of Conservative Party lawmakers in the first stage of the leadership contest. Now, the collapsing polls have left the lawmakers angry, fearful, and divided.Unless the trends are reversed, many of the party’s members in Parliament will be swept out of their seats in the next election, particularly in the “red wall” districts of the Midlands and the North, where Ms. Truss’s predecessor, Boris Johnson, lured traditional Labour voters to switch to the Tories with his promise to “Get Brexit done.”That realignment of British politics is in jeopardy. Professor Goodwin, of the University of Kent, said these voters did not want Ms. Truss’s low-tax, neoliberal economic policies. Adding to the alienation, he said, she was determined to relax immigration laws, another core issue for working-class voters.“We’re seeing the complete implosion of the Conservative vote,” Professor Goodwin said. “They’re losing middle-class voters who are alienated by Brexit, and working-class voters who are alienated by their economic policy.”For all the hand-wringing, it is not immediately clear what the Tories can do about it. Three months after evicting Mr. Johnson from Downing Street, few people want to go through with another protracted, divisive leadership contest.Professor Bale said another option would be for the party to settle on a consensus alternative to Ms. Truss and then pressure her to step down, so the new leader could be crowned without any delay. The problem with this scenario, he said, is a lack of obvious candidates to step into the role of the party’s savior. More

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    Fed's preferred gauge shows inflation accelerated even more than expected in August

    Core inflation rose 4.9% from a year ago in August and 0.6% on a monthly basis, according to a measure the Federal Reserve watches closely.
    Personal income rose 0.3%, the same as July and in line with the estimate. Spending rose 0.4% after declining 0.2% the month before.
    Headline inflation, including food and energy, also accelerated, despite a sharp drop in gasoline prices.

    Inflation in August was stronger than expected despite the Federal Reserve’s efforts to bring down prices, according to data Friday that the central bank follows closely.
    The personal consumption expenditures price index excluding food and energy rose 0.6% for the month after being flat in July. That was faster than the 0.5% Dow Jones estimate and another indication that inflation is broadening.

    On a year-over-year basis, core PCE increased 4.9%, more than the 4.7% estimate and up from 4.7% the previous month.
    Including gas and energy, headline PCE increased 0.3% in August, compared with a decline of 0.1% in July. It rose even with a sharp decline in gas prices that took the cost at the pump well below the nominal record above $5 a gallon earlier in the summer.
    The Fed generally favors core PCE as the broadest indicator of where prices are heading as it adjusts for consumer behavior. In the case of either core or headline, the data Friday from the Commerce Department shows inflation running well above the central bank’s 2% long-run target.
    Outside the inflation data, the numbers showed that income and spending continues to grow.
    Personal income rose 0.3% in August, the same as July and in line with the estimate. Spending rose 0.4% after declining 0.2% the month before, beating the 0.3% expectation. After-tax income increased just 0.1% after rising 0.5% the previous month, while inflation adjusted spending rose 0.1%.

    The inflation data reflected the shift in spending from goods back to services, which saw respective gains of 0.3% and 0.6% on the month. Food prices rose 0.8% while energy prices slid 5.5%. Housing and utilities prices were up 1% while health care rose 0.6%.
    Markets showed little reaction to the news, with stock futures pointing to a slightly higher open on Wall Street.
    The market, however, has been highly volatile as investors deal with the highest inflation since the early 1980s. To combat inflation, the Federal Reserve has enacted a series of interest rate increases this year totaling 3 percentage points, taking rates to their highest levels since early 2008.
    However, with data showing that the rate hikes have yet to work their way through to bringing down prices, Fed officials have remained vigilant about the need to keep tightening policy.
    Fed Chair Lael Brainard in a speech Friday morning cautioned against pulling back “prematurely,” saying rates will remain higher “for some time” until inflation is brought under control.

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    New Inflation Data Shows Prices Remain Stubbornly High

    The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge remained elevated in new data released on Friday, further evidence that the central bank is contending with a stubborn problem as it tries to choke off the worst inflation in four decades.The Personal Consumption Expenditures inflation measure, which is produced by the Commerce Department and is the measure the Fed officially targets as it tries to achieve 2 percent annual inflation, climbed by 6.2 percent in the year through August. While that was a slowdown from 6.4 percent in July, it was higher than the 6 percent economists in a Bloomberg survey had expected.Inflation has been moderating somewhat on an overall basis partly because gas prices are declining. After stripping out food and fuel, both of which jump up and down, inflation climbed 4.9 percent in the year through August. That compares to 4.7 percent the month before. On a monthly basis, the core index picked up by 0.6 percent, a rapid pace of increase that was the fastest since June.The data underlined what a rocky road the Fed faces as it tries to guide the U.S. economy toward slower inflation.Economists are hopeful that healing supply chains, a slowing housing market, cooling consumer demand and a moderating labor market will combine to pull inflation lower in the months ahead. But Russia’s war in Ukraine poses a constant risk to the global supply of food and oil, and industries including automobiles remain severely disrupted. Rents and other service costs have been rising sharply, and labor shortages spanning many industries have pushed wages up, which could feed through to higher prices.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5What is inflation? More

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    Erdogan says Turkey will keep cutting interest rates, mocks British pound

    Erdogan doubled down on his controversial monetary plan on Thursday, saying that he told central bank decision-makers to continue lowering rates at its next meeting in October.
    Faced with deepening economic problems, Erdogan also took the time to throw some barbs at the U.K., saying that the British pound has “blown up.”

    Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan addresses members of his ruling AK Party (AKP) during a meeting at the parliament in Ankara, Turkey May 18, 2022. Murat Cetinmuhurdar/Presidential Press Office/Handout via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES. MANDATORY CREDIT
    Murat Cetinmuhurdar | Reuters

    Turkey will keep cutting interest rates, its President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, despite soaring inflation at over 80%.
    The central bank of Turkey will not be raising rates, he told CNN Turk on Wednesday night, adding that he expects the country’s key rate, currently 12%, to hit single digits by the end of this year.

    Faced with deepening economic problems, Erdogan also took the time to throw some barbs at the U.K., saying that the British pound has “blown up.”
    The U.K. currency recently hit a historic low against the U.S. dollar at close to $1.03, as the new Conservative government led by Prime Minister Liz Truss put forward an economic plan — based heavily on borrowing and tax cuts despite mounting inflation — that sent markets reeling.
    It’s prompted alarmed reactions from U.S. economists, policymakers and the International Monetary Fund, with some saying the U.K. is behaving like an emerging market.
    Turkey’s lira, meanwhile, hit a record low of 18.549 against the dollar on Thursday. The currency has lost roughly 28% of its value against the dollar this year and 80% in the last 5 years as markets shunned Erdogan’s unorthodox monetary policy of cutting interest rates despite high inflation.
    “Oh the irony, Erdogan giving Truss advice on the economy,” Timothy Ash, an emerging markets strategist at BlueBay Asset Management, said in an email note. 

    “Turkey has 80% inflation and I guess the worst performing currency over the past decade. Lol. How low the U.K. has sunk.”

    People browse gold jewelry in the window of a gold shop in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar on May 05, 2022 in Istanbul, Turkey. Gold prices ticked higher on Monday as the dollar hovered near recent lows, with investors’ focus being on a key U.S. inflation reading as it could influence the size of the Federal Reserve’s next interest-rate hike.
    Burak Kara | Getty Images News | Getty Images

    Erdogan doubled down on his controversial monetary plan on Thursday, saying that he told central bank decision-makers to continue lowering rates at its next meeting in October.
    “My biggest battle is against interest. My biggest enemy is interest. We lowered the interest rate to 12%. Is that enough? It is not enough. This needs to come down further,” Erdogan said during an event, according to a Reuters translation.
    “We have discussed, are discussing this with our central bank. I suggested the need for this to come down further in upcoming monetary policy committee meetings,” he added. Turkey’s central bank shocked markets with two consecutive 100 basis point cuts in the last two months, as many other major economies seek to tighten policy.
    The lira meanwhile is set to fall further as Turkey prioritizes growth over tackling inflation, which is at its highest in 24 years. In addition to the skyrocketing living costs this has brought on Turkey’s population of 84 million, the country is burning through its foreign exchange reserves and has a widening current account deficit.
    As the U.S. Federal Reserve raises its interest rate and the dollar grows stronger, Turkey’s many dollar-denominated debts, and the energy it imports in dollars, will only become more painful to pay for.
    “With external financing conditions tightening, the risks remain firmly skewed to sharp and disorderly falls in the lira,” Liam Peach, a senior emerging markets economist, wrote in a note after Turkey’s last rate cut on Sept. 22.
    “The macro backdrop in Turkey remains poor. Real interest rates are deeply negative, the current account deficit is widening and short-term external debts remain large,” he wrote. “It may not take a significant tightening of global financial conditions for investor risk sentiment towards Turkey to sour and add more downward pressure on the lira.”

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