Economy

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States on Tuesday imposed sanctions on companies and people it accused of being involved in the production or transfer of Iranian drones that have been used by Russia in attacks on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.The United States is seeking to increase pressure on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine, which has reduced cities to rubble and killed or wounded thousands.Russia has procured drones from Iran that have been used to attack cities and power infrastructure in Ukraine. Iranian military entities and industries are already under heavy U.S. sanctions over Tehran’s nuclear development program.Iran has acknowledged that it had supplied Moscow with drones but said they were sent before the war in Ukraine.”As we have demonstrated repeatedly, the United States is determined to sanction people and companies, no matter where they are located, that support Russia’s unjustified invasion of Ukraine,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in the statement.”Today’s action exposes and holds accountable companies and individuals that have enabled Russia’s use of Iranian-built UAVs to brutalize Ukrainian civilians,” she said, using the acronym for unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone.Russia denies deliberately targeting civilians.Iran’s mission to the United Nations said Iran was ready to meet with Ukraine at the level of technical experts and investigate drone or parts ownership claims.”Therefore, any accusation or action against Iran before this meeting isn’t acceptable and will be rejected,” the mission said of Tuesday’s sanctions.Russia’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The U.S. Treasury Department, in a statement, said it imposed sanctions on the Shahed Aviation Industries Research Center, which it said was subordinate to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force, accusing the firm of being responsible for the design and production of Shahed-series drones being used by Russian forces in Ukraine.Also designated were United Arab Emirates air transportation firms Success Aviation Services FZC and iJet Global DMCC, which the Treasury accused of collaborating with an Iranian firm under U.S. sanctions to coordinate flights between Iran and Russia, including those tied to transporting Iranian drones, personnel and related equipment.Treasury said the action against the two companies was taken in cooperation with the government of the United Arab Emirates.Private military company Wagner group, IRGC Aerospace Force, and Qods Aviation Industries – already under U.S. sanctions – were also designated by the State Department in Tuesday’s move, the Treasury said.Treasury also targeted Abbas Djuma and Tigran Khristoforovich Srabionov, accusing the two of being involved in the Wagner group’s acquisition of Iranian drones to support combat operations in Ukraine.Tuesday’s move freezes any U.S. assets of those designated and generally bars Americans from dealing with them. Those that engage in certain transactions with them also risk being hit with sanctions. More

Households increased debt at the fastest pace in 15 years due to hefty increases in credit card usage and mortgage balances.
The credit card balance collectively rose more than 15% from the same period in 2021, the largest annual jump in more than 20 years, according to the New York Fed.
The increase stems from “a combination of robust consumer demand and higher prices,” a Fed official said.

Luis Alvarez | Digitalvision | Getty Images

Households increased debt during the third quarter at the fastest pace in 15 years due to hefty increases in credit card usage and mortgage balances, the Federal Reserve reported Tuesday.
Total debt jumped by $351 billion for the July-to-September period, the largest nominal quarterly increase since 2007, bringing the collective household IOU in the U.S. to a fresh record $16.5 trillion. That’s an increase of 2.2% from the previous quarter and 8.3% from a year ago.

The increase follows a $310 billion jump in the second quarter and represents a $1.27 trillion annual increase.
Debt has surged over the past year due to inflation running near its highest pace in more than 40 years and amid rising interest rates and strong consumer demand.

The biggest contributors to that debt load came from mortgage balances, which rose $1 trillion from a year ago to $11.7 trillion, and credit card debt, which climbed to $930 billion.
The credit card balance collectively rose more than 15% from the same period in 2021, the largest annual jump in more than 20 years, according to the New York Fed, which released the report. The increase “towers over the last eighteen years of data,” a group of Fed researchers said in a blog post on the central bank site.
“Credit card, mortgage, and auto loan balances continued to increase in the third quarter of 2022 reflecting a combination of robust consumer demand and higher prices,” said Donghoon Lee, economic research advisor at the New York Fed. “However, new mortgage originations have slowed to pre-pandemic levels amid rising interest rates.”

New York Fed researchers attributed the credit card growth to “very robust” consumption, rising prices and consumers using substantial levels of savings that remain on accounts.
Along with the rise in balances has come an increase in delinquencies.
However, while “delinquency rates are rising, they remain low by historical standards and suggest consumers are managing their finances through the period of increasing prices,” the researchers wrote.
Elsewhere in the report, the Fed said auto loan balances edged higher to $1.52 trillion while student loan debt nudged lower to $1.57 trillion. Student loan debt is the lowest since the second quarter of 2021 amid an extended period of forbearance and the Biden administration’s efforts to forgive some education loan debt.
Auto loan debt, while posting only a slight increase on a quarterly basis, is up 5.6% from a year ago.
Mortgage balances continued to grind higher amid a sharp increase in interest rates that has seen 30-year mortgages loan rates hover around 7%. Total debt climbed even though originations fell sharply, dropping nearly 17% to $633 billion.
Foreclosures remained low even as a pandemic-related moratorium expired. Student loan delinquent rates remained around 4%.

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The Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) in a statement said FTX Australia’s financial services licence will be suspended until mid-May next year, taking back its permit to deal in derivative and foreign exchange contracts to retail and wholesale clients, along with provide general advice.The Bahamas-headquartered FTX, once a rising star of the crypto industry with a $32 billion valuation as of January, filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection last week as it struggled to stave off collapse following a rush by traders to withdraw $6 billion from the platform in just 72 hours.Local units of FTX around the world face heightened regulatory scrutiny. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission along with other regulatory bodies are investigating FTX, while its unit in Japan would go into “close only” mode following guidance from the country’s financial services agency, among others.”ASIC is monitoring this situation closely and speaking regularly with international regulators and the external administrators,” the regulator said on Wednesday.It added FTX Australia could continue to provide limited financial services for terminating existing derivatives with clients until Dec. 19.FTX did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. More

(Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Justice will investigate whether police in Worcester, Massachusetts, have enforced the law in a discriminatory fashion and whether officers have used excessive force on a routine basis, the agency said on Tuesday. The justice department did not indicate any specific incidents in Worcester that may have prompted the investigation, which comes amid greater scrutiny of police since the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.Investigators will review the department’s policies, procedures and training, and how it holds officers accountable when it receives misconduct complaints in a bid to establish whether a pattern of discrimination on the basis of race and sex exists. The police department in the city, the second-largest in New England after Boston, was not immediately available for comment. The investigation will also focus on how police officers interact with the public, collect evidence and conduct investigations in the city of 200,000 residents, 50 miles (80 km) west of Boston. “We will go where the facts take us,” said Rachael Rollins (NYSE:ROL), U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts. “Our ultimate goal is to ensure that policing in Worcester is constitutional, safe, and effective all while the civil rights of their residents remain intact.”Worcester Mayor Joseph Petty, the city’s Acting Manager Eric Batista and Worcester Police Chief Steven Sargent pledged to cooperate with the investigation, the justice department said.In 1994, Congress granted the agency the authority to review a police department’s civil rights records in response to the police beating of motorist Rodney King in Los Angeles three years prior. Since then, the justice department has opened dozens of similar investigations across the nation. Police departments in the United States have come under renewed scrutiny since the death of Floyd, who died in handcuffs with a white Minneapolis police officer kneeling on his neck. The justice department launched a so-called “pattern or practice” investigation in Minneapolis a day after a jury found the officer, Derek Chauvin, guilty of murder. This is the second investigation of a Massachusetts law enforcement agency. In 2018, the Justice Department opened an investigation of the Springfield Police Department. That probe was resolved by a consent decree earlier this year. More

(Reuters) – A look at the day ahead in Asian markets from Jamie McGeever.Investors clearly want to take stocks and risk assets higher to try and make up for a dismal year, and they’re getting a timely helping hand from surprisingly weak U.S. inflation numbers.With daily direction seemingly driven by little more than the ebb and flow of hopes for a Fed pivot, they may have forgotten about the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and its potentially catastrophic spillover risks.Investors were jolted on Tuesday from any complacency that may have set in by reports that a blast in the eastern Polish village of Przewodow that killed two people was caused by Russian missiles crossing into Poland. Russia denied the reports, calling them “a deliberate provocation”; Washington called them “incredibly concerning”; Ukraine’s President Zelenskiy said this represents a Russian attack on NATO territory and marks a “significant escalation.”In the fog of war, clarity is hard to find. The reports knocked nearly 2% off the Nasdaq, briefly pushed the Dow into the red and clipped 5 to 10 basis points off U.S. Treasury yields across the curve. Wall Street still closed in the green thanks to a smaller-than-expected rise in U.S. producer prices, more evidence following Thursday’s CPI data that inflation has peaked. It remains to be seen how Asian markets open on Wednesday. The inflation outlook is improving and markets are running with it – the S&P 500 is up 12% since the Oct. 13 low, the Dow is up 17% and the Nasdaq is up almost 10% since last Thursday alone. But with world leaders gathered in Indonesia for the G20 summit, war and geopolitical risks are once again right at the forefront of investors’ minds. Or they should be. U.S. stocks and geopolitical tensions https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/jnpwyeygjpw/WallStRisks.jpg Three key developments that could provide more direction to markets on Wednesday: – China house prices (October)- Japan machinery orders (September)- Australia wage growth (Q3) More

Russia has launched a new barrage of missiles at targets across Ukraine, hobbling the country’s electricity infrastructure just days after withdrawing its forces from the strategically important city of Kherson. The Ukrainian air force said more than 90 missiles were fired as part of the offensive, which Kyiv said was the largest daily fusillade since the Kremlin retaliated after last month’s destruction of a crucial bridge linking Crimea to the Russian mainland. The Russian attack came the same day Zelenskyy told fellow world leaders that while he was open to peace talks to end the war, he would not pause fighting over winter. In a video address to the heads of the world’s largest economies, meeting at a G20 summit in Bali, Zelenskyy reiterated that Ukrainian borders were inviolable and were not open to negotiation.His comments follow suggestions by some US officials, including military chief General Mark Milley, that winter may provide an opportunity to begin negotiations with Russia and that Ukraine might never be able to expel Moscow’s forces from all its territory.In neighbouring Poland, the government convened an emergency security meeting on Tuesday evening after two people were reportedly killed by a missile strike close to Przewodów, a village near the Ukraine border.

Five more stories in the news1. G20 leaders to agree draft communiqué rejecting ‘era of war’ World leaders gathered in Bali plan to condemn threats to use nuclear weapons, reflecting rising global anxiety around Russia’s war against Ukraine. The language regarding the war and Moscow’s repeated use of nuclear rhetoric is stronger than western officials forecast.Elsewhere at G20: Wealthy nations led by the US and Japan have offered Indonesia a $20bn package to help pay for the coal-dependent country’s shift to renewable energy.Australia prime minister Anthony Albanese pressed Chinese president Xi Jinping to lift punitive export sanctions, Xi, however, offered no immediate relief.2. Global investigators pounce on FTX The collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire has sparked a vast global investigation, with dozens of authorities circling the company as lawyers warn there could be 1mn creditors in its bankruptcy proceeding. 3. Goldman paid $12mn to silence misogyny claims A Goldman Sachs partner accused executives including chief executive David Solomon of making misogynistic comments in a complaint that resulted in the Wall Street bank paying her a settlement totalling more than $12mn, according to those familiar with the matter. Goldman paid the settlement in 2020 in an effort to keep the allegations secret, the people said.4. India attempts to shift focus from coal at COP27 India is drawing support for its proposal for countries to agree to the phase down of all fossil fuels at the UN climate summit, rather than the narrower deal to phase down coal that was struck at the last summit. The country was blamed for weakening the final coal agreement at COP26.

Video: Can India adapt to extreme heat? | FT Film

5. Weak yen puts Japan’s economy into reverse in third quarter Japan’s economy saw an unexpected contraction for the first time in a year on the back of surging import bills in the third quarter, caused by the yen’s plunge to multi-decade lows. GDP in the July to September period shrank 1.2 per cent from the previous year.Thank you to readers who voted in our poll yesterday. Fifty-two per cent of respondents said US-China relations will improve as a result of Xi and Biden’s meeting this week. The day aheadJapan trade balance data Trade balance figures for October are due out today. In the first half of this fiscal year, Japan’s trade balance stood at a deficit — in part because of the weak yen. (Reuters) Rishi Sunak meets Joe Biden in Bali At the G20 summit today, the new British prime minister and US president will meet in person for the first time as pressure grows to finalise the Northern Ireland protocol. (Guardian) Nasa’s scheduled launch of Artemis I test flight mission The spacecraft’s two-hour launch window begins at 1:04am ET/2:04pm HKT — subject to local unsettled weather. It’s mission is to travel around the Moon from the Kennedy Space Center, but the longer-term plan is to create a permanent Moon base to support missions to Mars. (Space.com, FT) Join leaders including Singapore’s Minister of Trade and Industry at our Commodities Asia Summit in Singapore on November 23. You can also follow along online. Register here for your in person or digital pass.What else we’re reading and watchingSingapore Airlines’ pregnancy pivot Up until this year, the airline’s female cabin crew were fired when they became pregnant, even though maternity discrimination is against Singapore law. Many hope that forthcoming anti-discrimination legislation will be more effective in rooting out such practices.

Singapore Airlines dropped a policy in October that required female cabin crew to leave their jobs after the first trimester of pregnancy © Roslan Rahman/AFP/Getty Images

Cracks in the US Treasury bond market As recession looms and most asset prices face a dramatic sell-off, the world’s most important debt market is creaking once again. With the meltdown in UK gilts exposing the vulnerability of bond markets, can the US survive a wave of selling?Related read: Central bankers are to shift towards a more gradual monetary tightening, economists predict, as recent “jumbo” rate moves show signs of taming inflation and officials acknowledge the growing threat of recession.China’s offshore ‘police service stations’ spark European alarm Beijing denies the police overseas service stations have any role in policing, though the Qingtian police named “foreign police work” as one function of facilities in Barcelona and Budapest. The Netherlands has ordered two such facilities closed, and the UK security minister called reports of undeclared Chinese police stations “extremely concerning”.Tech lay-offs teach us a lesson about the ‘war for talent’ Once upon a time, young graduates thought they had a choice to make: they could become rich but miserable in an investment bank or law firm, or they could live without a huge salary but do something more fun. Then the big technology companies came along, writes Sarah O’Connor.Foreign companies adopt ‘China for China’ strategy Rather than rely on Chinese factories to produce goods that are ultimately sold elsewhere, some businesses are adopting a strategy that aims to draw on deeper research and development facilities in the country to make products for a vast, growing domestic market.TechnologyHTSI has rounded up five tiny gadgets with superpowers, including a pen-sized translator that doubles as a scanner and a “no-faff” crowdfunded timer.

NewYes Scan Reader Pen 3 PRO, £157.80 More

MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s government expects core inflation to start slowing down in the coming months, Economy Minister Nadia Calviño said on Tuesday.Spain’s 12-month core inflation, excluding volatile food and energy prices, remained at 6.2% in the period through October from the previous month, while overall inflation has fallen to 7.3% from 8.9% in the period through September. More