Economy

Fang Xinghai, vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), also told a forum that China would expand mutual access between mainland and Hong Kong, and would support the city’s role as a global listing venue. The agreement between China and the United States, announced on Friday last week, will allow U.S. regulators to vet accounting firms in mainland China and Hong Kong, potentially ending a long-running dispute that threatened to banish more than 200 Chinese companies from U.S. exchanges.Previously, China had been reluctant to grant such access, citing national security concerns.”We will implement well the Sino-U.S. cooperative agreement on cross-border audit supervision, and will continue to strengthen communication with overseas institutional investors,” Fang said.Under U.S. law, Chinese companies not compliant with U.S. audit rules will be prohibited from trading on U.S. exchanges by 2024. U.S. regulators have selected e-commerce majors Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) Group Holding Ltd and JD (NASDAQ:JD).com Inc, among U.S.-listed Chinese companies, for audit inspection starting this month under the agreement, sources told Reuters.Meanwhile, legal experts and China watchers warn the two sides could still clash over how the accord is interpreted and implemented.”My instinct is that now that China indicated that they want to avoid a mass delisting, that things will work out in the end,” said Drew Bernstein, co-chairman of Marcum Asia CPAs LLP.”But expect some bumps in the road and barrels of midnight oil being burned before they get there.”MUTUAL ACCESS Fang said the CSRC would work with Hong Kong financial regulators to expand the China-Hong Kong Stock Connect scheme, by including more eligible stocks.”That will help Hong Kong attract more companies elsewhere to come to list in Hong Kong,” Fang said.Already, a growing number of U.S.-listed Chinese firms have conducted secondary or primary listings in Hong Kong, to mitigate the impact of possible delistings in the U.S.Fang also said that China is studying to set up a yuan-denominated securities trading counter under the southbound leg of Stock Connect, which targets mainland investors.In addition, China supported the issuance of Chinese government bond futures in Hong Kong, he said. Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee hailed the measures as “significant milestones”, saying in a statement they would attract more listings in Hong Kong and provide risk-management tools for bond investors. Hong Kong’s Financial Secretary Paul Chan said in the same statement the measures would consolidate Hong Kong’s status as an international financial centre and a global hub for offshore yuan. More

“Quiet quitting” is having a moment.
The trend of employees choosing to not go above and beyond their jobs in ways that include refusing to answer emails during evenings or weekends, or skipping extra assignments that fall outside their core duties, is catching on, especially among Gen Zers.

Zaid Khan, 24, an engineer from New York, popularized this trend with his viral Tiktok video in July. 
“You are still performing your duties, but you are no longer subscribing to the hustle culture mentally that work has to be our life,” Khan says in his video. “The reality is, it’s not, and your worth as a person is not defined by your labor.”
In the U.S., quiet quitting could also be a backlash to so-called hustle culture — the 24/7 startup grind popularized by figures like Gary Vaynerchuk and others.
“Quiet quitting is an antidote to hustle culture,” said Nadia De Ala, founder of Real You Leadership, who “quietly quit” her job about five years ago. “It is almost direct resistance and disruption of hustle culture. And I think it’s exciting that more people are doing it.”
Last year, the Great Resignation dominated the economic news cycle. Now, during the second half of 2022, it’s the quiet quitting trend that’s gaining momentum at a time when the rate of U.S. productivity is raising some concern. Data on U.S. worker productivity posted its biggest annual drop in the second quarter. 
So, why is this trend on the rise? Watch the video above to learn whether quiet quitting is hurting the U.S. economy and how it’s being seen as part of the Great Resignation narrative.

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The proposal aims to stabilize unsettled energy markets in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But it faces considerable obstacles.WASHINGTON — Top officials from the world’s leading advanced economies agreed on Friday to move ahead with a plan to cap the price of Russian oil, accelerating an ambitious effort to limit how much money Russia can earn from each barrel of crude it sells on the global market.Finance ministers from the Group of 7 nations said they were firming up details of a price cap, with the aim of both depressing the price of global oil and reducing critical revenue that President Vladimir V. Putin is relying on to finance Russia’s war effort in Ukraine. The untested plan has been pushed by the Biden administration as way of keeping sanctions pressure on Russia while minimizing the impact on a global economy that has been saddled with soaring energy and food prices this year.Hours after the G7 ministers announced their plan on Friday, Gazprom, the Russian-owned energy giant, said it would postpone restarting the flow of natural gas through a closely watched pipeline that connects Russia to Germany, known as Nord Stream 1. The unexpected delay was attributed to mechanical problems with the pipeline, but it raised concerns that it was in retaliation for the price cap, an idea that Moscow has condemned.Eric Mamer, a spokesman for the European Commission, said that the “fallacious pretenses” for the latest delay were “proof of Russia’s cynicism.”The price cap still has many hurdles to clear before it can take effect, but its goal is to keep Russian oil flowing to global markets that depend on those supplies, while substantially reducing the profit Moscow reaps from its sales. Europe still consumes nearly two million barrels of Russian oil a day, though its imports have fallen since the war began, and the European Union is preparing to wean itself off those supplies by the end of the year.Officials are racing to put the price-cap plan in place by early December to try to limit the economic fallout from the new E.U. sanctions. They would ban nearly all Russian oil imports to the European Union and block the insurance and financing of Russian oil shipments.The Biden administration has become concerned that those moves could send energy prices skyrocketing and potentially tip the global economy into a recession if millions of barrels of Russian oil were suddenly yanked off the global market, drastically reducing the world’s supply of crude. U.S. administration officials have estimated that oil could soar to $200 a barrel or higher unless efforts to impose the price cap are successful.The initiative is a novel attempt to blunt the global economic impact of the invasion. Oil prices rose as fears of confrontation grew a year ago, and spiked when Russian troops entered Ukraine in February. They have receded in recent months, in part because much of Europe has tipped into recession, reducing global oil demand.Whether the price cap can work will hinge on a variety of factors, including securing agreement by all 27 E.U. member states and determining how the actual price would be set. Maritime insurers, which are critical to making the plan work, would also have to figure out how to comply in a way that allows them to continue insuring Russian oil cargo without running afoul of sanctions.The industry, which would be responsible for making sure that oil buyers and sellers were honoring the price cap, has warned that insurers lack the capacity to police the transactions. Financial services in Europe undergird international energy shipments around the world, and fully blocking their ability to deal with Russian oil could disrupt exports globally, even to countries that have not adopted Russian oil embargoes.The G7 finance ministers said in their statement that they intended to use a “record-keeping and attestation model” to track of whether oil transactions were below the price ceiling, and that they would try to minimize the administrative burden on insurers.A tanker at a crude oil terminal near Nakhodka. Maritime insurers would have to figure out how to comply with a cap in a way that allows them to continue covering Russian oil cargo.Tatiana Meel/ReutersRachel Ziemba, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said the agreement unveiled on Friday raised more questions than answers and suggested a challenging path ahead.“This sounds like something that is very technical and technocratic that is going to be hard to monitor and fully enforce,” Ms. Ziemba said.Understand the Decline in U.S. Gas PricesCard 1 of 5Understand the Decline in U.S. Gas PricesGas prices are falling. More

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A rally in world stocks flagged on Friday, while the U.S. dollar retreated from a 24-year high on the yen, after data that showed the U.S. labor market is starting to loosen failed to allay investor fears about aggressive interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve.News that Russia has scrapped a Saturday deadline to resume flows via a major gas supply route to Germany, deepening Europe’s difficulties in securing winter fuel, further soured sentiment in the United States ahead of the long Labor Day weekend.Data showed on Friday that U.S. employers hired more workers than expected in August, but moderate wage growth and a rise in the unemployment rate to 3.7% suggested there could be less pressure on the Federal Reserve to deliver a third 75-basis-point interest rate hike this month.This initially cheered investors and helped the S&P 500 index zoom up over 1%. But the gains reversed into losses over the day, hounded by concerns that a 75-basis-point rate hike was still in the cards. The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 1.1% each, and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.3%.Softer data is seen as alleviating the need for the Fed to raise rates to aggressively curb inflation, moves which the market worries could bring on a recession.Indeed, some analysts said the latest jobs data kept alive the debate about whether the Fed will raise interest rates by 50 basis points later this month, or 75 basis points.”We continue to expect the Fed to hike by 50bp in September and November. This report contained enough good news for the Fed,” analysts at Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) said in a note to clients.But hawkish remarks from Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen on Friday after the jobs data, where she was quoted as saying that U.S. inflation remained too high and that it is the Fed’s job to bring it down, dampened the initial euphoria.Still, European stocks rallied 2% off Thursday’s six-week lows, while Britain’s FTSE jumped 1.9%.Rallying stock markets helped the MSCI world equity index climb 0.5%. For the week, however, it is headed for a 2.7% drop, which would mark its third straight week of losses.Fresh lockdowns in China had earlier fueled concerns about global growth, and high energy costs as a result of the war in Ukraine are weighing on Europe.”The market is laser-focused on how aggressive the Fed is going to be with its hiking cycle,” said Giles Coghlan, chief currency analyst at HYCM, adding that expectations for higher rates have solidified since a speech last week by Fed Chair Jerome Powell at the Jackson Hole central banking conference.The markets are worried about “China slowing, euro zone recession and a hawkish Fed,” he said.Equity funds recorded the fourth largest weekly outflow of 2022, while bond funds saw investors pull out money for a second straight week, BofA said in a note.In Europe, fears of a recession are increasing, with a survey showing on Thursday that manufacturing activity across the euro zone declined again last month, as consumers feeling the pinch from a deepening cost of living crisis cut spending.The dollar, a beneficiary of rising interest rates, hit a fresh 24-year high against the yen at 140.80, triggering a warning by Japan’s Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki of “appropriate” action to curb the volatility. By midday in New York, the yen had pulled back to 140.18.The dollar index, which measures its performance against a basket of six currencies, was flat at 109.58, after hitting a 20-year high in the previous session.A pause in the dollar’s ascent helped the euro to bounce 0.1% to $0.99575.In bond markets, the yield on benchmark U.S. two-year notes fell to 3.3955%, after hitting a 14-year high of 3.5510% on Thursday.The yield on U.S. 10-year bonds fell to 3.1950%.German 10-year bond yields hovered at 1.520%, near recent two-month highs, as expectations grow of a 75 bps hike next week from the European Central Bank.”Almost half the euro zone is suffering inflation of over 10%, the pressure on the ECB is mounting,” said Martin Moryson, European economist at DWS. GRAPHIC-Developed markets interest rates (https://graphics.reuters.com/GLOBAL-MARKETS/RATES/jnvwemywzvw/G10widget1.1.gif) MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 0.6%, heading for its worst weekly performance since mid-June with a tumble of 3.6%.Japan’s Nikkei was steady and Chinese blue chips dropped 0.5%.The southwestern Chinese metropolis of Chengdu on Thursday announced a lockdown of its 21.2 million residents, while the technology hub of Shenzhen also rolled out new social distancing rules as more Chinese cities tried to battle recurring COVID-19 outbreaks.”We maintain the view that China will keep its zero-COVID policy until March 2023, when the (leadership) reshuffle is fully completed, but we now expect a slower pace of easing of the zero-COVID policy after March 2023,” analysts at Nomura said.Oil prices recovered much of their recent losses on expectations that OPEC+ will discuss output cuts at a meeting on Sept. 5, though concern over China’s COVID-19 curbs and weak global growth continued to limit gains. [O/R]Brent crude futures rose 1% to $93.3 a barrel while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were up by 0.6% at $87.14 a barrel. A softer dollar boosted spot gold, which rose 0.9% to $1,710.00 per ounce. [GOL/] More

The monthly employment report suggested that the Federal Reserve might be able to tame inflation without causing a recession.Monthly change in jobs More

In an interview with Mexican news outlet Excelsior, Esquivel said the bank’s board “may need to go a little further in the restrictive zone” to guarantee lower inflation.Esquivel posted a link to the interview on his Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) feed. More

While all demographic groups saw the unemployment rate tick up slightly in August, it rose at a sharper pace for both Hispanic and Black workers.
Black workers marked the only group that saw labor force participation decline, and their employment-population ratio also fell.
Black labor force participation fell to 61.8% from 62% in July, while the employment-to-population ratio dipped to 57.9% from 58.3%.

Commuters arrive at Grand Central station during morning rush hour in New York, Nov. 18, 2021.
Jeenah Moon | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The August jobs report showed the U.S. unemployment rate rise across the board. Meanwhile, Black workers marked the only demographic to see their labor force participation fall.
The unemployment rate rose 0.2 percentage point to 3.7% in August, according to data released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nonfarm payrolls came in at 315,000 and fell in line with estimates of 318,000.

While all demographic groups saw the unemployment rate tick up slightly, it rose at a sharper pace for both Hispanic and Black workers to 4.5% and 6.4%, respectively, from 3.9% and 6% in July.
However, Black workers marked the only group that saw labor force participation decline, while their employment-population ratio, which measures what percentage of the population holds a job, also fell.
“There is some volatility in these numbers but seeing a downward trend in employment and participation is worrisome,” said Elise Gould, senior economist with the Economic Policy Institute.

For August, Black labor force participation fell to 61.8% from 62% in July, while the employment-to-population ratio dipped to 57.9% from 58.3%
William Spriggs, chief economist at the AFL-CIO, said that looking at Black workers is one way to gauge what’s really happening among employers.

Black workers across the board face more discrimination than many other groups, which could be one explanation, Spriggs said. A potential slowdown in hiring — as evident through this week’s ADP private payrolls data — could also be contributing to the results.
“When firms slow their hiring rate, that hit Black workers immediately because they’re already in line the longest to try and find a job,” Spriggs said. “What’s happened is the queue’s just gotten longer so the discouraged worker effect is much more acute for Black workers.”
While it’s too early to assign a specific cause to the declining labor force participation among Black workers, Gould said the continued downward trend in recent months may signal something other than “a statistical anomaly.”
That said, the Federal Reserve’s campaign to quickly raise rates to tame surging prices may be causing more damage to the labor market, which tends to appear among historically disadvantaged groups like Black workers.
“Black workers are beginning to feel the brunt of it in a disparate fashion,” said Michelle Holder, a distinguished senior fellow at Washington Center for Equitable Growth. “Now, this is one report, but I pretty much believe that this is going to be the pattern over the next few months, particularly if the Fed continues to aggressively implement its approach.”

Like others, Holder agrees that it’s too early to attribute a cause to the decline in Black labor force participation, but she did call attention to rising unemployment among Black female workers.
The group saw its unemployment rate rise from 5.3% in July to 5.9%. In comparison, white female workers saw their unemployment rate tick up to 2.8% from 2.6%.
Hispanic female workers also experienced a sharp increase in their unemployment rate, rising to 4.3% from 3.2% in the prior month.
While the jobless rate did rise at a faster clip among Hispanic workers compared to white workers and the overall jobs market, that group’s labor force participation rate and employment trend seem to mimic the broader market, Gould said.
“We’re seeing this rise in unemployment as accompanied by a significant increase in participation and then uptake as well in employment,” she said. “I think that’s a hopeful sign. The fact that the unemployment rate moves up is not a troubling thing on its own.”
— CNBC’s Gabriel Cortes contributed to this report.

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Good evening,What can we learn from the latest round of data on global labour markets and their implications for monetary policy?Official figures from the US today showed jobs growth slowing in August after a bumper July, but still with a healthy 315,000 new posts. However, the unemployment rate edged up from 3.5 per cent to 3.7 per cent.“The labour market is moving in the right direction for policymakers,” said one economist. “An uptick in unemployment along with a modest increase in the participation rate means that the labour market in August is less tight than it was in July.”Data earlier this week indicated there were roughly two vacancies per employed worker, with many firms still struggling with shortages. Wages in turn are rising as companies compete for staff, fuelling concerns of a wage-price spiral as businesses charge more for their products, leading workers to demand even higher pay.

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Across the Atlantic, new eurozone data yesterday showed the unemployment rate falling below 6.6 per cent of the workforce for the first time.The strength of the labour market and the risk of wages rising sharply have fuelled calls for the European Central Bank to accelerate interest rate rises, with a possible 0.75 percentage point increase next week. Eurozone inflation is currently at a record 9.1 per cent, way above the ECB’s target of 2 per cent.Australia is applying a different approach to labour shortages — the country has the second worst record in the OECD after Canada — by increasing the pool of workers.Its home affairs minister announced today that it would allow tens of thousands more immigrants into the country and ease its dependence on lower-paid temporary workers as part of its response to the “global war for talent”.One Australian MP said the country risked a “brain drain” unless its visa system was improved. “We have too many engineers that are Uber drivers at the moment and yet we have skill shortages,” she said. Latest newsUS labour chief says jobs market can withstand Fed rate hikes (Bloomberg)All French nuclear reactors to restart by winter (AP)Russia’s Gazprom set to resume Nord Stream 1 gas flows as planned (Reuters)For up-to-the-minute news updates, visit our live blogNeed to know: the economyG7 countries have backed a price cap on Russian oil to limit the Kremlin’s earnings from energy and its ability to wage war in Ukraine. Russian president Vladimir Putin said yesterday that Moscow would stop selling oil to any countries attempting to do so.The EU has reached an agreement with member states to advance a €5bn loan to Ukraine as part of a €9bn package to prop up Kyiv’s finances.Latest for the UK and EuropeSterling in August had its worst monthly fall against the dollar since the Brexit referendum against a backdrop of economic and political uncertainty. Outgoing UK prime minister Boris Johnson used his final speech to defend his handling of the pandemic, while the FT editorial board said Liz Truss — the favourite to succeed him — would need to junk some of her ideological rigidity to deal with a worsening crisis. The next British PM will be announced on Monday. In the meantime, here’s what business wants from the new leader.UK campaigners have warned that the number of households in fuel poverty would more than double in January to at least 12mn unless the new prime minister takes “immediate” action to help with bills. Brussels has reiterated its warnings about the UK ditching the Northern Ireland protocol, the agreement which governs trade relations between the province, the rest of the UK and the EU, calling it a “provocative act”.Eurozone industrial producer prices rose by a record 37.9 per cent in the year to July, driven by a huge 97.2 per cent jump in the cost of energy. Here’s how Brussels plans to reduce electricity prices.Don’t miss your chance to join the FTWeekend Festival online or in-person tomorrow. There’s a great line up of speakers, including two former UK health secretaries, as well as experts on how to eat and live well, not to mention culture, politics, and big ideas. Get your discounted ticket at ft.com/festival using the code “Festival2022”.Global latestCommentator Martin Sandbu discusses an overlooked aspect of the energy shock: the “astounding” transfer of money from energy importers to exporters. To take one example: Saudi Arabian exports over the previous five years were around $20bn a month, but since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this has shot up to $40bn.Also benefiting is Joe Biden, says our Energy Source newsletter. The US president has managed a turnround in the political narrative as petrol prices fall, his climate bill passes and American shale oil and gas insulate the country from the kind of doomy prognosis engulfing Europe.One of the beneficiaries from China’s slowdown — PMI data yesterday showed manufacturing activity shrank in August — has been the environment. The country’s carbon emissions fell 8 per cent in the second quarter, the fourth consecutive drop for the world’s biggest emitter. Drought however is causing serious problems for hydroelectric power.Argentina’s vice-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, one of Latin America’s best-known politicians, survived an assassination attempt after her attacker’s gun failed to fire. Political tension has been rising this year as inflation heads towards 90 per cent a year and the peso plunges in value on the black market.Zambia’s $1.3bn IMF bailout will be a test of how the fund responds to the wave of debt distress in countries that have borrowed heavily from China.Need to know: businessThe UK’s top chicken producer said it would have to pay £1mn a week extra for carbon dioxide to stun birds for slaughter after a supplier pushed up prices following the end of production at CF Industries, the country’s biggest supplier. As well as the poultry and pig industries, CO₂ is also crucial for brewing, carbonated drinks production, food packaging and refrigeration.New “anti-woke” investment funds with names such as “Maga” and “God Bless America” are facing scrutiny from US regulators over whether their titles are fully compatible with their portfolios. US editor-at-large Gillian Tett says Republican targeting of ESG laws is bad for business.Russian banks lost Rbs1.5tn ($25bn) in the first half of 2022 after western sanctions cut the country out of large parts of the global financial system, preventing them from trading in the dollar, euro and other convertible currencies and leading to losses on currency swaps.India is stepping up efforts in chipmaking as geopolitical tensions continue to wreak havoc on global supply chains. As our Big Read explains, the country is keen to offer itself as a democratic alternative tech hub to China. The US is restricting exports of top Nvidia chips used in artificial intelligence to China and Russia.Science round-upMelbourne could become a global centre for developing new antiviral therapies to deal with future pandemics after receiving the largest donation in Australian medical history. “We wanted to create a second shield for humanity,” said donor Geoff Cumming.US regulators cleared vaccines by Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer targeting the dominant strain of the Omicron variant as well as the original strain of coronavirus despite a lack of human trials. The EU followed suit, paving the way for the messenger RNA jabs to be rolled out in autumn, when authorities expect cases to rise.Experts believe China’s zero-Covid policy will continue into next year, while hopes are pinned on a “super vaccine” that could stop the disease from spreading or a weaker mutation emerging with less serious health consequences. The megacity of Chengdu is the latest to be locked down.Covid-19 has also generated an “epidemiological aftershock”, leaving people susceptible to a large range of other conditions and piling extra pressure on already stretched health systems. Global health editor Sarah Neville’s Big Read lays out the challenges ahead.Get the latest worldwide picture with our vaccine trackerSome good newsFrom a new era of astronomy to a possible end to animal testing, 2022 is proving to be a great year for positive science stories. Here’s our top five.A young, star-forming region captured by the newly operational James Webb Space Telescope © Nasa, ESA, CSA, STScI More