Economy

Higher borrowing costs and a growing consumer preference for gasoline-electric hybrids have dampened EV sales, putting pressure on makers of both electric vehicles and the associated charging infrastructure. Blink’s job cuts would result in annualized savings of about $9 million and would be completed in the first quarter of 2025, the company said in a statement.In May, Elon Musk’s Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) had also laid off employees from its vehicle charging business, including the head of the division, taking automakers who use the Tesla Supercharger network by surprise.”The timing of these cost-cutting measures, as indicated in our last earnings announcement, is a proactive step to adapt to current market conditions while preserving our long-term strategy,” CEO Brendan Jones said.In August, Blink cut its annual revenue forecast and delayed its target for achieving positive adjusted EBITDA from December 2024 to 2025.As of December last year, Bowie, Maryland-headquartered Blink employed 706 people, according to its annual report. The company had sold, contracted, or deployed nearly 85,000 charging stations, as stated on its website. More

BOGOTA (Reuters) – Colombia’s government will not modify the value of 523 trillion pesos ($123.9 billion) for its proposed 2025 budget, Finance Minister Ricardo Bonilla said in an interview on Tuesday. Furthermore, if Congress does not approve a proposed fiscal reform, which it hopes will raise an additional 12 trillion pesos, the government will look to cut costs, he told Reuters. “The budget will remain within the threshold of 523 trillion pesos, which is financed with 511 trillion pesos and a law covering the remaining 12 trillion pesos,” Bonilla said.If the budget is rejected by Congress, the government will look at pushing it through via decree, Bonilla said, in line with comments made earlier this month by President Gustavo Petro. If the budget and fiscal reform are only partially approved, the government will make adjustments to how the money is spent, Bonilla said. Congress has refused to approve the proposed budget amount, saying some of the proposed sources of financing are not realistic, such as the collection goal set for efforts to tackle tax evasion and avoidance, among other measures.Elsewhere, Bonilla said he was confident the central bank board would cut the benchmark interest rate by 75 basis points to 10% at its meeting at the end of September.Bonilla represents the government on the seven-member board, which has cut the rate in increments of 50 basis points during its last four meetings. “I had originally still considered a cut of 100 (basis) points, but what I have finally chosen is to see if it’s possible to find majority support for 75 points, thinking about market expectations,” said Bonilla, who expects the rate to close 2024 at 8.50%.Bonilla said the government did not agree with the central bank’s technical team, which eyes the benchmark rate closing the year at 9.25%. Colombia’s economy could grow closer to 2% this year, Bonilla said, rather than the 1.7% forecast by the government.He also forecast inflation could end the year at 5.3%, still above the central bank’s 3% target.Bonilla said he expects to travel to the U.S. within a month to meet with several ratings agencies, as well as with Colombian bondholders, to discuss future foreign debt placements.($1 = 4,220.58 Colombian pesos) More

The FDA’s breakthrough tag is given to certain medical devices that provide treatment or diagnosis of life-threatening conditions. It is aimed at speeding up development and review of devices currently under development.The experimental device, known as Blindsight, “will enable even those who have lost both eyes and their optic nerve to see,” Musk said in a post on X.Neuralink did not immediately respond to a request seeking details about when it expects the Blindsight device to move into human trials. The FDA also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Founded in 2016 by Musk and a group of engineers, Neuralink is building a brain chip interface that can be implanted within the skull, which it says could eventually help disabled patients to move and communicate again, and also restore vision.Neuralink’s device has a chip that processes and transmits neural signals that could be transmitted to devices like a computer or a phone.The startup is separately testing an implant designed to give paralyzed patients the ability to use digital devices by thinking alone, a prospect that could help people with spinal cord injuries.This trial is expected to enroll three patients to evaluate its device in a study expected to take several years to complete, according to details on the U.S. government’s clinical trials database.Earlier this year, Neuralink successfully implanted the device in the second patient, who has been using it to play video games and learn how to design 3D objects. More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. House of Representatives plans to vote Wednesday on a stopgap spending bill that would extend government funding for six months and require Americans to provide proof of citizenship when they vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Tuesday.The vote sets up a confrontation with the Senate, where Democrats who control the chamber say any spending bill should not be paired with the voting requirements Republicans want.”I urge the House to be serious, come to the table, work together to reach bipartisan agreement,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said at a news conference.Unless a stopgap spending bill is sent to President Joe Biden by midnight Sept. 30, the end of the government’s current fiscal year, many agency operations will cease and thousands of federal workers would be furloughed for lack of funds.Last week, Johnson had to abandon his attempt to pass a spending bill when it became clear he did not have enough support for passage from his rank-and-file Republicans.It is not clear whether he will succeed this time. Republicans can afford few defections in order to pass legislation with their narrow 220-211 majority, and at least one of them said on Tuesday that the bill would not do enough to restrain federal spending. “I’m a ‘hell, no,'” Representative Thomas Massie wrote on social media.A shutdown could upset voters in the weeks before the Nov. 5 elections, with control of both the House and the Senate at stake.The last government shutdown occurred at the end of 2018 and stretched well into January 2019. Johnson’s decision to pair must-pass spending legislation with controversial new voting restrictions could raise the likelihood that lawmakers will not be able to reach a compromise by the Sept. 30 deadline.Fueled by Republican former President Donald Trump’s false claims about election fraud, the Republican voting bill would require those registering to vote to provide proof of U.S. citizenship and compel states to purge suspected noncitizens from their voter rolls.It is already a felony for a noncitizen to vote in a federal election. A 2017 study found only 30 instances of suspected noncitizen voting out of 23.5 million votes cast the previous year.Democrats describe the bill as a voter suppression effort, and President Joe Biden’s administration has said the legislation would do nothing to safeguard elections.Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, a moderate who occasionally breaks with her party, predicted Congress would ultimately pass a spending bill without the controversial voting provisions — but only after Johnson tries to pass his version. “I’m hoping we learn quickly what the House can and cannot do so we can move here,” she said. More

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It was the second straight outlook upgrade by the Bank of Spain so far this year following its initial forecast of a 1.9% expansion. Last year, the economy expanded 2.5%.Growth is likely to slow down in the third quarter to 0.6% from the preceding three months, when the economy grew a stronger-than-expected 0.8%, the report said. The central bank also raised the outlook for 2025 and 2026, to 2.2% and 1.9% from 1.9% and 1.7%, respectively.As a result, the bank also reduced the debt-to-GDP ratio forecast to 105.4% at the end of this year from a previous 105.8%. It now expects inflation to clock 2.9% this year, down from 3% predicted three months earlier, and then to gradually moderate to 2.1% and 1.8% in the following two years. More

Robert S. Kaplan, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, July 13, 2023.
Scott Mlyn | CNBC

Former Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan told CNBC on Tuesday that making the bolder move of 50 basis points would better position policymakers heading into the latter part of the year.
Markets currently are putting about 2 to 1 odds that the Federal Open Market Committee will approve the half-point reduction, a switch from prior expectations.

If Robert Kaplan still had a say in the matter, he’d be pushing for a half percentage point interest rate reduction at this week’s Federal Reserve meeting.
The former Dallas Fed president told CNBC on Tuesday that making the bolder move of 50 basis points would better position policymakers heading into the latter part of the year and the economic challenges ahead.

“If I were sitting at the table, I would be advocating for 50 in this meeting,” Kaplan said during a “Squawk Box” interview. “I think the Fed may be a meeting or so late, and if I had a do-over, I might prefer we had started the cutting in July, not September.”
Markets currently are putting about 2 to 1 odds that the Federal Open Market Committee will approve a 50 basis point reduction, as opposed to the 25 basis point cut it had been pricing in leading up to Friday, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch. One basis point equals 0.01%.
Fed funds, the central bank’s benchmark overnight lending rate, currently stands at 5.25% to 5.50%.
Should the committee decide to make the more aggressive move, Kaplan said it would then be incumbent on Chair Jerome Powell in his post-meeting press conference on Wednesday to indicate that additional cuts ahead are “likely to be more measured.” The Fed’s two-day policy meeting gets underway Tuesday.
“From a risk management point of view, 50 makes the most sense,” Kaplan said. “If the group is split, a lot of this will depend, actually, on what Jay Powell personally thinks, what is his personal disposition on all this, and then his ability to wrangle everybody to a unanimous decision.”
Kaplan ran the Dallas Fed from 2015-21 and is now a managing director at Goldman Sachs. More