UNITED STATES
Fed urges rise to save face
Federal Reserve officials earlier this month believed it would be appropriate to raise a key interest rate “relatively soon,” with some officials arguing for a hike at the Fed’s meeting next month in order to preserve the Fed’s credibility. Minutes of the Nov. 1 to Nov. 2 meeting show that officials were moving closer to hiking rates for the first time in nearly a year. Some officials argued that if the Fed did not raise rates at its meeting next month, it ran the risk of harming the central bank’s credibility given all the signals which had been sent about an impending hike. Private economists are forecasting that the Fed is likely to boost its benchmark rate by a quarter-point at its Dec. 13 to Dec. 14 meeting.
REAL ESTATE
US sales slow, but strong
Fewer Americans purchased new homes last month, but sales are still much stronger this year than last year — a positive sign for the housing market. The US Department of Commerce on Wednesday said that new-home sales fell 1.9 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 563,000 units. Still, sales through the first 10 months of this year are 12.7 percent higher than during the same period last year. The limited selection of new homes has prompted higher prices. The median sales price increased 1.9 percent from a year ago to US$304,500.
GERMANY
Q3 growth just 0.2 percent
Economic growth in the third quarter this year was just 0.2 percent, driven mainly by domestic consumption, but dented by foreign trade, the federal statistics office Destatis said yesterday. Domestic spending rose 0.4 percent and state expenditure by 1 percent compared with the preceding quarter, but gross investment and imports experienced negligible growth and exports fell by 0.4 percent. The report confirmed provisional figures issued on Tuesday last week. Expressed on a year-on-year basis, the economy expanded 1.7 percent in the third quarter, after 1.8 percent in the second quarter and 1.9 percent in the first quarter.
UNITED KINGDOM
Brexit loan to reach £22bn
Britain must borrow an additional £22 billion (US$27 billion) over five years as it exits the EU, the Office for Budget Responsibility said on Wednesday, forcing the government to shelve plans to balance the books by 2020. The extra borrowing, worth 143 billion euros (US$151 billion), covers the period until early 2021, and covers direct and indirect costs of Brexit, the office said. The office pinpointed £9 billion of additional borrowing directly caused by Brexit, including £6 billion as a result of lower migration and £8.1 billion due to lower productivity growth.
SOFTWARE
LinkedIn sale given all clear
EU antitrust regulators are set to give conditional clearance to Microsoft Corp’s US$26 billion takeover of professional social network LinkedIn Corp, three people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. As part of the EU approval, the US software company is to make some minor changes to concessions submitted last week following feedback from rivals and customers, the people said. The deal, Microsoft’s largest ever acquisition, is to allow the company to add a suite of sales, marketing and recruiting services to its core business products as it gears up for next-generation computing.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last