How is it that China’s power plants are running short of coal, a year into a national mobilization plan to ensure security of supply? Over the past five years, the country’s six major generators typically have had enough solid fuel in their yards to keep their turbines running for about three weeks. The figure has hardly ever dropped below about ...

  It’s tough being caught in the middle, especially when it comes to inflation. The pandemic caused a significant shift in demand toward goods and away from services and shattered the stable supply-demand balance that had spawned two decades of inflation averaging just above 2%. This abrupt change in demand patterns sparked pricing shocks that basically divided companies into winners, ...

  Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has finally delivered his message loud and clear: To get inflation under control, the central bank intends to push interest rates higher, and keep them there longer, than markets had expected. It’s a great first step. Now the Fed must follow through. In his speech at the annual Jackson Hole economics conference, Powell defined ...