Signs are emerging that the resilience of American consumers is rapidly waning, potentially undermining one of the few remaining pillars supporting the bull market in equities. US households have until recently mostly absorbed higher prices on everything from coffee to chicken to clothes, helping companies maintain fat profit margins despite higher input. But that doesn’t mean consumers were happy about ...

  Shanghai is China’s most important financial hub as well as the regional headquarters of global brands such as Apple Inc, Tesla Inc and LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE. Until recently, it also executed China’s “dynamic clearing” Covid policy better than the country’s other municipalities. With a staff of over 3,000 conducting contact tracing in the city of 25 ...

  Might Russian President Vladimir Putin drop The Bomb? Unleash a nuclear weapon in Ukraine? It is conceivable. Yet five years ago, it would have seemed fantastic that such a question could be posed about any national leader in the world. For much of the Cold War, prospects of Armageddon filled the nightmares of statesmen and their peoples. During the ...