When consumer prices began soaring last year, a trade union representing staff at the European Central Bank (ECB) demanded their wages increase in lockstep with inflation. This grassroots effort to index pay to price increases was ultimately unsuccessful, but it was incendiary stuff coming from the supposed guardians of euro-area price stability. Indexation, after all, can determine who is ...

  In 2018, German government officials war-gamed a massive natural-gas shortage. With the real thing looming, the lessons are sobering. Some hospitals, nursing homes and jails were forced to close; companies shut; livestock was left to die; hundreds of thousands of jobs vanished; rationing for households was imposed, according to the official account of the crisis-management exercise. In just a ...

  Bloomberg Southwest Airlines Co expects a rebound in domestic travel to carry into the summer, joining rivals predicting that consumers will shrug off worries about coronavirus variants, fork over higher fares and fill planes in the coming months. Southwest maintained a plan to restore 93% of its pre-pandemic flight capacity this quarter as robust leisure demand is joined by ...

  Bloomberg Wizz Air Holdings Plc extended its cancellation of flights to Ukraine and Russia through the end of October as the war started by Vladimir Putin in February shows no sign of abating. The move means Eastern Europe’s biggest discount carrier will have scrapped operations to the two countries for the whole of the summer timetable, which this year ...

Bloomberg EasyJet Plc terminated rental contracts on six Airbus SE jets owned by a Russian state leasing company in a rare example of sanctions depriving a European carrier of aircraft. EasyJet cancelled the leases on the A319 narrowbodies owned by a unit of state-controlled GTLK shortly after the UK and European Union acted to punish Vladimir Putin over the invasion ...

Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc acknowledged that a hiring and warehouse-building binge during the pandemic is catching up with the company as e-commerce sales growth inevitably slows from the torrid pace of the outbreak. That reality will weigh on revenue and profit going forward as consumers return to their pre-pandemic habits and inflation may cool their spending. Fuel and labour costs are ...

  Bloomberg Russia may be forced to ground between half and two-thirds of its commercial aircraft by 2025 in order to cannibalise them for spare parts, Kommersant newspaper reported, citing an unidentified person at the Transport Ministry. In the ministry’s base case, at least 70% of the country’s foreign-made planes will still be flying by the end of 2025, Kommersant ...

  Bloomberg Chinese holidaymakers face another holiday season ruined by virus outbreaks and controls, with the government’s stringent Covid Zero restrictions and fears of infection expected to keep many people at home during the upcoming Labor Day break. Travel was already down in March, when the biggest Covid-19 outbreak in two years prompted officials to lock down major cities like ...

Bloomberg Russia’s war on Ukraine has triggered a profound reassessment in European capitals of their individual and collective relations with China. Confronted by the need to rapidly unwind a dependence on Russian energy built up over decades, government officials from Rome to Prague are re-evaluating the extent of their economic and political ties to China. Senior lawmakers in Berlin who ...

Bloomberg The presidents of Russia and Ukraine have accepted invitations from Indonesia, the current chair of the Group of 20, for a big ticket summit in November. The decision to invite both leaders shows the delicate balance the Southeast Asian country is trying to make as the G-20 host this year. Russia is a member of the G-20, and the ...