December, 2021

• 28 December

  Holiday sales jump 8.5% as US consumers return to retailers

  

    Bloomberg US holiday sales jumped 8.5% from last year as consumers spent more money on clothes, jewelry and electronics, a report from Mastercard SpendingPulse showed. Sales grew across the board, both in stores and online, for the holiday season defined as November 1 to December 24. Consumers started searching for gifts earlier than usual with supply chains roiling retailers ...

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• 28 December

  Japan’s retail sales rise for third month as shoppers catch up

  

    Bloomberg Japan’s retail sales increased for a third straight month, as easing virus concerns fueled spending by consumers before the emergence of the Omicron variant. Sales advanced 1.2% in November from the previous month, as shoppers spent more on clothing and motor vehicles, the industry ministry reported Monday. Economists had expected a 1.3% overall gain. While Japan’s consumption hasn’t ...

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• 28 December

  Fearing axe in 2022, CEOs sweat supply chain more than Covid

  

    Bloomberg The C-suite is a bundle of nerves this winter. A new survey shows that 72% of chief executive officers are worried about losing their jobs in 2022 because of business disruptions, tracking closely with the 94% of bosses who say their corporate models need to be overhauled within three years. “That’s eye-poppingly high,” says Simon Freakley, the CEO ...

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• 28 December

  Chinese manufacturing profits squeezed by commodity prices

  Bloomberg China’s industrial firms are doing much better this year than in 2020, but the improvement in profits is patchy, with miners and raw material providers benefiting from higher commodity prices at the expense of manufacturers. In the first 11 months of the year, industrial profits climbed 38% from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday. ...

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• 27 December

  Russia plans security talks with US before Nato meeting

  

    Bloomberg Russia will start talks first with the US on its demands for guarantees of an end to Nato’s eastward expansion before a proposed January 12 meeting between the military alliance and Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. “We will hold the main round of negotiations with the US which will take place immediately after the end of the ...

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• 27 December

  Israel approves plan to double Jewish settlement in Golan

  

    Bloomberg Israel’s cabinet approved a plan to double the Jewish population in the southern Golan Heights, part of a 1 billion-shekel ($317 million) program meant to cement Israeli control over the territory, captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war. About half of the funds will be allocated to planning and housing, and the balance to developing transportation, ...

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• 27 December

  Taliban aims to boost exports to ease crisis as foreign aid ends

  

    Bloomberg The Taliban administration is working to boost exports to save the Afghan economy from collapse, with a government official saying international humanitarian aid alone won’t prevent the country from slipping deeper into poverty. “Humanitarian aid cannot solve Afghanistan’s economic problems. The only way to achieve economic self-sufficiency is to boost domestic products and export them abroad,” the Taliban ...

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• 27 December

  Desmond Tutu, apartheid opponent who won nobel prize, dies aged 90

  

    Bloomberg Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his opposition to racial discrimination in South Africa, has died. He was 90. Tutu died on Sunday in Cape Town, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office said in a statement. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997 and underwent surgery. Tutu was subsequently hospitalized several times to undergo treatment ...

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• 27 December

  Polish president vetoes media bill, bending to US pressure

    Bloomberg Poland’s President Andrzej Duda vetoed a bill that would force Discovery Inc. to sell most of the country’s most popular private television network, defusing a row that strained relations with the US. The bill, adopted in a surprise parliamentary vote on December 17, blindsided Washington and sent thousands of Poles to the streets in protest over what they ...

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• 27 December

  PBOC to make monetary policy more forward-looking, targeted

  

    Bloomberg China’s central bank pledged greater support for the real economy, and said that it will make monetary policy more forward-looking and targeted. There will be more “proactive” use of monetary policy tools, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said in a statement. It added that there will be “good use” of the monetary policy tools’ quantitative and structural ...

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