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Some economists have warned that the collapse of Evergrande could become China's "Lehman moment" -- a reference to the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers as a result of the subprime mortgage crisis, which triggered the 2008 global financial crisis.

However, Capital Economics senior global economist Simon MacAdam described that narrative as "wide of the mark."

So far, the sharp increases in these pandemic-popular segments have been offset by even sharper declines in the cost of categories most affected by covid 19-related travel restrictions, such as international airfare (down 28 percent from February of last year to this January) and spectator sports (down 18 percent).

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Powell and other economists also say it's not useful to compare inflation dynamics of the past with today's. The economy has changed so much since the 1970s and 1980s, they say, with globalization, technology and other forces combining to slow price growth.

A more globalized economy made it harder for businesses to raise wages or prices, since competitors and consumers could easily find a cheaper place to make a good or deliver a service. More advanced technology only quickened that shift.

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For years now, inflation has fallen short of the Fed's 2 percent target, even as the unemployment rate ticked lower and lower after the Great Recession. That reality spurred the Fed to reevaluate the connection between a tight labor market and rising prices. Economists had long believed that, as the labor market tightened and employers raised wages to compete for scarce workers, prices would rise as businesses passed high labor costs onto consumers. But such a relationship largely failed to materialize during the most recent expansion -- the longest in U.S. history.

In a complaint filed in state court Monday, the bank said it issued two mortgages totaling $31 million in 2013, but the borrower -- a limited liability company led by Mexican hotel magnate Moises Micha -- is in default.

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Just last month, the owner of the Blakely Hotel on West 55th Street told staff he was shutting down his operation because of financial pressures, a move he said was symptomatic of wider problems across the industry

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Mr. Mogensen aimed to turn Reykjavik into a major international air hub, exploiting its position near the top of the globe to transport passengers between North America, Europe and Asia, cutting the time of the traditional routes through London and Dubai. Iceland would be an enticing stopover, if not the final destination.

... now tourism is rolling backward, with the number of international visitors on track to drop by 16 percent this year compared with the year before, and numbers of Americans on pace to plunge by 20 percent.

The sudden shortage of Americans -- widely celebrated as a free-spending people -- is bemoaned by merchants of Viking-themed tourist tchotkes, by whale watching tour operators and by real estate agencies.

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Iceland's unemployment rate spiked to 4.7 percent in May, compared with 2.9 percent in January. At the Reykjavik unemployment office, those out of work are growing resigned to settling for less-desirable jobs.

"It's much harder now," said Ivars Rapa, 48, a Latvian immigrant who recently lost his job at a fish processing factory that furloughed its several hundred workers.

Four other executives are being charged, the prosecutors office said in a statement, without giving their names.

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Prosecutors said Winterkorn was accused of a particularly serious case of fraud, breach of trust and breaching competition laws because he had not acted -- despite having a special responsibility to do so as the company's CEO -- after it became clear on May 25, 2014, that diesel engines had been manipulated.

He neglected to inform authorities in Europe and the United States as well as customers of the illegal software and he also did not prevent the continued installation of such software, the prosecutors said.

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In a related case, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Winterkorn last month, saying U.S. investors were informed too late about the German automaker's diesel emissions scandal, alleging a "massive fraud".

VW and other carmakers are struggling to adapt quickly enough to stringent rules introduced after the carmaker was found to have cheated diesel emissions tests, with its chief executive Herbert Diess warning last month that Germany's auto industry faces extinction.

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VW's strategy shift comes as cities start to ban diesel engine vehicles, forcing carmakers to think of new ways to safeguard 600,000 German industrial jobs, of which 436,000 are at car companies and their suppliers.

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Despite the boost in production's effect on Tesla's bottom line, the company is still running into problems related to that explosion in scale. Tesla has had problems with customer service, with Musk recently admitting that the company has "major gaps" in its nationwide coverage. And while the company's cars consistently earn some of the highest safety ratings in the industry, its widely documented quality control issues continue to plague customers new and old. Before the earnings letter dropped on Wednesday, Consumer Reports said that Tesla ranked the third worst for reliability among major automakers.

Musk, despite his foibles, may have bamboozled investors into funding Tesla long enough to pull off viability... but will Tesla be able to grow into the market at hoped-for scale with the majors also now producing electric cars?

And here's the crazy thing ... the Khashoggi murder could blow this all up. Not just the WeWork deal. Not just the next mega-fund that SoftBank puts together. But this fund. The Vision Fund. And if the Vision Fund is no longer viable as a player in Silicon Valley, then I don't think the unicorn valuations are viable, either.

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Nasdaq cut the entire trade on Wednesday and the exchange confirmed that the loss accounted for all of the exchange's own default fund of €7m and swallowed €107m, or two-thirds, of its €166m mutual default fund that clearing house members must contribute to.

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With Nasdaq and members of its clearing house repairing the damage, questions as to how a single trader could come close to wiping out the clearing house's layers of protection will merit the attention of regulators, including the European Central Bank.Members of the clearing house include some of the biggest banks and energy traders such as Morgan Stanley, UBS and Equinor, Norway's state oil company... .The catalyst for the trading loss was a series of backfiring bets on the price difference between German and Nordic power markets, according to multiple sources in the industry.

They were amused by my optimism, but they didn't really buy it. They were not interested in how to avoid a calamity; they're convinced we are too far gone. For all their wealth and power, they don't believe they can affect the future. They are simply accepting the darkest of all scenarios and then bringing whatever money and technology they can employ to insulate themselves -- especially if they can't get a seat on the rocket to Mars.

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Carter Page met with Rosneft in December to assist with the deal, and he's on the record admitting it but claims he didn't meet Igor Sechin," said Dworkin incredulously... mighty brokerage fee to one of the Trump campaign advisors, Moscow-based investment banker Carter Page, is highlighted in the former MI-6 operative's report.

Theoretically, the former Merrill Lynch investment banker, Page, may have only been the "bag man" or go-between and someone else is the recipient of the cash premium in the dossier. Five hundred million dollars is a lot of money, and conceivably, many members of the Trump Organization, or family, could be involved in a deal of that scope.

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Nineteen and a half percent of Rosneft's stock was agreed to be transferred on December 7th, before the board was informed of the transaction's terms only after it took place.

The "matryoshka" (named after the famous nesting dolls) or complex deal structure is most likely designed to avoid American sanctions imposed over the Ukraine invasion against Rosneft, its CEO Igor Sechin, and its parent company Gazprom.

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"There was a lot of complacency in the market recently, so this is a brutal wake-up call for investors who had forgotten about political risks in Europe and especially in Italy... The risk is that the populist parties gain ground in the next Italian election, which would be really bad news for the euro zone. Clearly, investors are moving to the sidelines for now."

That's if American energy policy follows the track predicted by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which expects 1 million natural gas wells will be producing gas in the U.S. in 2050, up from roughly 100,000 today.

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"Whereas the worst-case scenario brought us to 1.5 degrees Centigrade in 2040," he adds, "we're almost there today." ... It's an alarming message -- even though the shale rush has stumbled somewhat as gas prices collapsed and many drillers went bankrupt, the cumulative impact of American fracking appears to have set the entire world on a collision course with climate change's most extreme effects.

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The central bank data, which cover payments of sovereign debt only and exclude obligations by PDVSA and other state entities, show that just $83m was paid in October, compared with sovereign obligations amounting to $465m, according to data from Caracas Capital.Payments in November fell to $28m, compared with obligations of $183m, and in December declined to $23m, compared with obligations of $242m.

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"They have been doing it [defaulting] strategically to sow confusion. They have said they have begun the process of paying things they clearly did not pay, and blamed it all on sanctions."The US has imposed several rounds of sanctions on Venezuelan individuals and institutions. Adding to pressures last August, it also banned any involvement in new bonds or shares issued by the government or PDVSA. Last month it prohibited involvement in the country's proposed digital currency, the petro, as well