1월 25일 자정 update: glimmer부터 legal tender까지

Good economic health provided a glimmer of hope that the region could escape recession, as lower energy prices and China’s reopening also bolster prospects for the global economy.

 

The company—which also owns a swathe of luxury brands including Tissot, Longines and Omega—reported an increase of 4.6% in net global sales from the previous year.

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/companies-markets/swatch-upbeat-after-china-ends-zero-covid-policy

 

Pekka Haavisto, Finland’s foreign minister, said discussions with Turkey about Finland’s and Sweden’s bid to join NATO should be paused until the “dust has settled”.

 

Next week it will reach its closest point to Earth, a mere 27m miles away, as it heads back to the Oort cloud at the edge of the solar system.

 

Flagellated by allies at home and abroad, the government of Olaf Scholz, Germany's chancellor, has started moving.

 

The new composite PMI numbers for Europe, released on Tuesday morning, provide some further insights into inflation pressures in the manufacturing and services sectors. American figures will be released later in the day.

Could Europe end up with a worse inflation problem than America?

 

Increasing wage costs could be part of the reason. In Europe, where wages are often decided in collective-bargaining agreements, pay has been increasing more slowly than in America’s flexible and tight labour market, but is now steadily piling pressure on prices.

 

The fortunes of the world’s biggest enterprise-software firm may offer clues to the state of the tech industry overall. Since November 2021 Microsoft’s shares have fallen by 27%.

Trustbusters should let Microsoft buy Activision Blizzard

 

That is two percentage points fewer than the tech-heavy Nasdaq index, probably because Microsoft’s customers are disproportionately businesses⁠—which have tended to cut back less than consumers have.

 

A Trump probe in Georgia heats up

 

A special grand jury has compelled unco-operative witnesses to testify, including Rudy Giuliani (Mr Trump’s former lawyer) and Lindsey Graham (a Republican senator).

 

It could include recommendations for criminal charges, such as solicitations of election fraud—though any indictments would come from a separate grand jury.

 

The many woes of El Salvador

 

President Nayib Bukele said El Salvador had repaid its creditors "in full" as $604m of bonds matured on Tuesday.

 

Concerns that the Central American country might default were alleviated last year when the government secured a $450m loan from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration and executed two bond buybacks.

 

After making El Salvador the first country in the world in which bitcoin is legal tender, in September 2021, Mr Bukele started to invest public money in the cryptocurrency.