GLOBAL NEWS-
China will cut “real interest rate levels” and lower financing costs for companies, Premier Li Keqiang said on Thursday in a speech at the annual Boao forum held in the southern island of Hainan.Li did not elaborate on which interest rate he was referring to, but said China has enough policy tools to cope with economic slowdown.
China has made unprecedented proposals in talks with the United States on a range of issues including forced technology transfer as the two sides work to overcome remaining obstacles to a deal to end their protracted trade war, U.S. officials told Reuters on Wednesday.U.S. President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese imports last year in a move to force China to change the way it does business with the rest of the world and to pry open more of China’s economy to U.S. companies.Among Trump’s demands are for Beijing to end practices that Washington alleges result in the systematic theft of U.S. intellectual property and the forced transfer of American technology to Chinese companies.
British Prime Minister Theresa May failed to sway hardline opponents of her European Union divorce deal on Wednesday with an offer to quit, but parliament’s bid to agree an alternative fell short, leaving the Brexit process as deadlocked as ever.May told her Conservative lawmakers she would step down if her Brexit deal was finally passed by parliament at the third attempt, in a last-ditch bid to win over many of her party’s eurosceptic rebels.But some were unmoved and the Northern Irish party crucial to getting the agreement through said it would reject the deal again.Britain was supposed to leave the bloc on Friday but Brussels agreed last week to put back the divorce date until April 12 to give it a chance to resolve a three-year crisis that has split the country down the middle.
It was a quiet day in January, and many oil traders were still on holiday, when two sources in the industry called to alert me to something unusual - a supertanker that had gone off radar for two weeks appeared off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and was pumping out fuel oil to two smaller vessels.The sources said it appeared that the supertanker was selling Iranian oil in violation of U.S. sanctions. If confirmed, the sale would shine a rare light on how traders and shippers were evading the sanctions.
Malaysian palm oil futures edged down to a more than one-week low in early trade on Thursday, as high inventory levels continued to weigh on the market.The benchmark palm oil contract for June delivery on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange was down 0.4 percent at 2,128 ringgit ($522.21) a tonne by the midday break, after hitting a more than one-week low of 2,106 ringgit earlier in the session. It was headed for a fourth session of losses in five.“The market is down as Dalian came down, and also due to our high stocks,” said a futures trader in Kuala Lumpur, referring to China’s Dalian Commodity Exchange.
The U.S. economy faces “notable” risks and the central bank can take a wait-and-see approach to monetary policy, Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank President Esther George said on Wednesday.“Over the medium term, I see the biggest risk coming from slower growth abroad, particularly in China, the euro area, and the United Kingdom,” George said in a speech delivered in New York.George said the U.S. economy’s fundamentals still appeared sound and that job growth would likely rebound from a weak performance in February.She said domestic factors, including the waning effects of U.S. government stimulus, also contributed to a median projection by Fed policymakers falling to 2.1 percent growth for 2019 at its most recent meeting last week, a full percentage point below the roughly 3 percent growth that was seen in 2018.“My outlook calls for growth to slow to trend, with moderating job gains and low inflation,” she said. “In these circumstances, monetary policy can take a wait-and-see approach.”
Chief executives from American steel producers urged lawmakers to maintain strong U.S. tariffs on the metal on Wednesday to protect their industry, as Senate efforts to rein in President Donald Trump’s tariff powers gained steam.
Asian share markets were painted red on Thursday as recession concerns sent bond yields spiralling lower across the globe, overshadowing central bank attempts to calm frayed nerves.Sterling was also hit by another bout of Brexit blues after a round of votes in the U.K. parliament failed to produce any plan to manage the divorce.MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan slipped 0.2 percent in early trade, with South Korea off 0.7 percent.Japan’s Nikkei fell 1.6 percent, while E-Mini futures for the S&P 500 lost 0.4 percentOn Wall Street, the Dow had ended Wednesday down 0.13 percent, while the S&P 500 lost 0.46 percent and the Nasdaq 0.63 percent.Worries that the inversion of the U.S. Treasury curve signalled a future recession only deepened as 10-year yields fell to 15-month lows at 2.35 percent.
Oil prices fell on Thursday, extending losses into a second straight session, after widely watched data showed a surprising increase in U.S. stocks.International Brent crude oil futures were at $67.63 a barrel at 0045 GMT, down 20 cents, or 0.3 percent, from their last close. Brent closed down 0.2 percent on Wednesday.U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $59.18 per barrel, down 23 cents, or 0.4 percent, from their last settlement. WTI fell 0.9 percent on Wednesday.