Economic News

By Glenn Somerville ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - The world economic outlook is healthy but inflationary expectations are rising, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Rodrigo Rato, said on Saturday. "We are in a healthy environment," Rodrigo Rato told a small group of reporters at the end of a Group of Eight finance ministers' meeting, notwithstanding the issues of highe ...

Ten-year Treasury prices rose Friday and yields closed below those on the two-year note for a second consecutive session, amid growing market convictions that a slowdown in the U.S. economy will help contain inflation. The 10-year note reversed early weakness sparked by data showing a narrower- than-expected trade deficit and a surge in import prices, reinforcing the case for the Federal Reserv ...

By Krishna Guha in Washington Published: June 9 2006 20:33 | Last updated: June 9 2006 20:33 // US productivity can continue to grow at a rapid pace for some time to come, Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said yesterday, arguing that companies have yet to reap the full benefit of recent advances in technology. Mr Bernanke told the graduating class at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that “the current productivity revival still has some legs as the full economic bene ...

Treasury prices rose Friday, sending yields lower, amid growing market convictions that a slowdown in the U.S. economy will help contain inflation. The 10-year note reversed early weakness registered after data showed a narrower-than-expected trade deficit and a surge in import prices, reinforcing the case for the Federal Reserve to hike rates later this month. "There's a sense that if the F ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Leisure group Whitbread (WTB.L: Quote, Profile, Research) has set a June-end deadline for first round bids in the sale of a group of 240 pubs, the company said on Friday. "First round bids will come at the end of June," said a spokeswoman for the company, whose holdings include restaurants, hotels and fitness clubs. She declined to name a specific date, though one source clos ...

Fri 9th Jun 2006 New Star UK Growth Fund has delivered top quartile performance over the last four years and its manager has today made comment on the state of the market. Stephen Whittaker, manager of the New Star UK Growth Fund, said: "The stronger economic data has meant that interest rate expectations have firmed up a little, with notions of a cut giving way to no change or eve ...

White House economists stuck to their guns on Thursday and forecast a soft landing for the US economy in spite of mounting market fears of inflation and slowing growth. // Releasing the administration’s twice-yearly update on the economy, Ed Lazear, the chairman of the council of economic advisers, said it did not expect higher-than-expected inflation in the first few months of this year to “casca ...

The US dollar made strong gains against a swathe of major currencies this week as interest rate differentials moved sharply back in favour of the greenback. // There were also signs that, for now at least, the dollar was the prime beneficiary of a rush into “safe haven” assets amid further volatility in global equity markets. On Monday, the greenback hit a 12-month low of $1.2979 to the euro as  ...

An interest rate rise in the eurozone and endless discussion of the likelihood and timing of increases in Japan and the US gave markets plenty to focus on this week. // It wasn’t just the majors that were dominated by rate rise news; Denmark, India, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey and Thailand all lifted key lending rates this week too, and some were unexpected. “One thing they all had in common was inflation concerns based on rising oil prices,” noted Carlin Doyle, strategist at State Stree ...

Wall Street fell back this week as three days of heavy selling dragged down the main stock indices. // During the week, the S&P 500 briefly dipped into negative territory for the year. At one stage the Nasdaq Composite had fallen more than 10 per cent from its high in May, the scale of decline that many market watchers define as a correction. And the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell back be ...