Economic News

LONDON (AFX) - European government bonds were little changed as a dearth of economic news kept trading activity to a minimum following Friday's short-covering recovery. "Barring surprises, it's going to be a quiet kind of week until Friday," said 4CAST fixed income analyst Jose Garcia Zarate. On Friday, the market will closely monitor US CPI data, which will be crucial in determining w ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Factory gate inflation slowed more than expected in August and firms' raw material costs dropped at their sharpest monthly rate in 1-1/2 years, official data showed on Monday. The Office for National Statistics said output prices were unchanged on the month in August, bringing the annual rate of increase down to 2.6 percent from 2.9 percent. Analysts had predicted a 2.7 percent rate. Core output prices defied expectations of a rise and fell a seasonally adjusted 0.2 percent, ...

LONDON (AFX) - The sharp fall in crude oil prices over the last month or so has helped ease the pressure on the UK's manufacturers and may allay fears that the Bank of England will be raising the cost of borrowing again in November. The office for National Statistics revealed that input prices on a seasonally adjusted basis fell 1.2 pct in August from the previous month against analysts' expectat ...

FRANKFURT (AFX) - European Central Bank executive board member Juergen Stark said he sees a risk that inflation expectations will rise if the market harbours the impression the ECB is tolerating an inflation rate above 2 pct. In an interview with Handelsblatt newspaper, Stark said the ECB is getting mixed signals on whether inflation expectations would harden, with one set of data coming from the ...

BASEL (AFX) - Financial markets are increasingly pricing in a moderate slowdown in US growth, the Bank for International Settlements said. "The market seemed increasingly to price in a scenario where the US economy would experience a 'soft landing', cooling just to the extent necessary to keep upward price pressures contained," the BIS said in its latest quarterly review. It said data  ...

BASEL (AFX) - The Bank for International Settlements said Asian central banks which have intervened to limit currency strength may be forced to raise interest rates or let their currencies appreciate as inflation pressures grow. Central banks have been able to keep interest rates low during the large-scale foreign exchange market intervention of recent years, because other structural factors such ...

BERLIN (AFX) - The director general of the International Monetary Fund has said he favours a further rise in the European interest rate "if the economic recovery continues". "The ECB (European Central Bank) must move from a monetary policy that tends towards the relaxed to a neutral policy if the economic recovery continues and that means new rate rises," Rodrigo Rato said in  ...