The Federal Reserve is facing a rather sticky problem. Despite its best efforts over the past year, inflation is stubbornly refusing to head south with any urgency to a target of 2%. Rather, the inflation report released on March 14, 2023, shows consumer prices rose 0.4% in February, meaning the year-over-year increase is now at […]Continue Reading
Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank failed with enormous speed – so quickly that they could be textbook cases of classic bank runs, in which too many depositors withdraw their funds from a bank at the same time. The failures at SVB and Signature were two of the three biggest in US banking history, following […]Continue Reading
In February 2023, India’s government announced that the Geological Survey of India found around 5.9 million tonnes of lithium reserves in the Salal-Haimana region of Jammu and Kashmir. Lithium is sometimes termed “white gold” for its strategic importance as an essential metal in electrification. But India faces several challenges in capitalizing on its lithium deposits. […]Continue Reading
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed Japan to reevaluate its energy strategy once again. A sharp rise in the price of LNG, a lack of energy alternatives to reduce reliance on Russian LNG imports and Tokyo’s commitment to phasing out Russian coal and oil imports — all while ensuring Japan’s energy security — are making this reevaluation […]Continue Reading
Silicon Valley Bank, which catered to the tech industry for three decades, collapsed on March 10, 2023, after the Santa Clara, California-based lender suffered from an old-fashioned bank run. State regulators seized the bank and made the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation its receiver. SVB, as it’s known, was the biggest US lender to fail since […]Continue Reading
Rapidus, Japan’s advanced logic foundry venture company, has chosen Chitose as the site for a new 5 trillion yen (US$37 billion) semiconductor production facility, a move that will pull the island nation’s northernmost region more firmly into its technology supply chain. Chitose, located 40 kilometers and 30 minutes by express train southeast of Sapporo on […]Continue Reading
Companies in traditional sectors should take the initiative in the coming decade to go digital under Beijing’s newly announced “Digital China” plan or they will be eliminated, according to some academics. “Digitalization is now a global trend,” Zhang Jun, dean of economics at Fudan University, told guancha.cn in an interview. “Without it, China’s service and manufacturing sectors […]Continue Reading
New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh, the most prolific Canadian politician on TikTok with almost 900,000 followers, has deactivated his profile in a move that will undermine his party’s attempts to engage with young voters through social media. On February 27, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced TikTok would be banned on all federal-issued government devices […]Continue Reading
Economists have urged African countries to shift to low-cost manufacturing – the path that led countries such as Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan – to industrial prosperity. These East Asian economies – which recorded high growth rates of at least 7% between the 1950s and 1990s – are commonly referred to as the […]Continue Reading
TOKYO – Mitsubishi Electric has invested US$25 million in Astroscale, Japan’s leading space debris removal start-up, in a deal that will develop and manufacture satellite buses for Japan’s national security satellite constellations. The buses will be equipped with a standardized docking plate that other spacecraft can use when servicing, moving or deorbiting satellites that cannot […]Continue Reading