Tuesday, Oct 15th
Last update12:25:41 AM GMT
Economic Glance
Boeing plans to lay off about 10% of its workers in the coming months, about 17,000 people, as it continues to lose money and tries to deal with a strike that is crippling production of the company’s best-selling airline planes.
New CEO Kelly Ortberg told staff in a memo Friday that the job cuts will include executives, managers and employees.
The company has about 170,000 employees worldwide, many of them working in manufacturing facilities in the states of Washington and South Carolina.
American employers added 254,000 jobs last month in the penultimate jobs report before the US election, defying fears of a slowdown in the labor market.
Job creation unexpectedly accelerated in September, while the headline unemployment rate slipped to 4.1% from 4.2% in August.
Economists had forecast a non-farm payrolls reading of around 132,500 for September, after a cooler summer of employment growth.
The Federal Reserve lowered its key interest rate by a hefty half percentage point Wednesday, moving ahead with its first rate cut in four years and cheering markets that expected an emphatic move amid a softening jobs picture.
With the slowing labor market posing a growing risk to the economic expansion, Fed officials opted for a bold approach to launch a projected flurry of rate cuts now that inflation is easing.
But the central bank forecast a total of just a half point in additional cuts the rest of the year, signaling officials don’t believe the job market is collapsing.
Donald Trump’s tiny social media empire has seen its extraordinary stock market rally wiped out by a steep sell-off.
Shares in Trump Media & Technology Group, owner of Truth Social, closed below $17 on Wednesday, reversing all their gains since the company’s rapid rise took hold in January.
The former president has been prohibited by a lock-up agreement from starting to sell shares in the firm until late September. While his majority stake in the firm is still worth some $2bn on paper, its value has fallen dramatically from $4.9bn in March.
US corporations and their supporters in Washington are pushing aggressively to roll back tax policies they once endorsed, in a move that could return hundreds of billions of dollars to some of America’s biggest companies.
As congressional negotiators attempt to keep the government funded past 19 January, an agreement is emerging that ties the corporate tax breaks to an increase in support for vulnerable American families – an effort to make the deal more palatable for Democrats.
Just six years ago the Business Roundtable, a lobbying group for CEOs of large US firms, described the Trump-era Tax Cuts and Jobs Act as “a remarkable, once-in-a-generation opportunity”. Now, the group is leading “a six-figure advocacy campaign” to roll back parts of it, according to Politico, and threatening that failing to secure new tax cuts will lead to “slower job creation, smaller wage increases and lower overall economic growth”.
FTX Trading on Friday filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, capping a sudden and startling downfall for one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges.
Founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried also resigned from the company, which appointed John J. Ray III as its new chief executive. Bankman-Fried plans to stay with FTX while it works through the bankruptcy process, according to a statement on Friday.
"The immediate relief of Chapter 11 is appropriate to provide the FTX Group the opportunity to assess its situation and develop a process to maximize recoveries for stakeholders," Ray said in the statement.
The central bank is considered likely to raise its benchmark short-term rate by three-quarters of a percentage point, far larger than the typical quarter-point increase, to a range of 1.5% to 1.75%. It will also likely forecast additional large rate hikes through the end of the year.
A series of sizeable increases would heighten borrowing costs for consumers and businesses, likely leading to an economic slowdown and raising the risk of a recession. The Fed's previous rate hikes have already had the effect of raising mortgage rates roughly 2 percentage points since the year began and have slowed home sales.
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