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  • The IMF sees greater chance of a ‘soft landing’ for the global economy | CNN Business

    The IMF sees greater chance of a ‘soft landing’ for the global economy | CNN Business


    London
    CNN
     — 

    The International Monetary Fund (IMF) sees better odds that central banks will manage to tame inflation without tipping the global economy into recession, but it warned Tuesday that growth remained weak and patchy.

    The agency said it expected the world’s economy to expand by 3% this year, in line with its July forecast, as stronger-than-expected growth in the United States offset downgrades to the outlook for China and Europe. It shaved its forecast for growth in 2024 by 0.1 percentage point to 2.9%.

    Echoing comments made in July, the IMF highlighted the global economy’s resilience to the twin shocks of the pandemic and the Ukraine war while warning in its World Economic Outlook that risks remained “tilted to the downside.”

    “Despite war-disrupted energy and food markets and unprecedented monetary tightening to combat decades-high inflation, economic activity has slowed but not stalled,” IMF chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas wrote in a blog post. “The global economy is limping along,” he added.

    The IMF’s projections for growth and inflation are “increasingly consistent with a ‘soft landing’ scenario… especially in the United States,” Gourinchas continued.

    But he cautioned that growth “remains slow and uneven,” with weaker recoveries now expected in much of Europe and China compared with predictions just three months ago.

    The 20 countries using the euro are expected to grow collectively by 0.7% this year and 1.2% next year, a downgrade of 0.2 percentage points and 0.3 percentage points respectively from July.

    The IMF now expects China to grow 5% this year and 4.2% in 2024, down from 5.2% and 4.5% previously.

    “China’s property sector crisis could deepen, with global spillovers, particularly for commodity exporters,” it said in its report

    By contrast, the United States is expected to grow more strongly this year and next than expected in July. The IMF upgraded its growth forecasts for the US economy to 2.1% in 2023 and 1.5% in 2024 — an improvement of 0.3 percentage points and 0.5 percentage points respectively.

    “The strongest recovery among major economies has been in the United States,” the IMF said.

    The agency expects that inflation will continue to fall — bolstering the case for a “soft landing” in major economies — but it does not expect it to return to levels targeted by central banks until 2025 in most cases.

    The IMF revised its forecasts for global inflation to 6.9% this year and 5.8% next year — an increase of 0.1 percentage point and 0.6 percentage points respectively.

    Commodity prices pose a “serious risk” to the inflation outlook and could become more volatile amid climate and geopolitical shocks, Gourinchas wrote.

    “Food prices remain elevated and could be further disrupted by an escalation of the war in Ukraine, inflicting greater hardship on many low-income countries,” he added.

    Oil prices surged Monday on concerns that the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas could cause wider instability in the oil-producing Middle East. Brent crude prices were already elevated following supply cuts by major producers Saudi Arabia and Russia.

    High oil and natural gas prices, leading to skyrocketing energy costs, helped drive inflation to multi-decade highs in many economies in 2022. The latest jump in oil prices could cause a fresh bout of broader price rises.

    Bond investors are already on edge. They dumped government bonds last week in the expectation that the world’s major central banks would keep interest rates “higher for longer” to bring inflation down to their targets.

    The IMF also pointed to concerns that high inflation could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If households and businesses expect prices to go on rising, that could cause them to set higher prices for their goods and services, or demand higher wages.

    “Expectations that future inflation will rise could feed into current inflation rates, keeping them high,” the IMF noted.

    It added that the “expectations channel is critical to whether central banks can achieve the elusive ‘soft landing’ of bringing the inflation rate down to target without a recession.”

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  • Americans are feeling gloomier about the economy | CNN Business

    Americans are feeling gloomier about the economy | CNN Business


    Washington, DC
    CNN
     — 

    Americans aren’t feeling gloomy about higher gas prices just yet, but they’re still on edge about inflation and the economy’s direction — and concerns are starting to surface about the possibility of a government shutdown.

    Consumer sentiment tracked by the University of Michigan edged down in September from the prior month by 1.8 points, according to a preliminary reading released Friday.

    “Both short-run and long-run expectations for economic conditions improved modestly this month, though on net consumers remain relatively tentative about the trajectory of the economy,” said the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers Director Joanne Hsu in a release. “So far, few consumers mentioned the potential federal government shutdown, but if the shutdown comes to bear, consumer views on the economy will likely slide, as was the case just a few months ago when the debt ceiling neared a breach.”

    Sentiment could start to sour soon, since gas prices are highly visible indicators of inflation. Sentiment fell to its lowest level on record last summer when gas prices topped $5 a gallon and inflation reached a four-decade high. The national average for regular gasoline stood at $3.87 a gallon on Friday, according to AAA, seven cents higher than a week ago and 17 cents higher than the same day last year.

    Consumers’ expectation of inflation rates in the year ahead fell to a 3.1% rate in September, down from 3.5% in the prior month.

    This story is developing and will be updated.

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  • US retail spending picked up in August, mostly due to sales at gas stations | CNN Business

    US retail spending picked up in August, mostly due to sales at gas stations | CNN Business


    Washington, DC
    CNN
     — 

    US retail sales picked in August, boosted by higher gas prices, as spending on other items grew modestly.

    Retail sales, which are adjusted for seasonal swings but not inflation, rose 0.6% in August, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. That’s a slightly faster pace than July’s revised 0.5% gain, and marks the fifth straight month of growth. It’s also well above economists’ expectation of a 0.2% increase.

    The increase was largely driven by spending at gas stations, which advanced 5.2% last month. Spiking oil prices due to OPEC+ production cuts, strong demand and disruption from a deadly flood in Libya have pushed up prices at the pump. The national average for regular gasoline stood at $3.86 a gallon on Thursday, according to AAA, the highest level in 10 months.

    Excluding sales at gasoline stations, retail spending advanced a more modest 0.2% in August from July.

    Retail spending increased across most categories, including at restaurants and grocery stores. Sales of furniture and at specialty stores, such as those that sell sporting goods, fell 1% and 1.6% respectively. Online retail sales in August were flat, after jumping in July due to Amazon’s Prime Day promotional event.

    Despite 11 interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve intended to cool demand, the US economy remains on strong footing, with American shoppers still doling out cash thanks to a strong job market.

    But after a summer of robust spending, US consumers are facing a number of economic challenges for the rest of the year, including student loan payments restarting and tougher lending standards, which could curb spending.

    “Fitch continues to view the consumer as relatively healthy, supported by low unemployment and somewhat declining goods inflation,” wrote David Silverman, senior director at Fitch Ratings, in an analyst note.

    However, he noted that “headwinds are emerging,” citing lower consumer savings and the resumption of student loan payments this fall.

    The US economy is widely expected to cool in the coming months, and since consumer spending accounts for about two-thirds of economic output, a weaker economy typically means softer spending. But economists don’t expect a recession this year. While Goldman Sachs recently reduced its bet of a US recession, the Wall Street bank still thinks there’s a 15% chance of an economic downturn.

    The job market is also expected to slow, which would include softer wage growth. That could prompt US consumers to pump the brakes on their spending.

    “Slowing labor market gains and softer disposable income growth in the coming months will likely mean ongoing consumer cautiousness. And it appears that consumers are already taking note,” wrote Lydia Boussour, senior economist at EY-Parthenon, in a note.

    However, if inflation slows in the months ahead, that could actually maintain economic activity, since it means consumers have regained some spending power.

    “Encouragingly, falling inflation should continue to provide a tailwind to real wages and avoid a retrenchment in consumer activity,” Boussour added.

    The Consumer Price Index rose 3.7% in August from a year earlier, up from July’s 3.2% rise, largely due to higher gas prices. Economists still expect inflation to cool later in the year, despite volatile energy markets. But gasoline prices are highly visible indicators of inflation, so more pain at the pump could also dampen consumers’ attitudes.

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  • Hurricane Idalia and Labor Day could send gas prices and inflation higher | CNN Business

    Hurricane Idalia and Labor Day could send gas prices and inflation higher | CNN Business

    A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link.


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Labor Day — one of the busiest driving holidays in the US — is on the horizon, and so is Hurricane Idalia. That’s potentially bad news for gas prices.

    The storm, which is expected to make landfall in Florida as a Category 3 hurricane on Wednesday, could bring 100 mile-per-hour winds and flooding that extends hundreds of miles up the east coast. The impact could take gasoline refinery facilities offline and may limit some Gulf oil production and supplies. Plus, demand for gas is expected to surge as residents of the impacted areas evacuate.

    “Idalia… could pose risk to oil and gas output in the US Gulf,” wrote the Nasdaq Advisory Services Energy Team.

    The storm is expected to make landfall as drivers nationwide load into their vehicles for the Labor Day weekend, pushing up the demand for gasoline even further.

    All together it means the price of oil and gasoline could remain elevated well into the fall.

    Generally, summer demand for oil tends to wane in September, but so does supply as refineries shift from summer fuels to “oxygenated” winter fuels, said Louis Navellier of Navellier and Associates. Since the 1990s, the US has required manufacturers to include more oxygen in their gasoline during the colder months to prevent excessive carbon monoxide emissions.

    With the storm approaching, that trend may not play out.

    What’s happening: Gas prices are already at $3.82 a gallon. That’s the second highest price for this time of year since at least 2004, according to Bespoke Investment Group. (The only time the national average has been higher for this period was last summer, when prices hit $3.85 a gallon).

    Geopolitical tensions have been supporting high oil and gas prices for some time. Recently, increased crude oil imports into China, production cuts by Russia and Saudi Arabia and extreme heat set off a late-summer spike in gas prices. And the threat of powerful hurricanes could send them even higher.

    Analysts at Citigroup have warned that this hurricane season could seriously impact power supplies.

    “Two Category 3 or higher hurricanes landing on US shores could massively disrupt supplies for not weeks but months,” Citigroup analysts wrote in a note last week. In 2005, for example, gas prices surged by 46% between Memorial Day and Labor Day because of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina, according to Bespoke.

    What it means: The Federal Reserve and central banks around the world have been fighting to bring down stubbornly high inflation for more than a year. This week we’ll get some highly awaited economic data: The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, is due out on Thursday. But the task of inflation-busting is a lot more difficult when energy prices are high, and it’s even harder when they’re on the rise.

    The PCE price index uses a complicated formula to determine how much weight to give to energy prices each month, but they typically comprise a significant chunk of the headline inflation rate.

    “Crude oil price remains elevated, even after the surge at the start of the Russia-Ukraine War,” said Andrew Woods, oil analyst at Mintec, a market intelligence firm. “Energy prices have been a major contributor to persistently high inflation in the US, so the crude oil price will remain a watch-out factor for future inflation.”

    High oil and gas prices are one of the largest contributing factors to inflation. That’s bad news for drivers but tends to be great for the energy industry, as oil prices and energy stocks are closely interlinked.

    Energy stocks were trading higher on Monday. The S&P 500 energy sector was up around 0.75%. Exxon Mobil (XOM) was 0.85% higher, BP (BP) was up 1.36% and Chevron (CVX) was up 0.75%.

    OpenAI, will release a version of its popular ChatGPT tool made specifically for businesses, the company announced on Monday.

    OpenAI unveiled the new service, dubbed “ChatGPT Enterprise,” in a company blog post and said it will be available to business clients for purchase immediately.

    The new offering, reports my colleague Catherine Thorbecke, promises to provide “enterprise-grade security and privacy” combined with “the most powerful version of ChatGPT yet” for businesses looking to jump on the generative AI bandwagon.

    “We believe AI can assist and elevate every aspect of our working lives and make teams more creative and productive,” the blog post said. “Today marks another step towards an AI assistant for work that helps with any task, is customized for your organization, and that protects your company data.”

    Fintech startup Block, cosmetics giant Estee Lauder and professional services firm PwC have already signed on as customers.

    The highly-anticipated announcement from OpenAI comes as the company says employees from over 80% of Fortune 500 companies have already begun using ChatGPT since it launched publicly late last year, according to its analysis of accounts associated with corporate email domains.

    A multitude of leading newsrooms, meanwhile, have recently injected code into their websites that blocks OpenAI’s web crawler, GPTBot, from scanning their platforms for content. CNN’s Reliable Sources has found that CNN, The New York Times, Reuters, Disney, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Axios, Insider, ABC News, ESPN, and the Gothamist, among others have taken the step to shield themselves.

    American Airlines just got smacked with the largest-ever fine for keeping passengers waiting on the tarmac during multi-hour delays.

    The Department of Transportation is levying the $4.1 million fine, “the largest civil penalty that the Department has ever assessed” it said in a statement, for lengthy tarmac delays of 43 flights that impacted more than 5,800 passengers. The flights occurred between 2018 and 2021, reports CNN’s Gregory Wallace.

    In the longest of the delays, passengers sat aboard a plane in Texas in August 2020 for six hours and three minutes. The 105-passenger flight had landed after being diverted from the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport due to severe weather, with the DOT alleging that “American (AAL) lacked sufficient resources to appropriately handle several of these flights once they landed.”

    Federal rules set the maximum time that passengers can be held without the opportunity to get off prior to takeoff or after landing, at three hours for domestic flights and four hours for international flights. Current rules also require airlines provide passengers water and a snack.

    American told CNN the delays all resulted from “exceptional weather events” and “represent a very small number of the 7.7 million flights during this time period.”

    The company also said it has invested in technology to better handle flights in severe weather and reduce the congestion at airports.

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  • Inflation may be cooling — but drivers can’t seem to catch a break | CNN Business

    Inflation may be cooling — but drivers can’t seem to catch a break | CNN Business


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    If you’re sitting in rush-hour traffic in Arlington, Virginia, there’s a good chance you’ll spot Hunter Scott in his helmet and elbow pads scooting right past you on an adjacent path.

    For the past year, Scott, a 38-year-old Navy pilot doing work for the government until his next deployment, has been commuting 12 miles from his home in Washington, DC, via motorized scooter. When it’s raining or snowing, he throws on his Navy-issued high-tech weather gear, if necessary.

    Even though the second-hand scooter he bought from Craigslist for $500 can only go up to 20 miles an hour, he said it’s saving him a lot of time compared to when he drove to work. Now he doesn’t have to walk a mile from the nearest parking lot to his office or wait for the Metro, which can often be unreliable, Scott said. And it means he can spend more time with his one-year-old daughter.

    It is also saving him a lot of money at a time when just about every car-related cost is more expensive.

    Scott said he got the idea to scoot to work last year when gas prices were near record highs and inflation rose to a 40-year record high. “The cost of living was just getting more expensive,” Scott told CNN. “We weren’t willing to make sacrifices on the quality of food that we buy.”

    Scott estimates he and his wife, who also commutes via scooter, are saving $4,500 this year from not driving to work. That’s according to calculations he made on an Excel spreadsheet that factors in savings from not having to repair their cars as much, the auto insurance reductions they get from driving less and the reduced fuel use.

    Even though gas prices have been rising lately, they’re still significantly lower than a year ago. But other costs associated with car ownership are continuing to skyrocket. In fact, if Scott and his wife switched back to driving today they’d likely find that they’re saving well above the $4,500 he calculated.

    It will cost you 19.5% more to repair your car now than it did a year ago, according to July’s Consumer Price Index report, released Thursday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Another hefty expense is car insurance, up 17.8% from a year ago. Car repairs and car insurance were the second- and third-largest annual price increases, respectively, tracked by the CPI.

    On top of that, car maintenance and servicing, body work, tires, parts and equipment and even state registration and licensing fees are all costing drivers more.

    Pam Franks, a retired Louisiana state Medicaid analyst, balked when she got a notice from State Farm informing her that her six-month policy for her 2017 Toyota Camry would increase by 41% to $408 this August.

    “It’s aggravating when I haven’t had any wrecks or tickets,” Franks, who lives in Pineville, Louisiana, told CNN.

    Pam Franks, a resident of Pineville, Louisiana, said her car insurance policy rate increased by 41%, despite the fact that she has not had any recent collisions or tickets.

    She said she tried shopping around for better rates, but couldn’t find anything cheaper since she bundles her auto insurance with her home insurance. Switching to another auto insurance policy would have pushed up the cost of her home insurance, she said.

    She’s one of many Louisiana drivers seeing their rates increase after the state’s Department of Insurance signed off on State Farm’s 17% average rate hike across all policies earlier this month.

    “Inflationary pressures and supply chain issues, along with higher claim costs continue to drive our rate changes in Louisiana and beyond,” Roszell Gadson, a State Farm spokesperson, told CNN. “We continue to adjust to these trends to make sure we are matching price to risk.”

    One of the reasons car repair costs are up is that Americans aren’t replacing their older vehicles, said Kristin Brocoff, a spokeswoman spokesperson for CarMD, a vehicle diagnostics provider.

    The average age of cars in use in the United States hit an all-time high of 12.5 years last year, according to an analysis from S&P Global Mobility of 284 million cars.

    That’s partly because car production still hasn’t caught up with pent-up demand from the pandemic, resulting in more expensive new cars.

    But trying to extend your car’s life span can add up.

    Model year 2007 cars were the most likely to need a repair related to the “check engine light” message in the past year, according to CarMD’s April Vehicle Health Index report that analyzed 17.7 million check-engine light readings from model year 1996 to 2022 vehicles driven last year. Some of the most common check-engine light repair issues include replacing catalytic converters, oxygen sensors and ignition coil and spark plugs, according to CarMD’s report.

    The average car repair cost $403.71 last year, a 2.8% uptick from 2021 and a record high since CarMD began reporting on this in 2009. CarMD estimates average repair costs using annual industry data on the cost of car parts, labor rates and the average amount of time required to complete a repair.

    On the labor side, rates were down by 0.5% from last year. Car parts were up 5% from a year ago, which pushed up overall repair costs.

    Paul Baxter, a mechanic who owns Bullet Proof Off-Road & Auto, a car repair shop in Mesa, Arizona, said he’s paying 30% more for car parts compared to before the pandemic. That’s a result of persistent supply chain issues and higher shipping costs, he said.

    He said he has no bargaining power and has to accept the price manufacturers are charging for parts. To keep the lights on, he marks up car parts he sells to customers by 20% to 30%, he told CNN.

    Baxter hasn’t had an issue finding and retaining qualified mechanics. Still, he raised his three workers’ wages by $5 an hour to $25 an hour over the past few years to keep up with the higher cost of living.

    Paul Baxter, who opened his auto shop in 2016, has had to raise prices due to the rising cost of car parts.

    Baxter said the industry publications he subscribes to that are critical for him to learn how to repair the newest car models raised their prices. Even the company from which he purchases water coolers so customers can have a drink in the waiting room now charges more.

    That’s why he recently charged $2,300 to replace a customer’s air conditioning. A few years ago he said he would have charged $1,500 for the same exact job.

    Customers constantly tell him he’s charging too much, said Baxter, who’s been repairing cars professionally since 2008 before opening his shop in 2016. “People don’t understand the back end of running an auto shop and the expenses I take on to keep it open,” he told CNN.

    When he explains how he arrives at an estimate, customers are more sympathetic, he said.

    Ted Canty, a 67-year-old retired FedEx operations manager living in Wimauma, Florida, said he is at his wits end with car repairs. A year ago, he paid $1,950 to replace the water pump in his 2017 Volkswagen Golf. That’s around what his monthly Social Security check is, he said.

    That meant Canty and his wife, who is also retired, had to cut back on dining out and seeing movies so they could save more money for future car repairs.

    Ted Canty, a retired resident of Wimauma, Florida, tries to avoid driving after paying almost $2,000 for a car repair and seeing his car insurance rates increase.

    When his anti-lock braking system recently went out, though, he knew he couldn’t push it off for too long. In the past, he’s almost always gone to Volkswagen service centers for repairs because he says he doesn’t feel comfortable getting it done at shops that aren’t as familiar with his car. But the Volkswagen service center wanted to charge him $525 to repair it, he said, leading him to shop around for better rates at other places. In the end, he paid a quarter of what Volkswagen was charging.

    Canty is worried about the next car repair he’ll inevitably need, especially because he and his wife have limited sources of income outside of their Social Security checks and his pension.

    “We could be driving more because we’re retired and want to go places. But we cut it back to keep the miles off the car,” he told CNN.

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  • US wholesale inflation rose more than expected in July | CNN Business

    US wholesale inflation rose more than expected in July | CNN Business


    Minneapolis
    CNN
     — 

    US wholesale inflation rose more than expected in July, reversing a yearlong cooling trend, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.

    The Producer Price Index, which tracks the average change in prices that businesses pay to suppliers, rose 0.8% annually. That’s above June’s upwardly revised increase of 0.2% and higher than expectations for a 0.7% gain, according to consensus estimates on Refinitiv.

    Producer price hikes increased 0.3% from June to July, the highest monthly increase since January.

    PPI is a closely watched inflation gauge since it captures average price shifts before they reach consumers, and is a proxy for potential price changes in stores.

    Services and demand for services were the primary culprits behind the lift higher for producer prices, said Kurt Rankin, senior economist for PNC Financial Services. Services prices rose 0.5% from June, the highest monthly increase since March 2022 for the category, BLS data shows.

    “The inflation story now, be it for producers or consumers, is demand,” he told CNN. “Mainly that’s consumers still spending money on services.”

    The food index, which had declined for three straight months, rose 0.5% in July, suggesting a 6.3% annualized pace of inflation, he said.

    “Consumers continue to go out and spend money,” Rankin said. “And as long as consumers are spending money, that’s going to create demand from producers, so that’s going to drive up their costs for their raw materials, for their transportation needs, etc.”

    “And they’re going to pass those prices on to consumers,” he added.

    That’s an unpleasant cycle.

    “The numbers over the past six months have been much more encouraging, but it’s a reminder that the Federal Reserve has an eye toward the possibility of inflation flaring up again,” he said.

    The report comes just one day after the Consumer Price Index showed that prices rose 3.2% annually in July. That increase, which was below the 3.3% economists were anticipating, was largely driven by year-over-year comparisons to a softer inflation number the year before.

    Similar base effects played their role in the headline PPI increase as well, noted Rankin.

    The tick upward to 0.8% doesn’t tell the whole story, because the index decreased in five of the previous seven months. Annualizing the 0.3% monthly gain, however, would put the PPI rate at about 3.6% and core at 3.8%, he said.

    “So the July number does suggest that there’s still some producer cost pressures,” he said.

    When stripping out the more volatile categories of food and energy, core PPI rose 2.4% annually in July. That’s in line with what was seen in June but a tick above economists’ expectations for a slight cooling.

    On a month-to-month basis, core PPI increased 0.3%, also the highest monthly gain since January.

    “The underlying trends show that PPI inflation is reverting to its pre-pandemic run rate, though progress is likely to be slower in [the second half of 2023] than [the first half],” Oxford Economics economists Matthew Martin and Oren Klachkin wrote Friday in a note. “While these data will comfort Fed officials, policymakers will likely maintain a hawkish tone and keep a close eye on whether last month’s jump in services prices persists in the months ahead.”

    US stock futures tumbled after the report was released, as the hotter-than-expected data fueled concerns that the Fed could continue to hike rates in order to rein in inflation. The Dow has since pared its losses and is back in the green.

    One month does not make a trend, and this result alone should not trigger a September increase from the Fed, but it certainly could heighten concerns, Rankin said.

    “One spark could reignite this,” he said. “We’re seeing energy prices, oil prices, rising over the past few weeks. Any flareup in oil prices goes straight through to not only manufacturing costs, but transportation of goods to market, even transportation of food to restaurants. So even services, leisure and hospitality get hit when energy prices spike, so that possibility is always there.”

    The PPI’s energy index, which increased 0.7% in June, showed that prices were flat for July.

    “So the fact that energy prices were not a contributor tho this month’s reading makes this number jumping a bit a stark reminder that the Federal Reserve’s fight against inflation and their rhetoric regarding that fight is going to remain hawkish in the near term.”

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  • Key US inflation gauge cooled last month to the lowest level in nearly three years | CNN Business

    Key US inflation gauge cooled last month to the lowest level in nearly three years | CNN Business


    Minneapolis
    CNN
     — 

    Wholesale inflation continued its yearlong slowdown last month, rising by just 0.1% for the 12 months ended in June, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Producer Price Index released Thursday.

    The PPI index, a key inflation gauge that tracks the average change in prices that businesses pay to suppliers, has cooled significantly since peaking at 11.2% in June 2022 and has now declined for 12 consecutive months. Annual producer price inflation is at its lowest level since August 2020, BLS data shows.

    Economists were expecting an annual increase of 0.4%, according to Refinitiv.

    On a monthly basis, prices increased by 0.1%.

    Goods prices held steady for the month, after tumbling 1.6% in May, according to the BLS report. As such, prices for services — which increased 0.2% from May — were the primary driver behind June’s slight increase.

    PPI is a closely watched inflation gauge since it captures average price shifts before they reach consumers and is a proxy for potential price changes in stores.

    While the PPI doesn’t directly correlate into exactly what will come from the following month’s Consumer Price Index — a major inflation gauge that tracks price shifts for a basket of goods and services — it provides a look at whole economy inflation, minus rents, said Alex Pelle, Mizuho Securities US economist.

    And that picture right now is looking pretty sharp.

    “It’s definitely a good month for inflation,” Pelle told CNN. “You saw that in CPI, and now you’re seeing it in PPI.”

    In June, inflation as measured by the CPI cooled to 3% annually, its lowest rate since March 2021, the BLS reported Wednesday.

    Both the CPI and PPI have declined monthly since their peaks in June 2022, when record-high energy and gas prices fueled the spikes to 9.1% and 11.2%, respectively.

    As such, the base effects of year-over-year comparisons are playing a part in the indexes’ sharp retreats.

    Still, underlying inflation is showing a cooling trend as well — albeit more muted.

    In the case of PPI, when stripping out the more volatile categories of food and energy, this “core” index rose 2.4% for the 12 months ended in June. That’s a step back from the 2.6% increase seen in May and economists’ expectations of 2.6%.

    Core PPI, which ticked up 0.1% on a monthly basis, is at its lowest annual level since February 2021.

    Inflation is looking a heck of a lot better than last year, when the Federal Reserve embarked on a campaign to combat price hikes with rate hikes, but economists don’t expect the latest CPI and PPI prints will dissuade central bankers from giving another crank to tighten monetary policy.

    Starting in March 2022, the central bank rolled out 10 consecutive interest rate hikes to tame inflation, finally hitting pause last month. The Fed is widely expected to raise rates by another quarter point when it meets later this month.

    “[The June data] means that the doves are going to have a little bit better of an argument to hold sooner rather than later, so that does reduce the probability of a second hike this year,” Pelle said, noting the commonly used terms to describe Fed members’ differing monetary policy approaches.

    Doves tend to favor looser monetary policy and issues like low unemployment over low inflation, while hawks favor robust rate hikes and keeping inflation low above all else.

    But just how long a hold could last is another matter, said Pelle.

    The job market is cooling from a scorching state, but it remains historically hot and tight. Considering ongoing demographic shifts (including the massive Baby Boomer generation aging out of the workforce), that tightness could continue, Pelle said.

    “Do we really need to be cutting rates if you have GDP running around trend and the labor market still very tight,” he said. “Inflation is coming down, but the economy is maybe growing a little bit into these higher rate levels. So the hold could be longer than people expect. But we might have some of the sting out on getting even higher.”

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  • US oil prices sink below $70 on debt ceiling jitters and Russia-Saudi tensions | CNN Business

    US oil prices sink below $70 on debt ceiling jitters and Russia-Saudi tensions | CNN Business


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    US oil prices dropped below $70 a barrel Tuesday on concerns about whether the debt ceiling deal will make it through Congress and on reports of tensions between Saudi Arabia and Russia ahead of a key OPEC+ meeting.

    Crude slumped 4.4% to close at $69.46 a barrel, the lowest settlement price in nearly four weeks.

    The selloff marks one of the worst days of the year for the oil market and could help keep a lid on pump prices. The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline is down by about $1 from a year ago.

    Oil market veterans blamed Tuesday’s decline in part on worries about whether conservatives in the House of Representatives will try to block the bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling forged over the weekend by President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

    “It’s not a layup that the debt deal is going to get done. That’s spooking the market, no doubt about that,” said Robert Yawger, vice president of energy futures at Mizuho Securities.

    Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, also pointed to “growing skepticism” about the debt ceiling agreement and the risk that a failure to raise the borrowing limit sets off a “deep recession” that curbs demand for oil.

    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned the government will not have enough funds to meet all of the nation’s obligations if Congress does not address the debt ceiling by June 5.

    Brent crude, the world benchmark, dropped by more than 4%, slipping below $74 a barrel.

    Meanwhile, there are new questions about the relationship between OPEC leader Saudi Arabia and Russia ahead of this weekend’s meeting of oil producers in Vienna.

    Saudi Arabia has expressed anger to Russia for failing to follow through on Moscow’s promise to cut production in response to Western sanctions, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources. The apparent tensions raises uncertainty about the status of OPEC+, the alliance between OPEC members like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait and non-OPEC nations led by Russia.

    “There is starting to be chatter about the Russian and Saudis not being the best of friends,” said Yawger.

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  • European Union upgrades outlook for economy as energy prices retreat | CNN Business

    European Union upgrades outlook for economy as energy prices retreat | CNN Business


    London
    CNN
     — 

    Questions swirl about the strength of China’s recovery from Covid lockdowns, and there’s talk of recession in the United States. Yet Europe’s economic prospects have brightened in recent months, according to the European Commission.

    The EU’s executive arm on Monday upgraded its growth outlook for 2023 and 2024. It now expects the EU economy to expand 1% this year, up from an estimate of 0.8% in February. Growth next year is pegged at 1.7%, an upward revision of 0.1 percentage points.

    The improved forecast for Europe — which narrowly dodged a recession this winter — still represents a marked slowdown on last year, when the bloc’s economy grew 3.5%.

    But it reflects sharply lower energy prices, which are reducing costs for businesses and easing the strain on households. A strong job market and ongoing government stimulus are also providing a lift.

    Even so, the Commission acknowledged that higher borrowing costs aimed at taming rising prices will weigh on growth in the months to come. The European Central Bank raised interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point this month, the smallest increase since it started hiking in July, but hinted at further rate hikes to come given stubbornly high inflation.

    “The key factors underpinning this forecast go in opposite directions: on the one hand, declining energy prices and a resilient labor market and, on the other hand, tightening financial conditions,” Paolo Gentiloni, the European Commission’s economy minister, said at a press conference.

    “Heightened risk perception” among banks after recent tumult in the sector is making it harder to access credit, while rising rates are eating into loan demand, Gentiloni noted.

    Significant divergence is also expected among countries in the European Union. Growth in Germany, the bloc’s biggest economy, is expected to slow sharply to 0.2% in 2023. Meanwhile, Italy’s output could increase by 1.2%, and Portugal’s economy could expand by 2.4%.

    Separately, industrial production data for Europe published Monday showed signs of weakness. Production fell 4.1% in March among the 20 countries that use the euro, worse than economists had expected.

    “With the tailwinds from lower energy prices and easing semiconductor shortages apparently exhausted and the economy struggling with tighter monetary policy, we expect industrial output to contract slightly over the rest of the year,” Andrew Kenningham, chief Europe economist at Capital Economics, said in a note to clients.

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  • What the OPEC cuts mean for Putin and Russia | CNN Business

    What the OPEC cuts mean for Putin and Russia | CNN Business

    A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link.


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Some of the world’s largest oil exporters shocked markets over the weekend by announcing that they would cut oil production by more than 1.6 million barrels a day.

    OPEC+, an alliance between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and a group of non-OPEC oil-producing countries, including Russia, Mexico, and Kazakhstan, said on Sunday that the cuts would start in May, running through the end of the year. The news sent both Brent crude futures — the global oil benchmark — and WTI — the US benchmark — up about 6% in trading Monday.

    OPEC+ was formed in 2016 to coordinate and regulate oil production and stabilize global oil prices. Its members produce about 40% of the world’s crude oil and have a significant impact on the global economy.

    What it means for Putin: OPEC+’s decision to cut oil production could have big implications for Russia.

    After Russia invaded Ukraine last year, the United States and United Kingdom immediately stopped purchasing oil from the country. The European Union also stopped importing Russian oil that was sent by sea.

    Members of the G7 — an organization of leaders from some of the world’s largest economies: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States — have also imposed a price cap of $60 per barrel on oil exported by Russia, keeping the country’s revenues artificially low. If oil prices continue to rise, some analysts have speculated that the US and other western nations may have to loosen that price cap.

    US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Monday that the changes could lead to reassessing the price cap — though not yet. “Of course, that’s something that, if we’ve decided that it’s appropriate to revisit, could be changed, but I don’t see that that’s appropriate at this time,” she told reporters.

    “I don’t know that this is significant enough to have any impact on the appropriate level of the price cap,” she added.

    Russia also recently announced that it would lower its oil production by 500,000 barrels per day until the end of this year.

    Just last week Putin admitted that western sanctions could deal a blow to Russia’s economy.

    “The illegitimate restrictions imposed on the Russian economy may indeed have a negative impact on it in the medium term,” Putin said in televised remarks Wednesday reported by state news agency TASS.

    Putin said Russia’s economy had been growing since July, thanks in part to stronger ties with “countries of the East and South,” likely referring to China and some African countries.

    Russia, China and Saudi Arabia: The OPEC+ announcement came as a surprise this week. The group had already announced it would cut two million barrels a day in October of 2022 and Saudi Arabia previously said its production quotas would stay the same through the end of the year.

    “The move to reduce supply is fairly odd,” wrote Warren Patterson, head of commodities strategy at ING in a note Monday.

    “Oil prices have partly recovered from the turmoil seen in financial markets following developments in the banking sector,” he wrote. “Meanwhile, oil fundamentals are expected to tighten as we move through the year. Prior to these cuts, we were already expecting the oil market to see a fairly sizable deficit over the second half or 2023. Clearly, this will be even larger now.”

    Saudi Arabia stated that the cut is a “precautionary measure aimed at supporting the stability of the oil market,” but Patterson says it will likely “lead to further volatility in the market,” later this year as less available oil will add to inflationary feats.

    Still, the changes signal shifting global alliances with Russia, China and Saudi Arabia around oil prices, said analysts at ClearView Energy Partners. Higher-priced oil could help Russia pay for its war on Ukraine and also boosts revenue in Saudi Arabia.

    The White House, meanwhile, has spoken out against OPEC’s decision. “We don’t think cuts are advisable at this moment given market uncertainty – and we’ve made that clear,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Monday.

    – CNN’s Paul LeBlanc and Hanna Ziady contributed to this report

    The crisis triggered by the recent collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank is not over yet and will ripple through the economy for years to come, said JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on Tuesday.

    In his closely watched annual letter to shareholders, the chief executive of the largest bank in the United States outlined the extensive damage the financial system meltdown had on all banks and urged lawmakers to think carefully before responding with regulatory policy.

    “These failures were not good for banks of any size,” wrote Dimon, responding to reports that large financial institution benefited greatly from the collapse of SVB and Signature Bank as wary customers sought safety by moving billions of dollars worth of money to big banks.

    In a note last month, Wells Fargo banking analyst Mike Mayo wrote “Goliath is winning.” JPMorgan in particular, he said, was benefiting from more deposits “in these less certain times.”

    “Any crisis that damages Americans’ trust in their banks damages all banks – a fact that was known even before this crisis,” said Dimon. “While it is true that this bank crisis ‘benefited’ larger banks due to the inflow of deposits they received from smaller institutions, the notion that this meltdown was good for them in any way is absurd.”

    The failures of SVB and Signature Bank, he argued, had little to do with banks bypassing regulations and that SVB’s high Interest rate exposure and large amount of uninsured deposits were already well-known to both regulators and to the marketplace at large.

    Current regulations, Dimon argued, could actually lull banks into complacency without actually addressing real system-wide banking issues. Abiding by these regulations, he wrote, has just “become an enormous, mind-numbingly complex task about crossing t’s and dotting i’s.”

    And while regulatory change will be a likely outcome of the recent banking crisis, Dimon argued that, “it is extremely important that we avoid knee-jerk, whack-a-mole or politically motivated responses that often result in achieving the opposite of what people intended.” Regulations, he said, are often put in place in one part of the framework but have adverse effects on other areas and just make things more complicated.

    The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has said it will propose new rule changes in May, while the Federal Reserve is currently conducting an internal review to assess what changes should be made. Lawmakers in Congress, like Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, have suggested that new legislation meant to regulate banks is in the works.

    But, wrote Dimon, “the debate should not always be about more or less regulation but about what mix of regulations will keep America’s banking system the best in the world.”

    Dimon’s letter to shareholders touched on a number of pressing issues, including climate change. “The window for action to avert the costliest impacts of global climate change is closing,” he wrote, expressing his frustration with slow growth in clean energy technology investments.

    “Permitting reforms are desperately needed to allow investment to be done in any kind of timely way,” he wrote.

    One way to do that? “We may even need to evoke eminent domain,” he suggested. “We simply are not getting the adequate investments fast enough for grid, solar, wind and pipeline initiatives.”

    Eminent domain is the government’s power to take private property for public use, so long as fair compensation is provided to the property owner.

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  • Oil prices surge after OPEC+ producers announce surprise cuts | CNN Business

    Oil prices surge after OPEC+ producers announce surprise cuts | CNN Business


    Hong Kong/Atlanta
    CNN
     — 

    Oil prices spiked during Asian trade Monday after OPEC+ producers said they would cut production in a surprise move.

    Brent crude, the global benchmark, jumped 4.8% to $83.73 a barrel, while WTI, the US benchmark, rose 4.9% to $79.36.

    Rising oil prices could mean inflation remains higher for longer, adding pressure to a hot-button issue for consumers around the world.

    On Sunday, Saudi Arabia announced that it would start “a voluntary reduction” in its production of crude oil, alongside other members or allies of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

    The cuts will start in May and last through the end of the year, an official with the Saudi Ministry of Energy was quoted as saying by Saudi state-run news agency SPA.

    The reductions are on top of those announced by OPEC+ in October, according to SPA.

    That month, oil producers had agreed to slash output by 2 million barrels a day, the largest cut since the start of the pandemic and equivalent to about 2% of global oil demand.

    Saudi Arabia now says it will cut oil production by another half a million barrels a day.

    Meanwhile, Iraq will slash production by 200,000 barrels per day, and the United Arab Emirates will decrease output by 144,000 barrels per day.

    Kuwait, Algeria and Oman will also lower production by 128,000, 48,000 and 40,000 barrels per day, respectively.

    In a Sunday note, Goldman Sachs analysts said the move was unexpected but “consistent with the new OPEC+ doctrine to act pre-emptively because they can without significant losses in market share.”

    The collective output cut by the nine members of OPEC+ totals 1.66 million barrels per day, said the analysts, who hiked their price forecast for Brent this year to $95 per barrel.

    Saudi Arabia’s energy ministry described its latest reduction as a precautionary measure aimed at supporting the stability of the oil markets, according to SPA.

    The White House pushed back on that notion — as well as the latest cuts by OPEC+.

    “We don’t think cuts are advisable at this moment given market uncertainty — and we’ve made that clear,” a spokesperson for the National Security Council said. “We’re focused on prices for American consumers, not barrels.”

    In October, OPEC+’s decision to cut production had already rankled the White House.

    US President Joe Biden pledged at the time that Saudi Arabia would suffer “consequences.” But so far, his administration appears to have back off on its vows to punish the Middle East kingdom.

    Russia, a member of OPEC+, also said Sunday that it would extend a voluntary reduction of 500,000 barrels per day until the end of 2023. The move was announced by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, as cited by state-run news agency TASS.

    That decision was less surprising. Goldman analysts said they had forecast the cut would last into the second half of the year.

    — CNN’s Hanna Ziady and Arlette Saenz contributed to this report.

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  • Why UK supermarkets are rationing fruit and vegetables | CNN Business

    Why UK supermarkets are rationing fruit and vegetables | CNN Business


    London
    CNN
     — 

    Major UK supermarkets have started rationing the sale of some staple fruits and salad vegetables, blaming poor weather that has depressed production in Spain and north Africa.

    Tesco

    (TSCDF)    , the UK’s biggest supermarket, confirmed to CNN Wednesday that it had temporarily capped the number of packs of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers to three per customer.

    Asda told CNN that it was temporarily limiting purchases of some items to three packs per customer. These include tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and lettuce.

    “Like other supermarkets, we are experiencing sourcing challenges on some products that are grown in southern Spain and north Africa,” an Asda spokesperson said.

    Morrisons told CNN that it had imposed a cap of two packs per customer on tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and lettuce. Aldi, a German discount grocery chain, announced Wednesday that it would also introduce a limit of three packs per person on peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes in its UK stores.

    Asda, Morrisons and Aldi are Britain’s third-, fourth- and fifth-biggest supermarket chains respectively, according to market share data from Kantar.

    Sainsbury’s

    (JSAIY)    , the United Kingdom’s second-largest food retailer, told CNN it had no plans to ration the sale of fruit and vegetables.

    The rationing is another knock for British shoppers already grappling with record grocery price rises, which have inflamed the worst cost-of-living crisis in decades.

    In the four weeks to January 22, food price inflation hit 16.7%, according to Kantar. That’s its highest level since the data company started tracking the indicator in 2008.

    “The more we face shortages, the more it will drive food inflation,” Minette Batters, president of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), which represents more than 46,000 farming and growing businesses, told the BBC Wednesday.

    A spokesperson for the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said in a statement: “We understand public concerns around the supply of fresh vegetables. However, the UK has a highly resilient food supply chain and is well-equipped to deal with disruption.”

    So what explains the empty shelves?

    Asda and Morrisons pointed the finger at poor weather in key growing regions as the main driver of the shortages.

    Andrew Woods, a sub-editor at Mintec, a commodities data company, told CNN that hotter-than-average weather in Spain and Morocco last fall, combined with a cold snap over the past two weeks, had hit production.

    The tomato crop in southern Spain is 20% smaller than a year ago, he said.

    The poorer harvests are problematic for UK retailers, reliant as they are on imports to fill their stocks at this time of year.

    According to the British Retail Consortium (BRC), a trade group, UK supermarkets import 95% of their tomatoes and 90% of their lettuce in December, and typically import the same proportions in March.

    James Bailey, executive director of supermarket Waitrose, told LBC radio Monday that snow and hail in Spain, as well as hail in parts of north Africa, had “wip[ed] out a large proportion” of key crops.

    The high-end supermarket chain told CNN that it was “monitoring the situation” but had no plans to introduce rationing.

    “Give it about [two weeks] and the other growing seasons in other parts of the world will have caught up and we should be able to get that supply back in,” Bailey added.

    The BRC also says it expects the current disruption to last a few weeks before home-grown produce arrives to fill the gaps on UK store shelves.

    “Supermarkets are adept at managing supply chain issues and are working with farmers to ensure that customers are able to access a wide range of fresh produce,” Andrew Opie, the BRC’s director of food and sustainability, told CNN.

    High input costs have contributed to the shortages of fruit and vegetables, the NFU says, as well as reduced production across the farming sector more broadly.

    “Labor shortages and soaring energy prices are hitting the poultry industry, already reeling from avian influenza, as well as horticultural businesses and pig farms,” Batters said in a speech Tuesday.

    The price of natural gas — a key input for nitrogen-based fertilizers — shot up following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year. Though gas prices have fallen back in recent weeks, they are still triple their historical average, while fertilizer costs are up 169% since 2019, Batters noted.

    Empty fruit and vegetable shelves at an Asda store in London on February 21, 2023.

    According to the NFU, the production of tomatoes and cucumbers is expected to fall to the lowest levels since the union started keeping records in 1985, on the back of crippling input costs.

    Woods at Mintec said processing and storing vegetables, such as tomatoes, was “energy intensive.”

    Europe, too, has wrestled with many of the same problems in recent months.

    “Across Europe, supplies [of tomatoes] are reportedly tight, and growers continue to grapple with higher fertilizer, energy and labor costs,” Mintec said in a note.

    Yet, currently, there are few indications — in media reports or on social media — that retailers in other countries are rationing sales.

    But Defra said in its statement Wednesday that “similar disruption is also being seen in other countries,” and that it was helping UK growers by expanding a visa scheme for seasonal workers to fill labor gaps.

    UK supermarkets have not cited Brexit as a reason for the supply crunch. But the NFU and some campaign groups argue that it has worsened labor shortages.

    Direct subsidy payments to UK farmers from the European Union are being phased out, which has increased uncertainty for farmers, Batters said in her speech. The United Kingdom plans to fully implement its own subsidy scheme by 2024.

    — Julia Horowitz contributed reporting.

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  • Russia’s economy is hurting despite Putin’s bluster | CNN Business

    Russia’s economy is hurting despite Putin’s bluster | CNN Business


    London
    CNN
     — 

    When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine one year ago, Western countries hit back with unprecedented sanctions to punish Moscow and pile pressure on President Vladimir Putin. The aim: to deal an economic blow so severe that Putin would reconsider his brutal war.

    Russia’s economy did weaken as a result. But it also showed surprising resilience. As demand for Russian oil fell in Europe, Moscow redirected its barrels to Asia. The country’s central bank staved off a currency crisis with aggressive capital controls and interest rate hikes. Military expenditure supported the industrial sector, while the scramble to replace Western equipment and technology lifted investment.

    “The Russian economy and system of government have turned out to be much stronger than the West believed,” Putin said in a speech to Russia’s parliament Tuesday.

    Yet cracks are starting to show and they will widen over the next 12 months. The European Union — which spent more than $100 billion on Russian fossil fuels in 2021 — has made huge strides in phasing out purchases. The bloc, which dramatically reduced its dependence on Russian natural gas last year, officially banned most imports of Russian crude oil by sea in December. It enacted a similar block on refined oil products this month.

    Those measures are already straining Russia’s finances as it struggles to find replacement customers. The government reported a budget deficit of about 1,761 billion rubles ($23.5 billion) for January. Expenditure jumped 59% year-over-year, while revenue plunged 35%. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak announced that Russia would cut oil production by about 5% starting in March.

    “The era of windfall profits from the oil and gas market for Russia is over,” Janis Kluge, an expert on Russia’s economy at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told CNN.

    Meanwhile, the ruble has slumped to its weakest level against the US dollar since last April. The currency’s weakness has contributed to high inflation. And most businesses say they can’t conceive of growing right now given high levels of economic uncertainty, according to a recent survey by a Russian think tank.

    These dynamics place the country’s economy on a trajectory of decline. And they will force Putin to choose between ramping up military spending and investing in social goods like housing and education — a decision that could have consequences both for the war and the Russian public’s support of it.

    “This year could really be the key test,” said Timothy Ash, an associate fellow in the Russia and Eurasia program at Chatham House, a think tank.

    In a bid to bring Russia to heel for its aggression, Western countries have used their sway over the global financial system, unveiling more than 11,300 sanctions since the invasion and freezing some $300 billion of the country’s foreign reserves. At the same time, more than 1,000 companies, ranging from BP

    (BP)     to McDonald’s

    (MCD)     and Starbucks

    (SBUX)    , have exited or curtailed operations in the country, citing opposition to the war and new logistical challenges.

    Russia’s economic output duly contracted by 2.1% last year, according to a preliminary estimate from the government. But the hit was more limited than forecasters initially expected. When sanctions were first imposed, some economists predicted a contraction of 10% or 15%.

    One reason for Russia’s unexpected pluck was its push toward self-sufficiency following Putin’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Through a policy known as “Fortress Russia,” the government boosted domestic food production and policymakers forced banks to build up their reserves. That created a degree of “durability,” said Ash at Chatham House.

    The swift intervention of Russia’s central bank, which jacked up interest rates to 20% after the invasion and implemented currency controls to buttress the ruble, was also a stabilizing force. So was the need for factories to increase production of military goods and replace items that had been imported from the West.

    But the greatest support came from high energy prices and the world’s continued thirst for oil and other commodities.

    Russia, the world’s second-largest exporter of crude, was able to send barrels that would have gone to Europe to countries like China and India. The European Union, which imported an average of 3.3 million barrels of Russian crude and oil products per day in 2021, was also still buying 2.3 million barrels per day as of November, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

    “It’s a question of natural resources,” Sergey Aleksashenko, Russia’s former deputy minister of finance, said at an event last month hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. That meant the economy experienced a decline, but “not a collapse,” he added.

    In fact, Russia’s average monthly oil export revenues rose by 24% last year to $18.1 billion, according to the IEA. Yet a repeat performance is unlikely, presaging increasingly tough decisions for Putin.

    The price of a barrel of Urals crude, Russia’s main blend, fell to an average of $49.50 in January after Europe’s oil embargo — as well as a Group of Seven price cap — took effect. By comparison, the global benchmark stood around $82. That suggests that customers like India and China, seeing a smaller pool of interested buyers, are negotiating greater discounts. Russia’s 2023 budget is based on a Urals price of more than $70 per barrel.

    Finding new buyers for processed oil products, which are also subject to new embargoes and price caps, won’t be easy either. China and India have their own network of refineries and prefer to buy crude, noted Ben McWilliams, an energy consultant at Bruegel.

    Meanwhile, gas exports to Europe have plunged since Russia shut its Nord Stream 1 pipeline.

    A motorcyclist rides past an oil depot in New Delhi, India, on Sunday, June 12, 2022.

    Russia’s government relied on the oil and gas sector for 45% of its budget in 2021. As it plans to maximize defense spending, lower revenues inevitably mean trade-offs. Spending plans for 2023 finalized in December involved a decrease in expenditure on housing and health care, as well as a category that includes public infrastructure.

    “Whatever energy resources are obtained, they’ll be spent on military needs,” said Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, acting director of the Russia Institute at King’s College London.

    The International Monetary Fund still expects Russia’s economy to expand by 0.3% this year and 2.1% the next. Yet any outlook is contingent on what happens in Ukraine.

    “Whether the economy shrinks or expands in 2023 will be determined by developments in the war,” Tatiana Orlova, an economist at Oxford Economics, wrote in a note to clients on Tuesday. Shortages of workers tied to military conscription and emigration pose a key risk, she noted.

    The impact of Western sanctions is poised to develop into a crisis over time. Bloomberg Economics estimates that Putin’s war in Ukraine will slash $190 billion off Russia’s gross domestic product by 2026 compared with the country’s prewar path.

    Sectors that rely on imports have been particularly vulnerable. Domestic car makers such as Avtovaz, which manufactures the iconic Ladas, have struggled with shortages of key components and materials.

    A man talks on his phone near a closed H&M store on December 15, 2022 in Moscow, Russia.

    Russia’s auto industry was already weakened after companies such as Volkswagen

    (VLKAF)    , Renault

    (RNLSY)    , Ford

    (F)     and Nissan

    (NSANF)     halted production and began to sell their local assets last year. Chinese firms have stepped up their presence, part of a broader trend. Even so, sales of new cars dropped 63% year-over-year in January, according to the Association of European Businesses.

    Across sectors, firms are struggling to plan for the future. A survey of more than 1,000 Russian businesses by the Stolypin Institute of Economic Growth in November found that almost half plan to maintain production over the next one to two years and aren’t thinking about growth. The group said this contributed to a high risk of “long-term stagnation of the Russian economy.”

    Given Putin’s ideological commitment to subsuming Ukraine, he’s unlikely to back down, according to Sharafutdinova at King’s College London. But his war chest “is likely, inevitably, to diminish,” she added.

    Prioritizing military spending will also come at a social cost, with a “slow and creeping” erosion of living standards, she added.

    “In normal times, we might have said that the population would protest against that,” Sharafutdinova said. “But of course, these are not normal times.”

    — Clare Sebastian and Olesya Dmitracova contributed reporting.

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  • Russia to cut oil output by 5% as sanctions bite | CNN Business

    Russia to cut oil output by 5% as sanctions bite | CNN Business


    London
    CNN
     — 

    Russia will cut crude oil production by half a million barrels per day starting in March, a little over two months after the world’s major economies imposed a price cap on the country’s seaborne exports.

    “We will not sell oil to those who directly or indirectly adhere to the principles of the price ceiling,” Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said in a statement. “In relation to this, Russia will voluntarily reduce production by 500,000 barrels per day in March. This will contribute to the restoration of market relations.”

    The cut is equivalent to about 5% of Russian oil output.

    Futures prices for Brent crude, the global benchmark, jumped 2.7% Friday to $86 a barrel as traders anticipated a tightening in global supply. US oil gained 1% to trade at $79 a barrel.

    In June last year, the European Union agreed to phase out all seaborne imports of Russian crude oil within the following six months as part of unprecedented Western sanctions aimed at reducing Moscow’s ability to fund its war in Ukraine.

    In a move aimed at further tightening the screws, G7 countries and the European Union agreed in December to cap the price at which Western brokers, insurers and shippers can trade Russia’s seaborne oil for markets elsewhere at $60 a barrel. Earlier this month, EU countries also banned imports of Russia’s diesel and refined oil imports.

    Novak warned that the crude oil price cap could lead to “a decrease in investment in the oil sector and, accordingly, an oil shortage.”

    Neil Crosby, a senior analyst at oil data firm OilX, told CNN that a 500,000 barrel-a-day cut is not the “worst-case scenario” and is still a smaller hit to Russian production than most analysts were expecting last year.

    “But it sets a precedent for further cuts ahead if necessary or desired by Russian authorities,” Crosby said, adding that Moscow could be anticipating difficulty in finding enough demand for its crude.

    Russian Urals crude traded at a discount to Brent crude of $28 a barrel on Friday. Over the past few months, India and China have snapped up cheap oil from Moscow, just as the EU — once Russia’s biggest customer for crude — has ended all imports.

    “Russia currently has a limited pool of buyers for its crudes and has likely found a ceiling to its export sales in the near term, primarily to China and India,” said Alan Gelder, vice president of refining, chemicals and oil markets at Wood Mackenzie.

    According to Reuters, Russia took the decision to reduce its output without consulting the OPEC+ group of producers, which includes Saudi Arabia. OPEC+ decided in October to cut output by 2 million barrels per day and has not adjusted that stance since.

    A potential drop in global oil supply could come at a tricky time. China’s swift reopening of its economy in December after almost three years of strict coronavirus restrictions has pushed up estimates for global oil demand.

    Last month, the International Energy Agency said it expected global demand to surge by 1.9 million barrels per day to reach an all-time high of 101.7 million barrels per day, with China accounting for nearly half of the increase.

    Western sanctions — added to the grinding cost of war — are weighing on Russia’s economy. The country’s budget deficit ballooned to $45 billion last year, or 2.3% of its gross domestic product.

    But Russia’s central bank held its main interest rate at 7.5% Friday, saying that economic activity was better than expected and that inflation was likely to come down this year.

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  • Here’s what keeps Jerome Powell up at night and interest rates high | CNN Business

    Here’s what keeps Jerome Powell up at night and interest rates high | CNN Business

    A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link.


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell threw markets into a tizzy on Tuesday as he spoke about the economy alongside his former boss, Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein, at the Economic Club of Washington.

    Stocks struggled for direction as investors tried to get a read on Powell’s economic outlook, attitude towards inflation and on future interest rate hikes. Wall Street cheered as the Fed chair said the disinflationary process has begun, then soured when he said the road to reaching 2% inflation will be “bumpy” and “long” with more rate hikes ahead.

    Markets soared to new highs, before quickly falling to session lows and then recovering to close the day in the green.

    “Powell doesn’t want to play games with financial markets,” said EY Parthenon chief economist Gregory Daco after the conversation. But at the same time, he said Powell wanted to communicate that the Fed’s “base case was not for inflation to come down as quickly and painlessly as some market participants appear to expect.”

    Here’s why Powell thinks bringing down prices will be more difficult than investors anticipate.

    Structural changes in the labor market: The US economy added an astonishing 517,000 jobs in January, blowing economists’ expectations out of the water. The unemployment rate fell to 3.4% from 3.5%, hitting a level not seen since May 1969.

    The current labor market imbalance is a reflection of the pandemic’s lasting effect on the US economy and on labor supply, said Powell on Tuesday in answer to a question about the report. “The labor market is extraordinarily strong,” he said. Demand exceeds supply by 5 million people, and the labor force participation rate has declined. “It feels almost more structural than cyclical.”

    “If we continue to get, for example, strong labor market reports or higher inflation reports, it may well be the case that we have to do more and raise rates more,” he said.

    Core services inflation: Powell noted that he’s seeing disinflation in the goods sector and expects to soon see declining inflation in housing. But prices remain stubborn for services. Service-sector inflation, which is more sensitive to a strong labor market, is up 7.5% from the year prior through the end of 2022, and has not abated, he said.

    “That sector is not showing any disinflation yet,” Powell said. “There has been an expectation that [higher prices] will go away quickly and painlessly and I don’t think that’s at all guaranteed.”

    Geopolitical uncertainties: Powell also cited concerns that the reopening of China’s economy after the sudden end of Covid-Zero restrictions, plus uncertainty about Russia’s war on Ukraine could also affect the inflation path in ways that remain unclear.

    ▸ The labor market is strong, but tech layoffs keep coming. There were around  50,000 tech jobs cut in January, and the trend has continued into February.

    Video conferencing service Zoom is one of the latest to announce layoffs. The company said Tuesday that it’s cutting 1,300 jobs or 15% of its workforce. 

    Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said in a blog post on Tuesday that Zoom ramped up employment  quickly due to increased demand during the pandemic. The company grew three times in size within 24 months, he said and now it must  adapt to changing demand for its services.

    “The uncertainty of the global economy, and its effect on our customers, means we need to take a hard — yet important — look inward to reset ourselves so we can weather the economic environment, deliver for our customers and achieve Zoom’s long-term vision,” he wrote.

    Yuan added that he plans to lower his own salary by 98% and forgo his 2023 bonus. Shares of Zoom closed nearly 10% higher on Tuesday. 

    The announcement comes just one day after Dell said it would lay off more than 6,500 employees.

    Amazon

    (AMZN)    , Microsoft

    (MSFT)    , Google and other tech giants have also recently announced plans to cut thousands of workers as the companies adapt to shifting pandemic demand and fears of a looming recession.

    ▸ Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis told CNN that he is starting to think that the US economy could avoid a recession and achieve a so-called soft landing.

    It’s hard to have a recession when the job market is still so robust, he told CNN’s Poppy Harlow on Tuesday on CNN This Morning.

    Still, “we have more work to do,” Kashkari told Harlow, adding that the labor market is “too hot” and that is a key reason why it is “harder to bring inflation back down.”

    Although many investors are starting to think the Fed may pause after just two more similarly small hikes, to a level of around 5%, Kashkari said he believes the Fed may have to raise rates further. Kashkari has a vote this year on the Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed’s interest-rate setting group.

    ▸ It’s a good time to be in the oil business. BP’s annual profit more than doubled last year to an all-time high of nearly $28 billion.

    The British energy company said in a statement that underlying replacement cost profit rose to $27.7 billion in 2022 from $12.8 billion the previous year. The metric is a key indicator of oil companies’ profitability.

    BP

    (BP)     also unveiled a further $2.75 billion in share buybacks and hiked its dividend for the fourth quarter by around 10% to 6.61 cents per share.

    BP’s shares rose 6% in Tuesday trading following the news. Over the past 12 months, its shares have soared 24%.

    The earnings are the latest in a string of record-setting results by the world’s biggest energy companies, which have enjoyed bumper profits off the back of skyrocketing oil and gas prices.

    Last week, another energy major Shell reported a record profit of almost $40 billion for 2022, more than double what it raked in the previous year after oil and gas prices jumped following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    On Wednesday it was TotalEnergie

    (TTFNF)    s turn. The French company posted annual profit of $36.2 billion for 2022, double the previous year’s earnings.

    Disney has found itself in the middle of a culture war battle that could end up transferring Disney World’s governance to a board appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. And that may be the least of Disney’s problems, writes my colleague Chris Isidore.

    The company faces a media industry in turmoil, plunging cable subscriptions, a still-recovering box office, massive streaming losses, activist shareholders, possible reorganization and layoffs and growing labor disputes with employees. That’s a lot for CEO Bob Iger to handle.

    Iger, who retired as CEO in 2020 only to be brought back in November, has been mostly quiet about his plans for the company since his return. That ends at 4:30 p.m. ET Wednesday when he is set to begin an earnings call with Wall Street investors.

    Click here to read more about what to look for on what is certain to be a closely-followed call.

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  • BP’s annual profit more than doubles to $28 billion | CNN Business

    BP’s annual profit more than doubles to $28 billion | CNN Business


    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    BP’s annual profit more than doubled last year to nearly $28 billion, extending a record run of earnings for the world’s oil majors that is adding to calls for higher taxes on the windfall gains.

    The British energy giant said in a statement that underlying replacement cost profit rose to $27.7 billion for 2022, compared with $12.8 billion the previous year. The metric is a key indicator of oil companies’ profitability.

    BP

    (BP)     also announced on Tuesday a further $2.75 billion in share buybacks and hiked its dividend for the fourth quarter by around 10% to 6.61 cents per share.

    The earnings are the latest in a series of record-setting results by the world’s biggest energy companies, which have enjoyed bumper profits off the back of soaring oil and gas prices.

    Last week, Shell

    (RDSA)     reported a record profit of almost $40 billion for 2022, more than double what it raked in the previous year after oil and gas prices soared following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    — This is a developing story and will be updated.

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  • Shell profits double to record $40 billion | CNN Business

    Shell profits double to record $40 billion | CNN Business


    Hong Kong/London
    CNN
     — 

    Shell made a record profit of almost $40 billion in 2022, more than double what it raked in the previous year after oil and gas prices soared following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    Europe’s largest oil company by revenue reported adjusted full-year earnings of $39.9 billion on Thursday — more than double the $19.3 billion it posted in 2021 — driven by a strong performance in its gas trading business. The company’s stock was up 1.7% in London.

    The company reported $9.8 billion in profit in the fourth quarter. Just over 40% of Shell’s full-year earnings came from its integrated gas business, which includes liquified natural gas trading operations.

    Shell CEO Wael Sawan said the results “demonstrate the strength of Shell’s differentiated portfolio, as well as our capacity to deliver vital energy to our customers in a volatile world.”

    The earnings are the latest in a series of record-setting results by the world’s biggest energy companies, which have enjoyed bumper profits off the back of soaring oil and gas prices.

    ExxonMobil this week posted record full-year earnings of $59.1 billion. Last month, Chevron

    (CVX)     reported a record full-year profit of $36.5 billion.

    That has led to renewed calls for higher taxation. Governments in the European Union and the United Kingdom have already imposed windfall taxes on oil company profits, with the proceeds used to help households struggling with rising energy bills.

    Shell said it expected to pay an additional $2.3 billion in tax related to the EU windfall tax and the UK energy profits levy. The company paid $13 billion in tax globally in 2022.

    Shell

    (RDSA)     also announced another $4 billion share buyback program and confirmed it would lift its dividend per share by 15% for the fourth quarter.

    — This is a developing story and will be updated.

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  • Biden administration takes another step toward advancing a controversial oil drilling project in Alaska | CNN Politics

    Biden administration takes another step toward advancing a controversial oil drilling project in Alaska | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management on Wednesday advanced the controversial Willow oil drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope, releasing the final environmental impact statement before the project can be approved.

    The ConocoPhillips proposed Willow drilling plan is a massive and decadeslong project that the state’s bipartisan Congressional delegation says will create much-needed jobs for Alaskans and boost domestic energy production in the US.

    But environmental groups fear the impact of the planet-warming carbon pollution from the hundreds of millions of barrels of oil it would produce – and say it will deal a significant blow to President Joe Biden’s ambitious climate agenda.

    The final environmental report from the Bureau of Land Management recommends a slightly smaller version of what ConocoPhillips originally proposed, putting the number of drilling sites at three instead of five. The Department of Interior is also recommending other measures to try to lower the pollution of the project, and recommending a smaller footprint of gravel roads and pipelines.

    In a statement, the Interior Department said it “has substantial concerns about the Willow project and the preferred alternative as presented in the final SEIS, including direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions and impacts to wildlife and Alaska Native subsistence.”

    The Biden administration now has 30 days to issue a final decision on the project, after which drilling could begin. In its statement, Interior said it could select a different alternative on the project, including taking no action or further reducing the number of drill sites.

    ConocoPhillips and members of the Alaska Congressional delegation have been pushing the administration to finalize the project by the end of February to take advantage of cold and icy conditions needed to drill in the Arctic. If the company misses that window, it could push the project’s start date to next year.

    Erec Isaacson, president of ConocoPhillips Alaska, said in a statement that nearly five years of regulatory review should conclude “without delay.” Isaacson added the project is “ready to begin construction immediately” after Interior’s final decision is issued.

    According to the Interior Department’s own estimation, the project would produce 629 million barrels of oil over the course of 30 years and would release around 278 million metric tons of planet-warming carbon emissions. Climate groups say that’s equivalent to what 76 coal-fired power plants produce every year.

    “The world and the country can’t afford to develop that oil,” said Jeremy Lieb, a senior attorney for environmental law firm Earthjustice. Lieb and other advocates are concerned that Willow may be the start of a future drilling boom in the area.

    “Willow is just the start based on what industry has planned,” Lieb said. “The total estimate for the amount of oil that could be accessible in the region around Willow is 7 or 8 billion barrels.”

    For the Willow project, ConocoPhillips is proposing five drilling sites on federal land in Alaska’s North Slope, and the project would include a processing facility, pipelines to transport oil, gravel roads, at least one airstrip and a gravel mine site.

    The project – and the public comment process leading up to it – has also received heavy criticism from the nearby Alaska Native village of Nuiqsut, which some villagers evacuated last year during a gas leak in a ConocoPhillips project in the area. Nuiqsut officials recently released a letter calling the Bureau of Land Management’s public input process “disappointing and inadequate,” criticizing both the Trump and Biden administration’s timeline.

    The bureau’s “engagement with us is consistently focused on how to allow projects to go forward; how to permit the continuous expansion and concentration of oil and gas activity on our traditional lands,” Nuiqsut officials wrote in their letter.

    Alaska’s entire Congressional delegation – including newly elected Rep. Mary Peltola, a Democrat – have urged the White House and Interior to approve the project, saying it would be a huge boost to state’s economy.

    Sen. Lisa Murkowski, in particular, has been urging the White House and Biden personally to greenlight Willow, she told CNN.

    “I’ve been pretty persistent on this,” she told CNN in an interview this summer. “Let’s just say, any conversation I’ve ever had with the White House, anyone close to the White House, I’ve brought up the subject of Willow.”

    As gas prices spiked last summer, Murkowski, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democrat, and other Senate Republicans tightened the pressure on Biden to approve a major domestic oil drilling project. Environmental advocates, meanwhile, argued the project will not bring US gas prices down any time soon, as the infrastructure will take years to build.

    “When you think about those things that should be teed up and ready to go, this is one where in my view there’s really no excuse for why we should see further delay,” Murkowski said. “This is something that’s been in the works that’s gone through so much process, across multiple administrations.”

    This story has been updated with more information.

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  • ExxonMobil earnings more than double to annual record | CNN Business

    ExxonMobil earnings more than double to annual record | CNN Business


    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    ExxonMobil’s earnings slowed from a peak earlier in the year but the oil giant still reached a full-year record profit more than double what it reported a year ago.

    The company earned adjusted income of $14 billion in the quarter, down from the record $18.7 billion it earned in the third quarter, but it was up from $8.8 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021. That was also better than the forecast from analysts surveyed by Refinitiv.

    The solid fourth quarter lifted full-year earnings to $59.1 billion from $23 billion in 2021, and well above the previous record net income of $45.2 billion it reported for 2008, the year that saw the record high for oil and US gasoline prices before the records set last year.

    The company was helped by soaring oil prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nearly a year ago. But oil prices have been coming down from the peak reached in June, and are now down to pre-invasion levels.

    Oil companies such as ExxonMobil have faced criticism from the White House and some members of Congress for taking much of the profit and using it to repurchase shares and increase dividend, rather than increase production.

    CEO Darren Woods defended the company’s investments in production, saying the company’s North American refineries had their greatest output ever, and that it had its highest global refinery production since 2012.

    “Our results clearly benefited from a favorable market,” said Woods. “But, to take full advantage of the undersupplied market our work began years ago, well before the pandemic when we chose to invest counter-cyclically. We leaned in when others leaned out, bucking conventional wisdom. We continued with these investments through the pandemic and into today.”

    Still, the company returned $29.8 billion to shareholders during the year, with about half of it coming through dividends and half through share repurchases.

    That compares to $22.4 billion in spending on exploration and other capital spending. It also reported a $22.8 billion, or 336%, increase in cash on hand, ending the year with $29.6 billion in cash on its balance sheet. And it repaid $7 billion in debt.

    The full-year results come to an average of $1,874 of profit for every second during the course of the year. Since it takes about two minutes to pump 20 gallons of gas, that means that in the time it takes to fill a nearly empty tank of a full-size SUV or pickup, ExxonMobil earned about $225,000, on average.

    Shares of ExxonMobil were slightly lower in premarket trading initially after the report, perhaps on investor disappointment that no new share repurchase program was announced. But shares were slightly higher in morning trading after the open.

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  • Here’s why you should always wait for the earnings call | CNN Business

    Here’s why you should always wait for the earnings call | CNN Business

    A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link.


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Investors are pretty bad at living in the moment. We’re currently in the thick of fourth quarter earnings reports, but traders don’t seem to care about how companies fared during the final months of 2022. They’re more focused on what’s going to happen in the future.

    Case-in-point: Earnings calls, where top execs pontificate about their economic outlook, have been moving markets more than earnings-per-share and revenue reports.

    What’s happening: The mantra on Wall Street has become, as Ritholtz Wealth Management CEO Josh Brown puts it, “ignore the numbers, wait for the call.”

    Microsoft reported great fourth quarter earnings last Tuesday that beat Wall Street’s expectations, but the stock dropped 4% the next day. That’s because CEO Satya Nadella got on an earnings call with investors and warned of a slowdown in the company’s cloud business and software sales. His negative outlook came just as the company announced it was letting go of 10,000 employees, further spooking investors. 

    Other tech companies are following suit — while things are fine for the time being, they’re reporting that the future is foggy.

    IBM stock sank 4.5% last Thursday even as the tech titan beat Wall Street’s Q4 expectations. The reason for the drop might be because Jim Kavanaugh, IBM’s finance chief, warned on the conference call that it would be wise to expect the company’s total 2023 revenue growth to be on the low end. IBM also announced layoffs – the company said it plans to cut around 3,900 jobs or 1.5% of its total workforce. 

    The economic environment is rapidly changing. CEOs on earnings calls are talking more about recession than inflation now, according to an analysis by Purpose Investments.

    Wall Street is also beginning to fear an economic downturn more than painful rate hikes and as a result investors are putting more weight on CEO and CFO forecasts.

    And they’re looking bleak. As of Friday, 19 companies in the S&P 500 had issued forward earnings-per-share guidance for the first quarter of 2023, according to FactSet data. Of these 19 companies, 17, or 89%, issued negative guidance. That’s well above the 5-year average of 59%.

    “My best guess is that cautious tones on conference calls will be the norm, not the exception,” wrote Brown in a recent post. These slowdowns have been partially factored into stock prices, he said, “but not necessarily in full.”

    The upside: Market reaction appears to go both ways. American Express missed on earnings last week but said that credit card spending was hitting new records and that the future looks bright. The stock shot up more than 10%. 

    Prices at the pump typically fall during the coldest months as wintry weather keeps Americans off the roads. But something unusual is happening this year, reports my colleague Matt Egan. Gas prices are rocketing higher.

    The national average for regular gas jumped to $3.51 a gallon on Friday and remained there through the weekend, according to AAA. Although that’s a far cry from the record of $5.02 a gallon last June, gas prices have increased by 12 cents in the past week and 41 cents in the past month.

    All told, the national average has climbed by more than 9% since the end of last year – the biggest increase to start a year since 2009, according to Bespoke Investment Group.

    Why are gas prices jumping? It’s not because of demand, which remains weak, even for this time of the year. Instead, the problem is supply.

    The extreme weather in much of the United States near the end of last year caused a series of outages at the refineries that produce the gasoline, jet fuel and diesel that keep the economy humming. US refineries are operating at just 86% of capacity, down from the mid-90% range at the start of December, according to Bespoke.

    Beyond the refinery problems, oil prices have crept higher, helping to drive prices at the pump northward. US oil prices have jumped about 16% since December partially due to expectations of higher worldwide demand as China relaxes its Covid-19 policies and also because oil markets are no longer receiving massive injections of emergency barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

    What’s next: Expect more pain at the pump. Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, worries the typical springtime jump in prices will be pulled forward.

    “Instead of $4 a gallon happening in May, it could happen as early as March,” De Haan told CNN. “There is more upside risk than downside risk.”

    A return of $4 gas would be painful to drivers and could dent consumer confidence. Moreover, pain at the pump would complicate the inflation picture as the Federal Reserve debates whether to slow its interest rate hiking campaign.

    Goldman Sachs had a rough time in 2022, and the investment bank’s CEO, David Solomon, is being punished for it. Well, kind of. 

    The investment banking giant said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Friday that Solomon received $25 million in annual compensation last year. While that is still a very large amount of money, it’s down nearly 30% from the $35 million that Solomon raked in during 2021, reports my colleague Paul R. La Monica. 

    Solomon’s $2 million annual salary is unchanged. But the company said that his “annual variable compensation,” paid in a mix of performance-based restricted stock units and cash, was well below 2021 levels.

    Goldman Sachs (GS) shares fell more than 10% in 2022. The company also  reported a 16% drop in revenue in the fourth quarter and profit plunge of 66% earlier this month, mainly due to the lack of merger activity and initial public offerings.

    Maybe Solomon can make that extra $10 million with payouts from his burgeoning DJ career. 

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