RIYADH — Khalid Al-Falih, the Minister of Investment of Saudi Arabia, has emphasized the reliability of both the country's monetary policies and its currency. "The Saudi riyal was the only currency in the world that did not experience volatility, and this is due to the prudent economic policies implemented by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which maintained the currency's stability. "The debt rate in the entire world economy, including the major countries, is increasing, while the debt rate in the Kingdom lowers to 25 percent," he stated while addressing the Saudi Budget Forum 2023 in Riyadh on Sunday. The forum is scheduled to take place in 2023. Al-Falih referred to the budget of Saudi Arabia as "historic," particularly in view of the difficulties that the globe is currently experiencing. According to the minister, the rate of economic expansion in the Kingdom is currently the highest in the entire world. In response to those who claim that the expansion...

According to recent data, more than one-third of Australians know someone who has committed suicide or attempted suicide in the last 12 months. According to a troubling study conducted by Suicide Prevention Australia, 38% of the 1022 persons polled were either indirectly or directly influenced by suicide throughout the study period. One in every five adults reported suicidal ideation in the previous year, and 70% experienced severe distress. According to additional study conducted by the national apex authority for suicide prevention, the most prevalent pressures Australians reported facing were the cost of living and personal debt, with housing-related anxiety being the fastest-growing issue. According to Nieves Murray, chief executive of Suicide Prevention Australia, new data suggest that housing stress has grown particularly quickly among "middle age and medium salary" Australians, and that financial concerns pose the greatest threat to the nation's mental health and s...

After two years of failed attempts and market resistance, Indonesia is expected to adopt significant changes to the regulation of its banking sector as early as this week. The new bill aims to broaden the mandate of the central bank and strengthen its authority to buy government bonds during times of crisis, as it had done in the past three years to shore up the largest economy in Southeast Asia. The central bank will have purchased debt papers totaling 1,144 trillion rupiah (about $US73 billion) by the end of 2022. The legislation also aims to update regulations to keep up with developments in blockchain technology and digital currencies. After passing through the finance panel on December 8, the measure will likely be put to a vote in parliament this week. Consider the following information regarding the revamping of the financial system: For what reasons is Indonesia revising its monetary regulations? The current set of rules is confusing and often inconsistent. Given the current fi...

The most encouraging sign that a recession brought on by the Federal Reserve can be avoided in 2019 has been removed. Hourly pay was revised up in September and October, and then again in November, pushing wage growth well beyond the Fed's 2% inflation objective. In practice, there is growing unanimity that the Federal Reserve raising its inflation target is the only way to keep the U.S. economy from crashing and the S&P 500 from falling much worse. It's possible the Fed would be open to doing so, but additional cooling is required before it would halt rate hikes. RSM senior economist Joe Brusuelas told IBD that the 2% inflation target "is a lot more elastic than the Fed is letting on" because "I don't think there's any constituency out there for the bloodletting that would be necessary." By Brusuelas's calculations, the Fed would have to raise the unemployment rate to 6.7% in order to get inflation back up to 2%. But a much more manageable i...

President of the Federal Reserve (Fed) Jerome Powell indicated a lesser increase in the US basic interest rate as a decision for the upcoming FOMC meeting on December 14 in a speech he delivered last Wednesday (November 30) at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. After four consecutive meetings with rises of 75 basis points, expectations have settled on a more modest increase of 50 basis points this time. The basic rate began the year at around zero and would end up between 4.25 and 4.5% annually. However, Powell stressed that US inflation remains elevated. He quoted a figure of 6% annual inflation in personal consumer spending for the 12 months prior to October.  Inflation needs to be kept under 2% annually, which means interest rates need to rise to prohibitive levels. When asked if the Fed would raise interest rates again in 2023, he said that there was still more material to cover. He explained that monetary tightening's goal is to reduce the rate of rising demand in re...

By midday, the pan-European Stoxx 600 had down 0.2%, with losses in the telecoms sector (-1.2%) and gains in the oil and gas sector (+0.8%). The Federal Reserve of the United States is widely predicted to increase interest rates by 50 basis points the following week. Even though it would be less of a jump than the last several rate increases, investors are getting nervous about whether or not the central bank can prevent a recession in 2019 by stifling inflation. Following the S&P 500's fifth consecutive day of losses, investors on Wall Street were weighing the potential of a slump, sending U.S. stock futures down on Thursday morning. Overnight, the mood in the Asia-Pacific area shifted toward greater activity. A local news site said Thursday that the city is considering further lowering Covid regulations, including as eliminating its outdoor mask rule and relaxing mandatory testing for arrivals, sending the Hang Seng index soaring by more than 3 percent. Most other regional ma...

"The days when low interest rates could encourage visions of a peaceful world based on renewable energy, equality, and autonomous central banks are long gone. World economies will enter a state of "War Economy" in 2023, where national economic interests and independence take precedence over globalization." That is how vehement Saxo Bank is in its report on the black swans for the upcoming year, which was just released. Black swans are occurrences that, on the surface, could not have been predicted, have a significant socioeconomic influence, and, after they have occurred, are examined in retrospect to become events that might have been expected. These are the Danish bank's ten "crazy" predictions: 1. A trillion-dollar energy plan known as the "Manhattan Project" is developed by a multibillion-dollar consortium. The ever-increasing demand for energy prompts the world's wealthiest people to get together and start an R&D project of a sca...