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The World
The world’s top central bankers have warned that the era of low interest rates and moderate inflation has come to an end following the “massive geopolitical shock” from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and from the pandemic. Speaking at the European Central Bank’s annual conference, Christine Lagarde, its president, Jay Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, and Andrew Bailey, Bank of England governor, called for rapid action to curb inflation. They said failing to raise interest rates quickly enough could allow high inflation to become embedded and ultimately require more drastic action by central banks to bring price growth back to more moderate levels. (Financial Times)
The U.S. will make its biggest military expansion in Europe since the Cold War, including its first permanent troop presence in Poland, as NATO prepares for two more members to join the alliance in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The announcement, which follows a NATO pledge this week to increase its high-readiness forces sevenfold, comes despite Washington’s efforts to shift U.S. attention toward China and offers fresh evidence how Russia’s war is upending international security. “We’re stepping up. We’re proving that NATO is more needed now than it ever has been,” President Biden said at the opening of the NATO summit. (Wall Street Journal)
NATO said China poses "systemic challenges" in its Strategic Concept, making it the first time that the Asian country appeared in the document to guide the alliance for the next decade. As Russia's invasion of Ukraine reverberates across the Indo-Pacific, where China's assertiveness is strongly felt, the document said that regional developments can "directly affect" Euro-Atlantic security and that NATO will strengthen dialogue and cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners. (Nikkei Asia Review)
Senate Democrats are working on shrinking the tax increases in President Biden’s economic package as part of a bid to cut a deal with Senator Joe Manchin and get it passed in the coming weeks, according to people familiar with the talks. The changes under consideration would pare down some of the tax measures passed by the House last year, and could mean that both US corporations and wealthy households end up facing smaller tax hikes than Biden and Democrats initially envisioned, the people said. (Bloomberg)
COVID twice as deadly in poorer countries: Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, before vaccines were available, the fatality rate was 2.7 times higher for 20-year-olds living in lower-income countries than for young people in rich nations. Researchers examined blood samples for signs of infection and segmented age groups to calculate the proportion of infected people who died from the disease. Despite the relative youth of populations in lower-income countries, a lack of access to health care and higher infection rates in older people raised the overall infection fatality rate to levels similar to those in older, richer countries. (Nature)
China to press on with ‘zero Covid’, despite economic risks, Xi Jinping says. (South China Morning Post)
How leaders can improve global happiness: Gallup CEO Jon Clifton says that to flatten the curve on growing global unhappiness, private and public leaders need to focus on three things: improving well-being at work, addressing global loneliness and fixing global hunger. Clifton's conclusions are based on the annual "Gallup Global Emotions" report, out today. The world's stress is at record levels. "Emotionally, the second year of the pandemic was an even tougher year for the world than the first one," Gallup found. (Axios)
Economy
Wages are rising for workers considered essential during the Covid-19 pandemic, but few consider themselves fairly paid. These are some of the findings by software company Payscale, which analyzed nearly 268,000 salary profiles and found that pay has climbed for a number of workers including house cleaners, nurses, and food service employees. Servers saw the largest gains with an increase to $21,300 annually this year from $17,100 in 2019, and about a third of wait staff surveyed consider their wages to be fair. (Bloomberg)
Hedge fund manager Jim Chanos’s next ‘big short’ is data centres: Short seller bets against Reits that own big server warehouses on risks that customers will become rivals. (Financial Times)
CEO Stock Sales Raise Questions About Insider Trading: A WSJ analysis of preset trading plans by company insiders shows that executives benefit when sales happen quickly after the plans’ adoption. Academics and the SEC say some corporate insiders might be using nonpublic information to game the system. (Wall Street Journal)
Cryptocurrency losses deepened, with popular Defi tokens such as Solana and Avalanche falling more than sector bellwether Bitcoin, as contagion concern mounts in the wake of the collapse of hedge fund Three Arrows Capital. (Bloomberg)
Are Coke and Pepsi Campuses Bad for Public Health? Almost all of the largest public universities in the United States have large marketing contracts with soda companies that include incentives to sell more to students, staff, and faculty, a new study finds. (Chronicle of Higher Ed)
After two-plus years of on-again, off-again supply chain snarls, American warehouses and store shelves are filling up with stuff — perhaps too much. Fresh government numbers out yesterday showed wholesale and retail stockpiles continue to mount, even as the ferocious consumer appetite for stuff — toys, clothes, furniture, packaged goods — that emerged as a feature of the pandemic economy may be ebbing. (Axios)
Technology
Chinese President Xi Jinping repeats call for tech self-reliance, innovative talent. Innovation is a decisive factor in building a modern socialist country and achieving China’s second centenary goal, Xi says during trip to Wuhan. Remarks come as country gears up for Communist Party’s national congress, where the president is expected to deliver a report on strategy for the next five years. (South China Morning Post)
A pro-China online influence campaign is targeting the rare-earths industry: Disinformation operatives seek to undermine firms in the Western world as China fights to maintain near-monopoly power. (MIT Technology Review)
As crypto enters another winter, Jimmy Fallon, Serena Williams, Reese Witherspoon, Meek Mill, and other celebrities quietly remove their NFT profile pictures. (Artnet News)
‘Anti-hunger’ molecule forms after exercise, scientists discover: Stanford Medicine researchers and collaborators identified a molecule that staves off hunger post-exercise, which helps explain how exercise results in weight loss and could hold the key to kick-starting the process in people with metabolic disease. (Stanford University)
More growth-stage companies are adding temporary or fractional chief marketing officers to their executive lineup. Companies benefit from opting out of hiring traditional CMOs because they're more focused on performance-based marketing. But the practice is more intimate than tapping outside consultants. For marketing veterans stepping in as fractional CMOs, the role offers more flexibility in client selection and schedule building. (Wall Street Journal)
Smart Links
Ketanji Brown Jackson to be sworn in today as newest Supreme Court Justice. (Bloomberg)
Bed Bath & Beyond ousts chief as home-goods retailer’s sales drop 25%. (Financial Times)
Tesla cuts 200 autopilot workers as California site closes. (Bloomberg)
Why Toronto wants you to forget everything you know about smart cities. (MIT Technology Review)
Venice plans to start weeding out cheap tourists: If you want to go to Venice for the day, you’ll soon have to start paying. (Bloomberg)