Author: Steven Sahiounie

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Saturday warned of dire consequences the country may be facing if it doesn’t hike its statutory debt ceiling in the coming months. According to the senior official, the US could default on its debt by summer, which would lead to a financial crisis. “It makes me nervous…It would be devastating. It’s a catastrophe,” Yellen told Axios news outlet, adding that “we’ll have a financial crisis and I believe we would have recession in the United States.” “Spending would have to decline to match the tax revenues,” Yellen said, which would strip the government of…

It’s hard to imagine the internet without Google. The tech giant has become so synonymous with searching the web that it has become a verb – we don’t look it up, we “Google it”. Google ended 2022 as it ends every year, as the most visited website in the world. Its estimated share of the search engine market stands at 92% (Microsoft’s Bing is its closest rival, on 3%). On the surface, it might not like a landscape that’s ripe for change but don’t be so sure. The launch of ChatGPT, an AI chatbot, last year threatened to upend how people prepare for…

Asda is facing the prospect of strike action unless it makes significant concessions on its self-styled “efficiency” plans that have placed thousands of jobs at risk, a union source has told Sky News. GMB representatives met late on Thursday – hours after Asda revealed a set of proposals that mainly involved moving away from some higher-paid nightshift work. While 211 night shift managerial roles were placed at risk under the plans, the biggest change would see 4,137 hourly-paid workers move to daytime roles, resulting in the loss of their night shift pay premium of at least £2.52 per hour. Asda said its…

President Joe Biden delivered a Thursday speech to hail economic progress during his administration and to attack congressional Republicans for their proposals on the economy and the social safety net. Some of Biden’s claims in the speech were false, misleading or lacking critical context, though others were correct. Here’s a breakdown of the 14 claims CNN fact-checked. Infrastructure projects Touting the bipartisan infrastructure law he signed in 2021, Biden said, “Last year, we funded 700,000 major construction projects – 700,000 all across America. From highways to airports to bridges to tunnels to broadband.” Facts First: Biden’s “700,000” figure is wildly inaccurate; it adds an extra…

Pakistan’s economy is almost on the verge of collapse. With inflation at 25 per cent, the Pakistani rupee trading in the market at 255 to the dollar and foreign exchange reserves which have sunk to about $3.5 billion, Pakistan is staring at a possible loan default. It desperately needs external funds to shore up its dwindling reserves. It has received pledges of $10 billion from foreign donors. But no one will go ahead till the IMF bailout package of $6 billion signed in 2019 goes through. The IMF has insisted on the correction of structural imbalances in the economy and advocated strict conditionalities. The government…

The World Bank slashed its global growth forecasts from projections it made in mid-2022 on the back of what it sees as broadly worsening economic conditions. The international development institution downgraded almost all of its forecasts for advanced economies in the world, cutting its growth outlook for the global economy to 1.7% for 2023, it said in its latest report, Global Economic Prospects. The organization earlier projected the world economy to expand by 3% in 2023. The adjustment was led by a significant downgrade to its prospects for the U.S. economy — it now forecasts 0.5% growth from an earlier projection of 2.4%.…

The layoffs come a day after Microsoft said it would reduce staff numbers by 10,000 in the coming months, following similar cuts by Meta, Amazon and Twitter. Google is laying off 12,000 workers, or about 6 percent of its workforce, becoming the latest tech company to trim staff as the economic boom that the industry rode during the Covid-19 pandemic ebbed. CEO Sundar Pichai informed staff on Friday at the Silicon Valley giant about the cuts in an email that was also posted on the company’s news blog. The firings add to tens of thousands of other job losses recently…

Ford declined to comment on the report published by Automobilwoche but said transformation to electric vehicle. Ford plans to cut more than a thousand jobs at its main German plant in Cologne, German auto publication Automobilwoche has reported, citing unnamed sources. The head of the works council has called a meeting for all 14,000 employees of the Cologne plant, Ford’s biggest in Germany, on Monday, the report said on Friday. Ford, which according to its website employs around 20,000 people in Germany, declined to comment on the report but said the transformation to electric vehicles required “significant change” in the way…

Shares of Gautam Adani’s business empire sink nearly 20 percent as scathing report by Hindenburg Research ignites rout in conglomerate’s listed firms, casting doubts on how investors will respond to company’s record $2.45 billion secondary sale. Shares in the business empire of Asia’s richest man Gautam Adani has nosedived, extending this week’s losses to $48 billion, days after a US investment firm Hindenburg Research claimed it had committed “brazen” corporate fraud. Adani, 60, began his week the world’s third-richest person but has tumbled down the rankings to seventh on Forbes’ billionaires tracker after a $22.6 billion hit to his fortune…

“I will not let it happen. Not on my watch,” says US President Biden as he accuses his opponents of gimmick to allow “millionaires and billionaires” to avoid paying taxes. US President Joe Biden has said he will veto any Republican legislation that threatens to sow “chaos” in the country’s economy. “I will not let it happen. Not on my watch. I will veto everything,” he said in a speech laying out his economic vision at a Virginia pipe fitters union hall on Thursday. Biden said congressional Republicans’ push to block expansion of the nation’s borrowing limit, threatening a US…