Free Republic

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Wednesday that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not the primary driver of inflation. In a Senate Banking Committee hearing Wednesday morning, Sen Bill Hagerty (R-TN) pointed out that inflation rose from 1.4 percent in January of 2021 to seven percent by the end of the year, months before Russia invaded Ukraine. It has since risen another 1.6 percentage points. “Given how inflation has escalated over the past 18 months, would you say the war in Ukraine is the primary driver of inflation?” Hagerty asked. “No,” Powell responded. “Inflation was high. Certainly, was high before...

Federal Reserve officials have a “decent chance” of avoiding a recession in the United States with a “soft landing,” former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke said on Sunday. “The U.S. economy today is a mixed bag,” Bernanke said on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” while noting inflation levels that have reached 40-year highs. “A recession is possible. Economists are very bad at predicting recessions, but I think the Fed has a decent chance, a reasonable chance of achieving what [Fed Chair] Jay Powell calls a ‘soft-ish landing;’ either no recession or a very mild recession to bring inflation down,” he added....

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered global condemnation and tough sanctions aimed at denting Moscow’s war chest. Yet Russia’s revenues from fossil fuels, by far its biggest export, soared to records in the first 100 days of its war on Ukraine, driven by a windfall from oil sales amid surging prices, a new analysis shows.Russia earned what is very likely a record 93 billion euros in revenue from exports of oil, gas and coal in the first 100 days of the country’s invasion of Ukraine, according to data analyzed by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a research...

India is buying up cheap sanctioned Russian oil, refining it, then selling it to the US and EU for huge profits, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The US has reluctantly given India permission to buy Russian oil because India has threatened to ditch their alliance with America and ally with China if the US dares to sanction them. While Americans and Europeans are being forced to pay record prices for gas as "the cost of standing up for freedom," the free nation of India is buying oil from Russia for a whopping $35 off a barrel...

As the Russian ruble defies currency market gravity, perhaps no one is more surprised than officials in Ankara and Buenos Aires.

Russia's failure to pay $1.9 million in accrued interest on a dollar bond will trigger payouts potentially worth billions of dollars, a panel of investors determined on Wednesday, as the country teeters on its first major external debt default in over a century.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon says he is preparing the biggest U.S. bank for an economic hurricane on the horizon and advised investors to do the same. “You know, I said there’s storm clouds but I’m going to change it… it’s a hurricane,” Dimon said Wednesday at a financial conference in New York. While conditions seem “fine” at the moment, nobody knows if the hurricane is “a minor one or Superstorm Sandy,” he added. “You better brace yourself,” Dimon told the roomful of analysts and investors. “JPMorgan is bracing ourselves and we’re going to be very conservative with our balance...

The European Union has reached a deal to ban the import of Russian oil , EU council president Charles Michel said late on Tuesday. In a tweet, he said it would immediately covers more than two thirds of oil imports from Russia, “cutting a huge source of financing for its war machine”.A proposed exception for oil delivered by pipeline earlier edged the EU towards finalising the deal to sanction Russia and squeeze its financial ability to wage war in Ukraine.

While Europe shuns Russian oil amid sanctions and expectations of an oil embargo on Russian oil imports, India and China have stepped up purchases and are importing record volumes of Russian crude, according to data from energy analytics company Kpler cited by Bloomberg on Friday. Russia had up to 79 million barrels of crude either traveling on tankers or held in floating storage over the past week, Kpler’s estimates have shown. That’s more than double the 27 million barrels of crude Russia had seaborne in February, just before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Before the war, Russia was primarily selling its...

Brent Crude prices could jump to well above $150 per barrel if Russia’s oil exports fall off a cliff in the coming months, according to Bank of America. “With our $120/bbl Brent target now in sight, we believe that a sharp contraction in Russian oil exports could …. push Brent well past $150/bbl,” analysts at Bank of America (BofA) Global Research wrote in a research note on Friday carried by Reuters. In a base-case scenario, Bank of America expects Brent Crude prices to average $104.48 a barrel this year and $100 a barrel in 2023. Early on Friday, Brent Crude...

One of the side effects of war is economic dislocation. No matter what Vladimir Putin chooses to call his war in Ukraine, it is a war, and it is dislocating markets worldwide. Most of the attention has been on the potential disruption of Russian oil and gas supplies to Europe, but a more significant problem than cold Euros is looming. Ukraine is one of the world’s leading exporters of wheat and sunflower oil. Because of Putin’s War, Ukrainian products can’t pass through the Black Sea to get to market.Fears of a global food crisis are swelling as Russian attacks on...