US Federal Reserve

Americans are finally reaping some benefit from keeping their money in the bank.

Banks are paying up for savers' deposits in a much bigger way than they have in more than a decade, based on recent earnings reports from the nation's biggest banks.

U.S. interest rates are likely to rise further, and will need to remain high to effectively tackle inflation, a top Federal Reserve official said on April 20.

Tesla reported a drop in first-quarter earnings on April 19 as price cuts at Elon Musk's electric vehicle company boosted demand but hit profit margins.

Profits came in at $2.5 billion, down 24 percent from the year-ago period on revenues of $23.3 billion, which were up 24 percent.

Oil prices continued to fall during trading on Thursday, hitting three-week lows on concerns that rising interest rates policies by leading central banks could limit global economic growth and fuel consumption going forward.

At the same time, the dollar has appreciated in the foreign exchange market, with its strengthening making oil more expensive for buyers in other currencies.

President Joe Biden keeps seeing good economic news and bad public approval ratings. The unemployment rate fell to 3.5 percent in March.

More than 236,000 jobs were added. But there has been no political payoff for the president.

U.S. adults are skipping past the jobs numbers and generally feeling horrible about the economy.

India's Central Bank held interest rates yesterday for the first time in nearly a year because of "unprecedented uncertainty" in global markets but said it was committed to taming persistent inflation.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) left the benchmark repurchase rate at 6.50 percent after hikes at all six of its prior meetings since May 2022.

The United States is likely to enter a recession this year and face high inflation through 2024, a majority of economists polled in a recent survey predicted.

More than two-thirds of respondents to the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) policy survey forecast that inflation will remain above four percent at the end of this year.

The Federal Reserve extended its year-long fight against high inflation on March 22 by raising its key interest rate by a quarter-point despite concerns that higher borrowing rates could worsen the turmoil that has gripped the banking system.

The slowing pace of the Fed rate hikes and those that followed in Britain, Switzerland and Norway kept investors at bay on Thursday, though buyers edged out sellers at Athinon Avenue for price growth on low turnover. This time banks underperformed, but they are about to be joined soon by the new listing of Optima Bank in a rare injection of fresh blood in this section of the market.

U.S. central bankers face an unenviable task when they gather in Washington this week: Tackling persistent inflation without adding to financial sector turmoil after Silicon Valley Bank's rapid collapse.

The Federal Reserve has raised rates eight times since last year in the face of decades-high inflation as it looks to cool the economy without tipping it into a recession.