China’s factory prices grew at the fastest pace since the pandemic four years ago as the fallout from the Iran war sharply raises costs. Producer prices rose 2.8% in April from a year earlier after an increase of 0.5% in the previous month, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Monday. That was the fastest since July 2022 and higher than all estimates in a Bloomberg su...
China’s factory prices grew at the fastest pace since the pandemic four years ago as the fallout from the Iran war sharply raises costs. Producer prices rose 2.8% in April from a year earlier after an increase of 0.5% in the previous month, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Monday. That was the fastest since July 2022 and higher than all estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists, whose median was 1.8%. Though food prices slumped , consumer inflation unexpectedly climbed to 1.2% from a year earlier from 1% in March, surprising analysts who expected a slight slowdown. The Chinese yuan extended gains against the US currency after the data release, gaining as much as 0.2% to breach the psychological level of 6.8 per dollar. Chinese bonds futures fell, with the 30-year tenor dropping to the lowest intraday level in more than a month. The acceleration in producer prices was “driven by factors including the rapid rise in international commodity prices, increased demand in certain domestic sectors and improved market competition,” NBS statistician Dong Lijuan said in a statement accompanying the release. Triggered by the war in Iran, the worst energy disruption in generations has already helped end three and half years of factory deflation in China. But it’s also piling pressure on profits as companies struggle to pass on higher costs to their customers, as domestic demand remains weak and labor market shows signs of deterioration . Even in sectors like the services industry, firms are reducing their charges despite a sharp increase in the rate of input cost inflation. In a sign of growing pressure on factories’ profit margins, the purchase price index rose 3.5% from a year ago. That’s the biggest gap with selling prices since August 2024. China had been trapped in a deflationary spiral since late 2022, as a manufacturing glut and sluggish domestic demand led to intense price wars. Bloomberg Economics predicts the GDP deflator, a measure...
Why Socialism Fails Authored by Deborah Palma via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), Economics is not a zero-sum game in which one person’s gain comes at another’s expense; nor is it just about numbers or purposeless statistical aggregates, but conscious human action. Custom image by FEE Ludwig von Mises, in his work “ Human Action ,” explains that individuals act to replace a less satisfactory stat...
Why Socialism Fails Authored by Deborah Palma via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), Economics is not a zero-sum game in which one person’s gain comes at another’s expense; nor is it just about numbers or purposeless statistical aggregates, but conscious human action. Custom image by FEE Ludwig von Mises, in his work “ Human Action ,” explains that individuals act to replace a less satisfactory state of affairs with a more satisfactory one. This process is inherently subjective and teleological, meaning that the values guiding economic activity are rooted in individual choices, and not in physical objects themselves. Economic calculation serves as the bridge between the subjectivity of human desires and the objective reality of scarce resources. Consider a quantity of steel that could be used to build either a hospital or a factory. Without a system of prices reflecting society’s preferences and the relative scarcity of resources, there would be no way to determine which of these projects creates greater value . Economic calculation, expressed through prices, allows for the comparison of alternatives, whilst directing resources toward their most-valued uses. Similarly, consider an entrepreneur evaluating whether they should open a bakery. They must decide how much to invest in equipment, rent, labor, and so on. By comparing the costs of these factors with the expected revenue from sales, our entrepreneur can estimate whether the business will create value. If revenues are expected to exceed total costs and taxes, there will be profit. Profit, therefore, is not merely a financial gain, but evidence that scarce resources have been allocated in ways that better satisfy societal needs, because society has, in an undirected way, decided its needs are satisfied this way. Conversely, losses would indicate that those resources should have been allocated to more valuable uses. Without prices, profits, and losses, the entrepreneur would have no way of knowing whether resources ...
You can’t buy happiness, they say. But we “buy” dopamine fixes all the time. Just whip out the smartphone and we easily go down that rabbit hole of endless doom scrolling, falling into the addictive trap of instant gratification, chasing likes, shares, comments and followers as rewards. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays a key role in our experience of pleasure, focus, reward and motivation...
You can’t buy happiness, they say. But we “buy” dopamine fixes all the time. Just whip out the smartphone and we easily go down that rabbit hole of endless doom scrolling, falling into the addictive trap of instant gratification, chasing likes, shares, comments and followers as rewards. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays a key role in our experience of pleasure, focus, reward and motivation. It propels us to put in effort, devote time and feel good about our achievements. Before the...