U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met with BlackRock Inc executive Rick Rieder in New York on Friday, as the Trump administration continued its search for a new chair for the Federal Reserve, a source familiar with the matter said. Bessent has now spoken with four of the 11 candidates on the administration's list of candidates to replace Fed chair Jerome Powell, whose term expires in May, the source said. Bloomberg first reported Bessent's meeting with Rieder, BlackRock's CIO of fixed income, and called him a rising contender for the post. The two met for two hours and discussed...
President Donald Trump kicked off his Gulf trip on Tuesday with a surprise announcement that the United States would lift long-standing sanctions on Syria, and a $600 billion commitment from Saudi Arabia to invest in the United States. The United States has agreed to sell Saudi Arabia a nearly $142 billion package of arms, the White House said, calling it Washington's largest ever "defense cooperation agreement." The end of sanctions on Syria would be a major boost for a country devastated by more than a decade of civil war. Rebels led by current President Ahmed al-Sharaa toppled President...
Republicans who control the U.S. House of Representatives kicked off public debate on major pillars of President Donald Trump's budget legislation on Tuesday, weighing choices about tax policies and spending on popular social safety-net programs that may strain their narrow majority. The plan, which would extend tax cuts passed during Trump's first term, could add to the nation's $36.2 trillion in debt over the next decade. Congress' bipartisan Joint Tax Committee estimates the tax cuts would cost $3.72 trillion. "Together with a one big, beautiful bill, we can ignite a second Trump...
European Central Bank (ECB) policymaker Francois Villeroy de Galhau indicated in a recent interview that there may be room for another rate cut by the ECB by the summer. The discussion took place with the EBRA newspaper group on Tuesday. Villeroy, who also holds the position of head of the Bank of France, shared his insights on potential inflation trends in the United States and Europe. He suggested that the U.S. might experience a surge in inflation due to the tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump's administration. However, he expressed confidence that Europe would remain unaffected by...
President Donald Trump cited a softer-than-expected inflation report to again pressure Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to lower interest rates. "No Inflation, and Prices of Gasoline, Energy, Groceries, and practically everything else, are DOWN!!!" Trump wrote in a social media post. "THE FED must lower the RATE, like Europe and China have done. What is wrong with Too Late Powell?" Trump added that the Fed's strategy was "not fair to America, which is ready to blossom." "Just let it all happen, it will be a beautiful thing!" he continued. The consumer price index...
President Donald Trump said he'll lift US sanctions against Syria following the toppling of former President Bashar al-Assad, a boost to the war-ravaged country's ambitions of rejoining the international community. "I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at greatness," Trump said in an address to a Saudi-US investment summit in Riyadh on Tuesday. "It's their time to shine." The US leader will go on to briefly meet Syria's new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, in the Saudi capital on Wednesday, a White House...
Asia-Pacific markets traded higher, tracking Wall Street gains overnight.
Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 rose 0.41% after hitting a fresh record high on Thursday, while the Topix added 0.61%. South...
Both the STOXX 50 and STOXX 600 hovered around the flatline on Friday, as investors adopted a cautious stance ahead of further developments in trade talks between US President Trump and Chinese...
Poland rejected on Friday a suggestion by Donald Trump that Russian drone incursions into its airspace could have been a mistake, a rare contradiction of the U.S. president from one of Washington's...