Daily Dispatches

By Craig Hemke
Sprott Money, Toronto
Tuesday, April 4, 2023

The final leg of the Fed's stool was kicked out from under them Tuesday morning when the latest JOLTS job openings report showed a dramatic slowdown in the U.S. labor market. It's now not a question of "if" the Fed will cut rates, it's a matter of "when".

By Lindsay Dunsmuir and Ann Saphir
Reuters
Tuesday, April 4, 2023

A key gauge of labor market tightness that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has cited throughout the central bank's aggressive interest-rate hike campaign dropped to its lowest level since late 2021, a sign that a long-awaited cooling is underway and easing concerns borrowing costs will have to move much higher to bring down inflation.

From Bloomberg News
Monday, April 3 2023

China's yuan has replaced the U.S. dollar as the most traded currency in Russia, a year after the invasion of Ukraine led to a slew of Western sanctions against Moscow.

The yuan surpassed the dollar in monthly trading volume in February for the first time, and the difference became more pronounced in March, according to data compiled by Bloomberg based on daily transaction reports from the Moscow Exchange. 

Before the invasion, the yuan's trading volume on the Russian market was negligible. ...

From Al Jazeera
Doha, Qatar
Thursday, March 30, 2023

Zimbabwe's government is using smuggling gangs to sell gold worth hundreds of millions of dollars, skirting some of the consequences of tough Western sanctions imposed on the country over human rights abuses, Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit can reveal.