The inflation see-saw

The see-saw continues. The first half of the week brought warnings of resurgent inflation and bigger rate hikes along with fresh reasons to support them. A report showed America’s job market continuing to crush it, keeping wages high despite the Fed’s best efforts. Well it’s Thursday and we’ve flipped to the other side. Applications for US unemployment benefits last week rose to the highest since December, blowing past all estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists. The numbers suggest some softening in the still-tight labor market, and will likely go into the pot as the Fed cooks up its next rate hike. On Wall Street, the S&P 500 fell to the lowest since Jan. 19 with financial companies plunging more than 4%. Here’s your markets wrap. —David E. Rovella

How big a toll is work-from-home taking on the biggest commercial landlords? Big. As borrowing costs soar and downtowns are left half empty, even the titans are quickly realizing they miscalculated. Some are even skipping payments.

Visa and Mastercard were planning on creating a new merchant code that anti-gun violence advocates hoped would help slow America’s drumbeat of firearm-fueled killings. But then Republicans in several state legislatures started drawing up bills targeting the new code. Now Visa and Mastercard have postponed its implementation.

Ukraine has been getting good at knocking down Russian missiles, but not so much on Thursday. The Kremlin, in its latest deadly attack on residential areas and infrastructure, relied on more of its expensive, high-end missiles, and most of them got through, Kyiv authorities said. They included Kinzhals, a nuclear-capable supersonic missile, KH-22 anti-ship missiles and S-300 anti-aircraft missiles. At one meter in diameter and eight meters long, the Kinzhal travels at Mach 5 and carries a 1,058 pound payload. It was likely developed to target ships and command centers in the event of conflict with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

German authorities said they searched a vessel that may have transported explosives used in the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines last year. This comes just days after several news organizations reported intelligence indicating a pro-Ukrainian group may have been behind the explosion.

This week, the influential sister of North Korea leader Kim Jong Un threatened the US with unspecified consequences if it goes ahead with joint military drills with South Korea. It’s true that Pyongyang has been making a show of testing missiles for so long that one could forgive South Korea and the US for taking the saber-rattling with a grain of salt. But a look at the numbers shows that, since the beginning of last year, the pace of launches has radically accelerated.

The world is getting hotter. Rising incomes across the Global South mean more people can afford air conditioning—and they understandably want it. One problem with A/C though is that it sends large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, perpetuating the cycle of warming. Making matters worse is that soon temperatures will rise so high that some regions will become unlivable. On the latest episode of Getting Warmer With Kal Penn, he explores both novel and tried-and-true cooling strategies being employed to help keep the planet livable.

One of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds has a new boss. Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan will become chairman of Abu Dhabi’s
$790 billion sovereign wealth fund. He’s already the United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser and head of its largest bank. His brother, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, will lead the emirate’s Mubadala Investment Co., which has only $272 billion.

Bloomberg continues to track the global coronavirus pandemic. Click here for daily updates.

The threats posed by the digital world to you, your family, companies and nations have been growing for years. As humans live their lives on the internet, even the tiniest details can be exploited. The conventional wisdom has been that the death of privacy wrought by 21st century technology will leave us more exposed to hackers as every day passes. But as renowned mathematician Hannah Fry reveals on this episode of The Future With Hannah Fry, maybe that’s not the case after all.

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The Bloomberg Invest series returns to London on March 22, gathering leading thinkers in investing to identify the biggest risks and greatest opportunities facing those in the region. Join in London or online to hear from executives from Blackstone, QuantumLight, and Sotheby’s. Register here.