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Sterling has recorded its steepest monthly decline against the dollar since the wake of the Brexit referendum against a backdrop of intensifying economic and political uncertainty. The pound fell 4.5 per cent in August to $1.16 in the biggest monthly drop since October 2016. Sterling also declined by almost 3 per cent against the euro.

Rishi Sunak, Tory leadership contender, has warned that it would be “complacent and irresponsible” to ignore the risk of markets losing confidence in the British economy, as wagers against UK government debt sent short-term borrowing costs in the gilt market soaring. In an interview with the Financial Times, Sunak said his leadership rival Liz Truss

The EU is preparing emergency measures to curb the price of electricity by separating it from the soaring cost of gas, as Shell warns the energy crisis could last for years, and utilities turn to the state for support. With member states stepping up pressure for action, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said

Central bankers face a more challenging economic landscape than they have experienced in decades and will find it harder to root out high inflation, top multilateral officials and monetary policymakers have warned. The world’s leading economic authorities this weekend sounded the alarm about the forces working against the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and other

The writer is chief executive of the Resolution Foundation think-tank Economic crises have phases you can almost feel. They ebb and they flow, as the nature and scale of the crisis, and our awareness of it, changes. Single events often crystallise a shift, forcing policymakers to wake up to the fact they are required to

The scale of the challenge facing the UK’s next prime minister was laid bare on Friday when the energy regulator said household power bills would surge 80 per cent with further rises expected next year. Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak, the two candidates for the leadership of the Conservative party, will face a spiralling cost

Liz Truss is considering plans to trigger “Article 16” proceedings against the EU over the Northern Ireland protocol within days of entering Downing Street if she succeeds Boris Johnson as prime minister next month, according to several government insiders. The UK and Brussels are locked in a fractious legal stand-off over implementing the deal covering

Joe Biden’s administration will cancel $10,000 in student loan repayments for millions of Americans in a move that has pleased progressives but threatens to push up inflation. The US president announced the decision on Wednesday, following months of deliberations over the exact structure of the debt forgiveness scheme. Biden paused most student debt repayments during

One of the UK’s largest energy groups has told ministers that a rescue plan to protect households from rising bills will need funding of more than £100bn over two years, underlining the scale of the crisis engulfing Britain as gas prices surge. Keith Anderson, chief executive of Scottish Power — one of the “Big Six”

US stocks suffered their biggest decline in two months on Monday, with tech shares falling sharply on worries about the gloomy economic outlook and concerns that members of the Federal Reserve will adopt a hawkish tone at a symposium this week. Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 index slid 2.1 per cent, its most severe one-day

Moscow sees no possibility of a diplomatic solution to end the war in Ukraine and expects a long conflict, a senior Russian diplomat has warned, as President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion reaches the six-month mark this week. Gennady Gatilov, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, told the Financial Times that the UN should

Some investors are warning of a mismatch between market expectations and the Federal Reserve’s stated commitment to stamping out inflation as traders stand by their wagers on interest rate cuts next year. Traders in the futures market are betting the central bank’s main interest rate will be cut to 3.3 per cent by the end

Investors are raising red flags over a stock market rally that has added more than $7tn in value to US equities since June, with many of the gains being driven by hedge funds unwinding bearish bets rather than newfound conviction that it is time to buy. Traders at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said he is ready to support peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow after he met President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Lviv. Erdoğan, who has acted as an intermediary between Moscow and Kyiv, on Thursday made his first trip to Ukraine since Russia’s full-blown invasion on February 24 and said he

Federal Reserve officials discussed the need to keep interest rates at levels that restrict the US economy “for some time” in a bid to contain the highest inflation in roughly 40 years, according to an account of their most recent meeting. Minutes from the meeting, at which the US central bank raised its benchmark policy

The global energy crisis deepened on Tuesday as a further surge in natural gas prices in Europe and the US threatened to push some of the world’s largest economies into recession. Gas markets in Europe jumped by as much as 10 per cent to as high as €251 a megawatt hour, equivalent in energy terms

Activist investor Dan Loeb is agitating for sweeping changes at Disney, including a shake-up of its board, a spin-off of the sports television network ESPN and aggressive cost-cutting after rebuilding a stake in the entertainment and media group. The head of the Third Point hedge fund also recommended that the company take full control of

US lawmakers demanded more information on the potential threat to national security posed by Donald Trump’s hoarding of classified documents, as the fallout from the unprecedented search at the home of the former president reverberated through Washington. The comments by Democrats and Republicans on Sunday were among the first reactions from Congress to the release