Closing post
Time to wrap up….
A rout in the global bond market appears to have cooled this afternoon, after government borrowing costs hit multiyear highs.
UK 30-year gilt yields (the interest rate on the bond) soared to levels last seen in 1998, trading above 5.1%, as anxiety grew that central banks will leave interest rates high for longer than hoped.
US 10-year Treasury bill yields hit their highest level in 16 years, while Germany’s borrowing costs were the highest since 2011.
But the slump in bond prices has reversed in late trading, after unexpectedly weak jobs data showed fewer new hires than expected last month.
This has pulled the UK 30-year bond yield back to around 5% tonight.
The oil price has also weakened, after Opec+ indicated it will leave its output targets unchanged while Saudi Arabia and Russia reaffirmed their commitment to additional cuts until the end of the year.
Here’s the rest of today’s stories:
Updated
Central banks risk tipping a stalling global economy into a full-blown recession unless they relax their 2% inflation targets and adopt a more pro-growth stance, the economic arm of the UN has warned.
Pointing to evidence of a looming debt crisis in poor countries, the UN said the sharp rises in interest rates from the major central banks since 2021 had increased inequality and reduced investment but proved a blunt anti-inflation weapon.
The annual report from the Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) said global growth was set to slow from 3% in 2022 to 2.4% in 2023, with little sign of a rebound next year.
Richard Kozul-Wright, the director of Unctad’s globalisation and development strategies division, said:
“The global economy is stalling, with Europe teetering on the edge of recession, China facing strong headwinds and financial stresses are reappearing in the United States.
