Bloomberg Businessweek-Europe Edition June 20, 2022

● The Fed raised rates by 0.75 of a percentage point on June 15. The Federal Open Market Committee said in a statement that it’s “strongly committed to returning inflation to its 2% objective.” A few hours earlier, the European Central Bank held an emergency meeting and promised to devise a new tool to curb market stress, after Italian bond prices surged to levels last seen in 2014. ● War in Ukraine ▶ Russia continued its assault on Sievierodonetsk, Ukraine’s last major foothold in the eastern region of Luhansk. The regional governor said Russian troops now control 80% of the city. ▶ President Volodymyr Zelenskiy pleaded for Ukraine’s allies to accelerate deliveries of advanced weapons and reiterated that fighting will end only when all invading troops leave the country. ▶ Amnesty International accused Russia of…

For too long, a bipartisan, commonsense agreement to fix America’s broken gun laws has seemed out of reach. A new effort in Congress offers reasons for optimism. In the wake of multiple mass shootings this year—including the slaughter of 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas—Senators Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) have reached a tentative agreement on the first significant national gun reform in many years. It won’t please everyone, of course. But there’s no doubt it represents progress. Although negotiations continue, the broad outlines are clear. Crucially, the framework would close the “boyfriend loophole,” ensuring that domestic violence records are more widely included in background checks. It would allow some sealed juvenile records to be available for similar purposes, while boosting penalties for crimes…

▶ IATA holds the aviation industry’s annual general meeting on June 19-21 in Doha. After two years of coronavirus restrictions, airlines are heading into a busy summer season. ▶ Colombia presidential election will take place on June 19. The runoff pits leftist Senator Gustavo Petro against Rodolfo Hernández, a previously little-known independent. ▶ The UK is bracing for travel disruptions on June 21, 23, and 25, when thousands of rail workers go on strike for better pay. It’s the network’s biggest dispute in 30 years. ▶ Monthly inflation figures and producer prices for the UK on June 22 will probably show another uptick, exacerbating the cost-of-living crisis gripping the country. ▶ SoftBank holds its annual shareholder meeting on June 24. CEO Masayoshi Son’s wagers on money-losing technology businesses led to a record loss for…

In a 1997 paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research titled Why Do People Dislike Inflation?, Nobel laureate Robert Shiller and a team of graduate assistants interviewed hundreds of people in the US, Germany, and Brazil. While few of those ordinary Joes knew much about the economic term in question, they were all uniformly against it. Even when one researcher told a survey respondent that inflation might help raise his wages, he remained steadfastly opposed. “I suspect that an important difference between economists and laymen is that, to some extent, we speak different languages,” wrote Harvard’s N. Gregory Mankiw in his review of Shiller’s project. That’s the problem with inflation, which Shiller’s research found to be the most-used economic term in all published news stories in the Nexis database (even…

For hockey fans, this year’s playoffs have been as good as it gets. After a competitive season flush with scoring, the National Hockey League’s yearend tournament has seen a half-dozen series go all the way to seven games. In almost half of the matchups, the winner has come from behind. And in one semifinal game, the Colorado Avalanche scored three times in just over two minutes, helping put the team into the Stanley Cup final against the two-time defending champions, the Tampa Bay Lightning. For ESPN, which last year won the right to broadcast NHL matches through 2028, the playoffs have been equally thrilling. Games have averaged 1.1 million viewers, the company says, up 30% from NBC Sports’ broadcasts last season. Subscribers to the ESPN+ app, which also airs the NHL,…

Chloe Dykstra’s seven Razor scooters have entertained her throughout the pandemic. During lockdown, she also occupied herself building a Lego typewriter. Now she’s eyeing a Sea-Monkeys Aquarium pet hatching kit. Although the toys were designed for kids, that doesn’t bother Dykstra, a 33-year-old writer and producer in Los Angeles. “Sometimes taking care of yourself looks like going back to childhood a little bit,” she says. A cohort of shoppers like Dykstra—dubbed “kidults” by toy industry insiders—have helped US toy sales surge 37% over two years, to $28.6 billion in 2021, according to data tracker NPD Group. Executives more accustomed to the whims and preferences of children initially thought the spike in purchases of dolls and skateboards were for kids cooped up at home. But a survey last year from the US…