Weekend Reading

To tackle soaring inflation, central banks have kicked off a campaign of interest rate hikes aimed at stabilizing prices while supporting growth. The Federal Reserve is to undertake the most aggressive hikes since the mid-2000s. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said he thinks the U.S. economy “can handle” the tighter monetary policy and avoid a recession. But there could be a rub. “Once inflation gets going, it’s hard to stop,” Allison Schrager writes in Bloomberg Opinion. “The Fed appears to be hoping that inflation will go away on its own if it stops accommodating and the supply chain and oil market work out their kinks.”

The U.S. offered Ukraine $800 million in new weaponry this week, including drones, to help it fight Russia as President Joe Biden called Vladimir Putin a “war criminal.” On Friday, Bidenwarned China’s Xi Jinping against supporting Russia’s invasion while Xi assured Biden his country didn’t want the war. Putin is growing more desperate, Hal Brands writes in Bloomberg Opinion, which makes everything more dangerous. “There are major perils ahead,” Brands said.

The world’s food system is in jeopardy because of the war on Ukraine. Global food prices, already at record highs, could surge another 22% as the conflict stifles trade and slashes future harvests from key grain-growing regions, the United Nations warned. The result could be a full-blown hunger crisis. While Ukrainian refugees flood other European nations, soaring costs could prompt another surge of migrants from Central America to the Mexican and U.S. borders.

A customer packs canisters of cooking oil purchased from a store on the outskirts of New Delhi. The UN is warning that Russia’s war on Ukraine could trigger a global hunger crisis. Photographer: Anindito Mukherjee/Bloomberg

Two years ago, New York City followed China’s lead by locking down to try and limit the spread of the coronavirus. And now? Urban centers in China are again shut down and half of China’s GDP and population could be affected. Cases in Europe tied to the omicron variants are on the rise and the situation “could very well be a preview for the U.S.,” said Yale School of Medicine’s Akiko Iwasaki. A wastewater network is indicating that cases are once again climbing in many parts of the U.S.

Germany for years feared a decline in industrial jobs because its carmakers dragged their feet on going electric. Then Elon Musk announced Tesla would build an EV factory near Berlin, and slowly but surely, Germany began turning into a major hub for supplying and producing electric vehicles. Meantime, a judge has spared Musk from testifying in a case that blames Tesla Autopilot for a fatal crash.

In a rare show of bipartisanship, the U.S. Senate passed legislation to make Daylight Saving Time permanent. The policy of changing clocks from standard to DST was adopted during World War I to conserve electricity, but studies have found it can be disruptive to people’s sleep and health. However, Bloomberg’s editors write, lawmakers would do good to remember the last time DST was made permanent: Energy savings were negligible and kids got hurt in accidents as they went to school in the dark.

Why Sanctioning Billionaires Won’t Sway Putin

Mikhail Fridman, one of the original post-Soviet tycoons, is worth about $10 billion on paper. Now he may be reduced to a monthly allowance of less than $3,500—his assets frozen because of sanctions meant to pressure Putin to end his war. But oligarchs have no influence over the Russian leader, Fridman argues. “Those who are making this decision understand nothing about how Russia works.”

Mikhail Fridman greets Vladimir Putin at a U.K.-Russia energy summit in London in 2003. Between them is then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Photographer: John Stillwell/AFP/Getty Images

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Why Sanctioning Billionaires Won’t Sway Putin