Crypto News: Workforce woes

As the dust settles on yesterday's 10th interest rate hike by the Bank of England, its top brass have been touring the broadcast studios: Whilst we're clearly nearing the end of the rate hiking cycle, the BOE is reluctant to declare victory.

Aside from the question of whether or not more hikes are on the horizon, the story is pretty clear: A large part of the problem is the UK's labor supply. Bloomberg's Phil Aldrick suggests the key to getting Britain working again is probably… to get Britain working again.

This graph shows you why workforce problems are weighing on the UK economy's potential.

Partly this is Covid, but partly too this is lower net migration from the EU that has "only partially been offset by higher migration from outside the EU," the Bank of England said. Have Brexit and Covid permanently reduced the size of the British workforce?

The government has stressed it will address this in March's budget. There's a lot riding on it.

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The stories you need to know about this evening

Britain's rail network has been affected by strikes today, with the biggest train drivers' union warning of more industrial action if talks next week don't lead to a breakthrough.
Hiring unexpectedly surged and unemployment fell to a 53-year low in the US jobs market, defying recession forecasts.
A cyber attack has sent derivatives trading back to the 1980s as shops were forced to process deals manually.
Pro-Brexit Tories and Northern Ireland's DUP have sent Rishi Sunak a warning as an EU deal nears.

It's a one-man polycrisis with "few parallels" according to Bloomberg writer Blake Schmidt. What is happening right now to Indian billionaire Gautam Adani is, for Blake, a downfall "so spectacular that it defies just about every historical comparison."

Nonetheless, in his analysis piece, Blake has a go. Adani has "lost more than Sam Bankman-Fried and been wiped out almost as fast as Elon Musk… All told, Adani's wealth wipeout is among the most severe in terms of scale and speed since Bloomberg began tracking billionaires in 2012." There's peril for everyday Indians too: Adani's troubles threaten public sector investments and the country's important diplomatic year.

Gautam Adani, billionaire and chairman of Adani Group, during a video speech on monitors in Mumbai, India. Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg

A quick recap: at the time of writing, Adani Group has shed $112 billion in market value since Hindenburg Research accused it of stock manipulation and accounting fraud in a Jan. 24 report. To be clear, that was barely ten days ago. Since then, Gautam Adani has lost his place in the world's top 10 richest people, and fallen off his pedestal as not only Asia's richest person, but also India's.

The ripple effect is in full ripple: Boris Johnson's brother, Jo Johnson, has stepped down as director of an Adani-linked firm — Elara Capital. Meanwhile BlackRock, the world's biggest asset manager, is among at least 200 financial institutions around the world to have had exposure to Adani Group's $8 billion in dollar bonds.

In India, our writers argue, there will be an impact on both foreign investment and confidence in the country's Prime Minister. Adani has become the poster child for the Modi administration's use of private capital to boost infrastructure and domestic manufacturing.

As concerning are the amounts Indian institutions have invested in Adani enterprises. Now that the conglomerate's ability to keep delivering is coming into question, the market crash has spilled into politics. Parliament had to be adjourned for the day after pandemonium broke out when the upper house chair rejected opposition lawmakers' demands for a debate on Adani.

2023 is a key year for India — it looks set to become the world's most populous nation and hosts world leaders in September with the G20. The government must be hoping this tale of one powerful man's downfall can be contained.

Britain's blue-chip stocks closed at an all-time high today, for the first time since 2018. The FTSE 100 Index climbed as much as 0.9%, as the pound slumped after the US dollar rallied on stronger-than-expected jobs data.

Having managed to avoid a selloff last year on the sterling's weakness, the FTSE 100 Index joined a global equities rally in 2023 with a nearly 6% gain, helping the British large-cap benchmark scale an all-time high.

Get ahead of the curve

Under discussion. Germany and Sweden are in talks over anti-missile systems for Ukraine.

Supermarket prices. A United Nations index of food commodity costs fell for the 10th month in a row, despite consumers still feeling the squeeze.

Surveillance balloon. What you need to know about the Chinese spy balloon floating over the US.

Sticking around. Amazon's slowing cloud-computing sales are expected to linger.

Cutting-edge medicines. Sanofi's CEO warned that the UK risks throwing away its pharma success.

Competing pressures. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said he's pushing the Treasury for more military spending at the budget.

$100 billion

Swiss prosecutors are investigating a data leak involving thousands of former Credit Suisse clients with significant holdings in the bank.

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Banks on the skyline in Frankfurt. Photographer: Alex Kraus/Bloomberg

Ten of the region's biggest lenders that have reported so far boosted net lending revenue by 16% to a record €120.8 billion ($131.6 billion) last year, fueling their highest profits since 2007 and setting off a cascade of dividend increases and buybacks. With rates set to increase further, executives from Deutsche Bank to Nordea Bank are saying the good times aren't over yet. But savers look set to start demanding their cut of the higher rates.