US lawmakers voted to raise the federal debt limit on Wednesday, eliminating the threat of a disastrous credit default with just hours to spare ahead of the deadline set by the Treasury.

The Federal Reserve opened its two-day policy meeting on Tuesday, focused squarely on how to address the troubling US inflation threat.

Global shares fell on Tuesday and the US dollar rose again as investors held their breath ahead of the update on monetary policy due out from the Federal Reserve on Wednesday.

American businesses stand to lose more than 3 million days of operations from flooding in 2022 and will face worsening economic fallout in the coming decades as climate change fuels ever more extreme weather events, researchers said yesterday.

The Biden administration has ordered US government agencies to immediately stop financing new carbon-intensive fossil fuel projects overseas and prioritize global collaborations to deploy clean energy technology, according to US diplomatic cables.

Drugmakers have targeted the U.S. market to earn outsized profits from old medicines, according to a report released on Friday by the House Oversight Committee that highlighted Eli Lilly and Co, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi, which dominate the market for insulin.

The US Federal Reserve’s experiment with running a “hot” economy has edged into historically uncharted territory, with an unemployment rate never reached without associated central bank rate increases and now levels of inflation that in the past also prompted a policy response.

US consumer prices rose last month at a rate not seen in nearly 40 years, the government reported Friday, underscoring how inflation threatens the world’s largest economy and President Joe Biden’s public support.

Strong American export business caused a large drop in the US trade deficit last month, even as imports also rose, according to government data released Tuesday.

The US Treasury is moving to combat corruption, money laundering and tax evasion by shell companies by requiring firms disclose their ownership, according to proposed rules announced Tuesday.

President Joe Biden’s administration will announce an anti-corruption strategy meant to tackle two major vehicles for money laundering in the United States -- real estate transactions and shell companies.

Bitcoin tumbled almost 5 per cent on Monday as the start of the week offered little respite to the world’s largest cryptocurrency after a bruising weekend where at one point it lost over a fifth of its value.

Global stocks finished a volatile week on a downcast note Friday, sunk by festering worries over the Omicron variant and disappointment at the most recent US job growth figures.

Business activity in the massive US services sector grew beyond expectations in November even as companies dealt with shortages and supply delays, according to an industry survey released Friday.

The International Monetary Fund is likely to lower its global economic growth estimates due to the new Omicron variant of the coronavirus, the global lender’s chief said at the Reuters Next conference on Friday in another sign of the turmoil unleashed by the ever-changing pandemic.

The Biden administration could adjust the timing of its planned release of strategic crude oil stockpiles if global energy prices drop substantially, US Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk told Reuters on Wednesday.

US manufacturing activity picked up in November amid strong demand for goods, keeping inflation high as factories continued to struggle with pandemic-related shortages of raw materials.

US President Joe Biden’s top Pacific envoy on Wednesday accused China of trying to “drive Australia to its knees” through a barrage of sanctions that amounted to “economic warfare”.

Just as it was recovering from the body blow of the Covid-19 pandemic, the global economy has taken yet another hit from the Omicron variant of the virus, which has led to a raft of new travel restrictions.

The Biden administration proposed a slew of changes on Friday to the nation’s federal oil and gas leasing program, including hiking fees on drilling companies and limiting their access to sensitive wildlife and cultural zones.