United States

Interest payments will be the single largest federal expenditure, topping Social Security by 2051, a projection shows. US debt breached an all-time high of $33 trillion as federal deficit ballooned amid a swath of Treasury bills, budget experts warned.

Interest payments will be the single largest federal expenditure, topping Social Security by 2051, a projection shows. US debt breached an all-time high of $33 trillion as federal deficit ballooned amid a swath of Treasury bills, budget experts warned.

A paper on the economic projections released indicated another hike might be coming before the end of the year.

Fitch sent Congress a wake up call after the debt limit fight earlier this summer. The ratings agency downgraded US sovereign debt from AAA to AA+ in August, citing the nation’s mounting debt and partisan brinkmanship as the major reasons behind its decision, CNN reported.

The company has filed a petition for Chapter 15 protection with the US bankruptcy court for the Southern District of New York on Tuesday, CNN reported.

That data indicates that the Federal Reserve is still likely to hold rates steady next week, some investors say. But they add that there are pockets of strength in the economy that suggest markets don’t have the all-clear, CNN reported.

Members walked out at three plants: a GM site in Wentzville, Missouri; a Stellantis centre in Toledo, Ohio; and a Ford assembly location in Wayne, Michigan. General Motors CEO Mary Barra told NBC News that the UAW strike might start to affect the US economy relatively soon, assuming the union and the Big Three don't reach agreements on a new contract. 

US stocks opened lower on Friday as the major indexes failed early on to build on a late Thursday rally. The S&P 500 was down 0.3 per cent, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average slumped by 0.2 per cent. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite lost 0.3 per cent, media reports here said.

Consumer prices in the US rose by more than expected last month, driven by higher costs for rent and fuel, particularly, media reports said. The inflation rate, index of the pace of price rises, was 3.7 per cent over the 12 months to August, the Labor Department said adding up from 3.2 per cent in July. 

The Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which measures whether people have enough resources to cover their needs, increased 4.6 percentage points in 2022 from a year earlier, Xinhua news agency quoted the report released late Tuesday as saying.