The US military said it’s striking Iran for the second straight day, an escalation of violence that threatens to strain an already fragile ceasefire.

“At the direction of the Commander in Chief, US Central Command forces have started conducting additional strikes against Iran to further degrade their ability to threaten freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz,” CENTCOM said in a social media post, citing attacks on vessels in the waterway. “The United States is holding Iran accountable for recent unjustified aggression against commercial shipping and civilian crews freely navigating a vital international waterway.” (BBG – Continue Reading)

Federal Reserve officials broadly agreed at their meeting last month that they would need to raise interest rates if inflation stays elevated this year. They also agreed that they could stay on hold if price pressures fade soon, according to minutes of that meeting released Wednesday.

Which of those paths they take depends on something they haven’t resolved: whether the forces pushing up prices will last. (WSJ – Continue Reading)

Delaying Social Security reform could have negative effects on the bond market and the economy, new research shows.

The findings — published June 26 by George Mason University’s Mercatus Center — come on the heels of the annual Social Security trustees report. The agency projects that the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance, or OASI, trust fund may be depleted in the fourth quarter of 2032 — three months earlier than projected the previous year. Just 78% of those benefits may be payable at that time, according to the projections.

Pushing reform closer to that depletion date would increase fiscal risk and make it more likely that lawmakers would turn to additional borrowing, straining Treasury markets and the broader economy, wrote co-authors Veronique de Rugy, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, and Jason Fichtner, executive director at the LIMRA Retirement Income Institute, a research initiative within the insurance trade association LIMRA. (CNBC – Continue Reading)

The Bank of Japan may pick up the pace of its rate hikes late this year and eventually push the benchmark above 2% as it races to rein in inflation, a former central bank official said.

“I believe the eventual peak in interest rates will be higher than most people currently expect,” Tsutomu Watanabe, an emeritus economics professor at the University of Tokyo who left the BOJ in 1999, told Bloomberg Wednesday. “The terminal rate will be around 2%, or perhaps a little above.” (BBG – Continue Reading)