A supercharged US dollar (USD) is beating up weaker global currencies like a schoolyard bully and leaving central banks scrambling to find a solution. 

The G7 price cap on Russian oil imports set to start December 5 has been touted as the biggest step yet in defunding the Russian war machine. But experts aren’t so sure. 

The chip war is on, and we’re not talking about the always-heated debate about Doritos vs. Miss Vickies—this is the (just slightly) more important battle to control the world’s supply of the most advanced computer chips. 

Driving the news: Chinese President Xi Jinping committed to developing his country’s capacity to build its own cutting-edge semiconductors in a two-hour speech at the Communist Party’s twice-a-decade congress.

Embattled British Prime Minister Liz Truss made (another) U-turn yesterday, firing her top finance official, Kwasi Kwarteng, and reversing her plans to slash the corporate tax rate. 

Catch up: All eyes are on Truss as she scrambles to hang on as Prime Minister after a disastrous first few weeks in office, during which her government’s economic proposals (which she heavily campaigned on) brought the UK to the edge of a financial crisis.

Dream job alert: Get paid millions, tax-free, to build a gleaming city of the future from the ground up. 

There’s just one catch: Your employer is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and that city is Neom, the brainchild of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS, for short). 

Driving the news: Saudi Arabia is luring talent from around the world to work on the project with annual pay packages of over US$1 million for senior executives, per The Wall Street Journal, which stacks up to over 30% more than the typical CEO salary found at a major US company. 

China’s most important political event begins this week, a twice-a-decade Communist Party gathering that will likely see President Xi Jinping secure a precedent-breaking third consecutive five-year term in office. 

Why it matters: Who leads China for the next five years (and their policies) will have enormous consequences for the global economy, which has come to depend on the Chinese economy as a critical manufacturing hub and consumer market.

Six years after the release of the Panama Papers, it’s not totally clear if the government has collected any tax-evasion-money found hidden in Central American offshore accounts. 

Russia will annex four regions in Ukraine today after tightly controlled “referendums” that Kremlin officials claim resulted in 99% of locals voting to join Russia (weirdly, North Korea’s ruling party often wins their elections with similar margins).

In what sounds like a James Bond plot, Danish, German, and Polish officials believe that leaks in Russia’s Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines were likely caused by acts of sabotage.   

There’s buyer’s remorse over that late-night online shopping spree, and then there’s another level of buyer’s remorse entirely (to the tune of $1 trillion)—the latter is what China is experiencing right now as it tries to salvage its troubled Belt and Road infrastructure initiative.