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The US dollar is wreaking havoc

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

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. 
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China vows to win chip war

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.
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Can Truss outlast a lettuce?

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.

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Who wants to be a millionaire?

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. 

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Xi tries to three-peat

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.
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The CRA’s missing $75 million

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. 
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Russian annexation escalates Ukraine war

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).
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Sabotage!

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.   
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Goodbye, Yellow Brick Belt-and-Road

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.
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