After last week’s surprise revelation that the consumer price index fell last month, a lot of us have had a question for Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

“So…rates. Gonna cut ’em now?”

Unfortunately for all of us, the top central banker declined to answer that in his first public remarks since last month’s inflation dip. Powell did, however, say that inflation data in the second quarter has increased his focus on the Fed’s other top goal.

We’ll just have to wait and see what comes out of the Fed’s next rate setting meeting, scheduled for the last two days of July.

ASAP, plz. The Fed can’t lower rates quickly enough for small- and mid-cap companies. There were more corporate bankruptcies in the first half of 2024 than in any six months since 2010, and June was the single worst month since the beginning of the pandemic, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. Most of the filers were small and medium businesses, CNN reported, and most sell goods and services that are optional, like restaurants, or which consumers can hold off buying if they need to, like cars and clothes.

Rate cuts could rev up growth and help more consumers come off the sidelines for these optional purchases, and smaller-cap companies want the cuts even more than large businesses, CNN reported, because high borrowing costs have made it harder and harder for them to pay their workers and buy equipment and supplies, and they use loans more than fundraising to cover those expenses.

Click here for more on how are interest rates are impacting bankruptcies.—GD

Times are indeed changin’. From breakthroughs in AI to fintech’s rising impact on payments, payroll is looking a lot different these days. It’s safe to say your company’s cash-out game is gonna need a refresh.

That’s where Papaya Global Academy comes in. As the world’s first dedicated learning platform for payroll and payments, Papaya Academy can help you prep for the future with 80+ free lessons led by industry heavy hitters, such as Harvard thought leader Eugene B. Kogan.

We’re talking timely courses, such as:

• The CFO’s Guide to Negotiation
• Will Payroll Be Obsolete by 2030?
• How AI Can Drive Payroll & Payments
• How to Avoid Employee Misclassification

Payroll’s changing—keep up with its pace.

Finance teams ought to prepare for a deluge of gas, dinner, and coffee receipts for reimbursements, because it looks like corporate travel expenses may soon reach (or even exceed) pre-pandemic levels.

“By the end of 2024, US-based companies’ spend is expected to reach and perhaps surpass 2019 levels,” according to a new Deloitte report. The firm surveyed business travelers, travel managers, and budget owners in May and June, and found that corporate expenses could swell between 8% and 12% this year.

Nearly three in four (73%) travel managers said their companies’ travel spend will grow this year, and 58% expect spend will grow again in 2025. Their average growth expectations are 14%–15% for both years. This may create some headaches for the roughly one-fifth of CFOs who cited cost management as a top three priority for this year and next, per a recent Gartner survey.

Deloitte experts observed that since the expected bump in travel expenses is greater than the Conference Board’s projected 2.1% GDP increase this year, business travel is likely a “still-recovering industry.”

Click here to read how much business travel has returned.—AZ

There’s some good economic news in the International Monetary Fund’s latest World Economic Outlook, at least.

Growth in global output is expected to align with the IMF’s previously predicted 3.2%, representing no change from this April.

But that’s kind of the end of the good news; the IMF also acknowledged that the global economy is “in a sticky spot.”

Despite the apparent stability of global growth, the report’s authors note that “under the hood, however, offsetting growth revisions have shifted the composition,” adding that “among advanced economies, growth is expected to converge over the coming quarters.”

The United States economy is growing a bit slower than expected. The IMF lowered its projected economic growth for the US to 2.6% in 2024, a 0.1 percentage point dip from April’s projection. “The United States shows increasing signs of cooling, especially in the labor market, after a strong 2023,” Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, the IMF’s chief economist, said in a statement that accompanied the report.

By 2025, US growth is expected to slow to 1.9% “as the labor market cools and consumption moderates, with fiscal policy starting to tighten gradually,” the report’s authors noted.

Click here for more on the global economic outlook.—NP

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