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The 64-year-old won a clear majority on Tuesday – 237 votes in the powerful Lower House and another 125 in the Upper House – as leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Her economic views align closely with those of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who promoted a reflationary policy framework known as “Abenomics.” She has long called for aggressive government spending to boost Japan’s economic growth rate and criticized the Bank of Japan for tightening monetary policy.

On Tuesday, the Governor of the Bank of England (BoE), Andrew Bailey joined the growing number of finance leaders worried about the AI boom and the inflated value of tech companies. In his letter to other G20 finance ministers and bank governors he said, “While most jurisdictions have seen a rebound in financial markets in recent months, the resulting asset valuations could now be at odds with the uncertain economic and geopolitical outlook, leaving markets susceptible to a disorderly adjustment.”

The next day, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) echoed Bailey’s comments when it released its latest World Economic Outlook report…

Despite lingering concerns from earlier tariff shocks and geopolitical tensions, equity markets rallied on AI-driven optimism, cooling inflation, and expectations of central bank rate cutting. The latter notably from the Federal Reserve in the US. Whilst at the same time, the US showed economic resilience with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth for the third quarter, with GDP being revised upwards to nearly 4% on an annualised basis. Positives certainly seemed to outweigh any negatives…

All US markets fell sharply on Friday following Trump’s threat to impose an additional 100% tariff on China from as soon as November.

Earlier in the week, China added five new rare earth minerals (holmium, erbium, thulium, europium and ytterbium) to its control list. This takes the total number of restricted minerals to twelve. China has effectively developed a monopoly on rare earth minerals, and these additions will have a major impact on the US…

As expected, in a week where US President Trump reposted bizarre and offensive AI videos of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, promoted a “med-bed” conspiracy video, and announced plans to use “dangerous cities” as “training grounds” for the US military, he failed to stop a US government shutdown during last week’s negotiations.

It’s the first US government shutdown since the 35-day shutdown in December 2018…

On Tuesday, Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, reiterated the need for the central bank to balance the competing risks of high inflation and a declining job market when making interest rate decisions. Powell called it “a challenging situation” and said there was no “risk-free path” for the Fed to follow.