Cracks are showing in a pillar of China’s debt market: local-government financing vehicles (LGFVs), the Washington Post reported. Created to fund such things as roads, airports and power infrastructure, they rarely generate enough returns to cover their obligations. That means most rely on injections of municipal funds to stay solvent. With many local authorities facing cash-flow problems due to a real estate crisis, there are growing concerns about this $9 trillion debt market — prompting the country’s biggest state banks to take steps to avert a credit crunch.

A pair of central bank decisions next week will shape the outlook for a wobbly global economy that the World Bank warns in a downbeat new assessment is battling stubbornly high inflation amid the pandemic’s aftermath and the war in Ukraine, the Washington Post reported. The gloomy forecast arrives days after one threat to global growth was eliminated when President Biden signed legislation Saturday to raise the U.S. debt ceiling and avert a potentially catastrophic government default.

Not long ago, Huobi was one of the top crypto exchanges in the world, Bitcoinist reported. At its peak, it was processing over $2 billion in trades per day and ranked third in total volume. These days, Huobi seems to be losing steam. Recent reports and data shared by Willy Woo, a crypto expert on Twitter, indicate that the exchange’s transaction volume and web traffic appear to have suffered a plunge in recent months. Crypto balances held on the Huobi exchange have decreased by over 90% since late 2020.

Amid the ruins of a city ravaged by World War II, Karl Haeusgen’s grandfather invented a hydraulic pump he was so proud of that he founded a company to sell it, the New York Times reported. Back then, there were no revenue projections or five-year growth strategies. The plan was survival: “It was just about grabbing chances,” Mr. Haeusgen said. Seven decades and three generations later the family business, Hawe Hydraulics, ships some 2,500 parts around the globe. Instead of scrambling for sales, though, Mr. Haeusgen must parse the geopolitics of an ever more polarized world.

Liu Zhongtian, who founded Zhongwang Group and built it into Asia's biggest maker of aluminum extrusion products while launching himself onto the Forbes list of China's richest billionaires, now finds himself under legal restraint with his company in bankruptcy and much of his wealth evaporated, Nikkei Asia reported. What went wrong? Zhongwang was set to file a reorganization plan on June 20, nine months after creditors applied for a bankruptcy restructuring of the manufacturer's hundreds of subsidiaries and affiliates.

An Indian court on Wednesday allowed leasing companies to access aircraft leased to Go First for inspection and maintenance, though they were still unable to repossess them while the airline's operations remain stalled, Reuters reported. Lessors of Go First, which was granted bankruptcy protection on May 10, have made several attempts to reclaim planes for missed payments, filing over 50 requests with the watchdog to allow repossession.

From Melbourne to Manchester to Miami, people are struggling under the weight of hefty price increases for the things they buy each day, the New York Times reported. The worst spike in inflation that many advanced economies have seen in decades underscores the global forces driving prices higher, namely the disruptions set in motion by the coronavirus pandemic. The stakes are high for policymakers around the world, who are facing similar problems.

MSCI's global equities index lost ground on Wednesday after weaker-than-expected overseas data and as investors monitored a heating up of American-Chinese trade tensions while they awaited upcoming U.S. economic data and second-quarter earnings, Reuters reported. Investors shrugged off U.S. Federal Reserve meeting minutes released on Wednesday that showed a Fed united in its June meeting decision to hold interest rates steady to buy time to assess whether further hikes would be needed. Minutes also showed most members expecting more policy tightening eventually.