IN LAST week’s leader on India’s economy we referred to the government as acting with Brezhnev-grade complacency. That was probably a bit too harsh. In the last few days I’ve listened to two energetic government bigwigs—officials rather than politicians—talk about the slowdown and what to do about it. Here’s what they had to say. The [...]
IT IS half of the Franco-German motor that drives the European Union. It has been the swing country in the euro crisis, poised between a prudent north and spendthrift south, and between creditors and debtors. And it is big. If France were the next euro-zone country to get into trouble, the single currency’s very survival [...]
SEARCH online for “company incorporation” and you’ll be spoilt for choice. Hundreds of so-called formation agents ply their trade online, offering to set up companies, trusts and foundations cheaply and discreetly, with minimal fuss (and in some cases minimal documentation) almost anywhere in the world. The customer need only click on the company desired, perhaps [...]
AIG is offering about 1.7 billion shares in a range of HK$27.15-27.50 per share – a discount of up to 7 percent to Friday’s close of AIA shares, according to a term sheet seen by Reuters on Monday. Trading in AIA shares was suspended. AIG announced the sale, via a placement with institutional investors, in [...]
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – The weak housing market and high levels of household debt are still holding back the economic recovery, more than four years after the start of the recession and nearly seven years after the housing bubble began to deflate. Make no mistake, the economy is growing. Over the past 10 quarters, the economy [...]
LIKE the weather, American politicians talk a lot about tax reform but do nothing about it. Which is a pity, because while Americans have been talking, other countries have been doing; since the late 1980s, top corporate tax rates around the world have dropped to a point that America’s, once below the international average, is [...]
The news yesterday from Cairo, once again, was ominous. This time Iran warned its oil-producing neighbors in the Persian Gulf against boosting production to offset any potential decrease that might occur when and if Iran drops its exports in the event of an embargo. Iran does not want to see oil shipments from Saudi Arabia, [...]
COMMERCE has long been at the mercy of the elements. The British East India Company was almost strangled at birth when it lost several of its ships in a storm. But the toll is rising. The world has been so preoccupied with the man-made catastrophes of subprime mortgages and sovereign debt that it may not [...]
(Reuters) – Retailers were hoping for more shoppers like Shawn Elzia as the annual Black Friday bargain stampede marked the unofficial start of what is widely expected to be a middling holiday shopping season. The Brooklyn, New York teacher, one of hundreds of thousands of shoppers jostling for deals around the country, said he ended [...]
Oil futures surged over $101 a barrel today for the first time since June, a spike which analysts say could raise prices for consumers. But who will get hit first? The full impact of today’s surge may not be known right away, as the jump is due in part to news of a deal to [...]
As MF Global Holdings Ltd. was sinking in late October, trader Andrew Gochberg thought he was making all the right moves to protect himself if the securities firm failed. The 52-year-old Mr. Gochberg closed his trading positions at MF Global, leaving the entire balance of more than $1 million in what he thought was a [...]
Billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway now has a stake in IBM worth $11 billion, making it the largest single stakeholder in the company. With fully 5.5 percent of the all common shares, Buffett, who is the president, chairman and chief executive officer of conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, has been snapping up as much IBM as he [...]
ALTHOUGH it came after scandal, scheming and a truly dismal record as prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi’s resignation pledge was no more cathartic than any other of the remedies that the euro zone has so far concocted. The gesture was too little because Mr Berlusconi is so distrusted, after a total of eight and a half [...]
The federal government will spend $148.8-million over the next five years to expand existing programs that help the country deal with impacts of climate change, Environment Minister Peter Kent said on Tuesday. Kent explained that the investments were “important” to ensure that the “reality of climate change be well understood and proactively managed.” The funding [...]
FIRST Greece. Next Italy? Troubled euro-zone countries get bail-out money with conditions and strict monitoring by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). But at the G20 summit that concluded in Cannes today, the troubled euro zone got no more money (more on this in my next post), and Italy was placed under IMF monitoring. Though yields [...]
The US Federal Reserve considered a new round of quantitative easing as an option at its September monetary policy meeting, suggesting that “QE3” is still possible if the economy weakens further. “A number of participants saw large-scale asset purchases as potentially a more potent tool that should be retained as an option in the event [...]
Federal Reserve officials are hitting the public-speaking circuit this week to defend their latest attempt to boost the economy, describing the action as prudent and necessary. The central bank said last week it would sell $400 billion of its U.S. Treasury securities maturing in the next three years and replace them with longer-term bonds maturing [...]
THE horns have sounded and the hounds are baying. Across the developed world the hunt for more taxes from the wealthy is on. Recent austerity budgets in France and Italy slapped 3% surcharges on those with incomes above €500,000 ($680,000) and €300,000 respectively. Britain’s Tories are under attack for even considering getting rid of Labour’s [...]
By Greg Robb, MarketWatch WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The Federal Reserve is expected to announce a plan on Wednesday to swap shorter-maturity government securities for longer-dated ones in another stab at jolting the slow-moving U.S. economy, analysts said on the eve of a key meeting. The Federal Open Market Committee of the central bank on Tuesday [...]
WHEN is anything going to go right for Barack Obama in the Middle East? The president came to office hoping to deliver a two-state solution in Palestine, and wasted a lot of political capital failing to do so. He wanted dearly to put America on the right side of the Arab spring, though this entailed [...]