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 [...]
South Korea’s current account surplus hit a nine-month high in July thanks to record exports despite global economic uncertainty, the central bank said Monday. The surplus reached $4.94 billion in July, more than double a revised $2.03 billion the previous month, the Bank of Korea said. The July surplus in the account — the broadest [...]
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke proposed no new steps on Friday to jumpstart a weakening U.S. economy, but signaled that Congress may need to act to stimulate hiring and growth. Bernanke’s speech followed the release of a Commerce Department report that showed the economy grew at an annual rate of only 1 percent this spring, [...]
Hardly covered in the news has been Obama’s recent decision to execute a case-by-case review of over 300,000 illegal immigrants and grant amnesty to those who appear to be “low-priority offenders.” I add that it was hardly covered by the news because its impact on the United States may become profoundly harmful to the economy [...]
FOX Business: The Power to Prosper Nervous traders darted out of equities and flocked into safe-haven assets on heightened euro zone sovereign debt and global economic tensions, launching the markets deep into negative territory. Today’s Markets The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 420 points, or 3.7%, to 10,991, the S&P 500 slid 53.2 points, or 4.5%, [...]
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — The job market strengthened in July, a welcome piece of good news that sharply contrasted other recent data pointing toward an economic slowdown. Employers added 117,000 jobs last month, easily topping the 75,000 gain economists surveyed by CNNMoney had predicted. And the unemployment rate improved slightly to 9.1%. After a shockingly [...]
CONTROVERSIAL when it began a generation ago, China’s one-child policy is stirring yet more contention. Until recently most discussion in China has been confined to academic demographers. Many of them argue that the policy did little good when it began and is increasingly damaging now that the fertility rate is below the replacement level and [...]