Submitted by Pam Martens and Russ Martens via WallStreetOnParade.com, Less than two weeks after Mary Jo White was nominated to become Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission by President Barack Obama on January 24, 2013, White filed an ethics disclosure letter advising that she would “retire” from her position representing Wall Street banks at the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton. White wrote on this subject in […]
By Tulay Karadeniz | ANKARA ANKARA Turkey’s military said on Friday it was close to taking the northern Syrian city of al-Bab from Islamic State, a victory that would deepen Turkish influence in an area where it has created a de facto buffer zone. Al-Bab, an Islamic State stronghold 30 km (20 miles) from the border, has been a key target in an offensive launched by Turkey […]
ABU DHABI // Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, took part in the Yemen Quartet meeting, held in Bonn, Germany, on Thursday. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al Jubeir, Minister Responsible for Foreign Affairs in the Sultanate of Oman Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah and the United Nations’ Special Envoy for Yemen […]
Ten years ago Vladimir Putin angrily declared that the post-cold war order was a sham. Standing before the western military and diplomatic establishment at the Munich Security Conference, the Russian president accused the US of plunging the world into chaos by warmongering, meddling in other countries’ affairs and disregarding international law. For many, it marked the moment that Mr Putin became an adversary. Now, as foreign policy […]
It is not just equities that are rebounding this month. The dollar is up almost 2 per cent against a basket of its peers as it resumes an upward path that most in the foreign exchange market believe is the natural consequence of the economic policies Donald Trump has vowed to deliver. Given the US president has suggested he prefers a weaker dollar, its fresh strength has […]
Record sales of non-performing loans are expected in Europe this year with a more urgent approach from policymakers driving increased activity, according to Deloitte. As much as €200bn of debt could be sold during 2017, almost double last year’s total of just over €100bn of sales, said the professional services group, which advises banks and investors on NPL transactions. Europe’s banking sector is weighed down by more […]
BEIRUT Syrian Islamist fighters have executed scores of insurgents in the west of the country in an increasingly bloody battle between different militant groups, the SITE Intelligence Group said. An offshoot of the Jund al-Aqsa group killed more than 150 members of rebel factions in the village of Khan Sheikhoun in southern Idlib province, the U.S.-based monitoring service reported on Wednesday. Dozens of those executed were members […]
BERLIN No country can solve the world’s problems on its own and governments can achieve more for their nations if they work together closely, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday. Germany holds the presidency of the G20 leading economies this year, a platform Merkel wants to use to safeguard multilateral cooperation after U.S. President Donald Trump questioned international alliances and obligations and insisted on putting “America […]
The Syrian civil war has left nearly half a million people dead, displaced millions more, and turned its largest city, Aleppo, into an open-air slaughterhouse. The war is destroying antiquity too. For just under a year, from May 2015 to March 2016, the so-called Islamic State held control of the ancient central city of Palmyra, a boomtown that became a Roman colony in the 3rd century A.D. […]
By Phil Stewart and Robin Emmott | BRUSSELS BRUSSELS U.S. President Donald Trump’s defence secretary warned NATO allies on Wednesday that they must honour military spending pledges to ensure the United States does not “moderate” support for the alliance. Jim Mattis, on his debut trip to Brussels as Pentagon chief, also accused some NATO members of ignoring threats, including from Russia. “America cannot care more for your […]
Joo Kim Tiah, the son of one of Malaysia’s wealthiest tycoons, sat on stage in the summer of 2013 as his new business partner announced their plans for a C$360m luxury condominium-hotel project on Vancouver’s most prestigious downtown thoroughfare. With characteristic salesmanship, Donald Trump bragged that the 63-storey glass tower on West Georgia Street would be “one of the great buildings, not only in Canada and the […]
For the tattered Rashidiya neighborhood here, the recent battle never ended. It just shifted course along the river. Rashidiya was the last district in eastern Mosul declared liberated in late January, but army officers say Islamic State sleeper cells remain entrenched. Continue reading the main story And those are not the only troubles here. Even as American-backed Iraqi forces prepare an offensive against the Islamic State stronghold […]
By Steve Holland and Patricia Zengerle | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Senior Republicans issued their boldest challenge yet to U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday, promising to get to the bottom of the relationship between his aides and Russia, and calling for ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn to testify before Congress. Trump, facing a deepening crisis less than a month into his presidency, sought to focus the attention […]
By Ayat Basma | NORTH OF MOSUL, Iraq NORTH OF MOSUL, Iraq Islamic State will put up a tough fight in the western side Mosul that remains under its control despite the losses the group suffered so far in the battle for the Iraqi, a U.S. commander said on Wednesday. “It is hard and hard every day here,” Colonel Patrick Work, commander of the 2nd Brigade, 82nd […]
Donald Trump responded to a growing crisis surrounding his White House on Wednesday by rekindling a public war with the US intelligence community, accusing it of mounting a dirty tricks campaign to undermine his presidency by leaking information about his administration’s ties to Russia. In an early-morning Twitter barrage the US president blamed the escalating crisis that forced this week’s departure of Michael Flynn, his national security […]
Munich mayor Dieter Reiter: “Employees are not satisfied with our IT. More than half are not happy.” Image: ZDNet/Munich City Council Munich’s city council has resolved to draw up a plan for abandoning LiMux, a Linux distribution created especially for its use, which the mayor wants ditched in favor of Microsoft’s Windows 10 by the end of 2020. Despite heavy criticism from opposition parties, the city’s governing […]
For the first time since Q1 2013, mortgage delinquencies rose QoQ in Q4. The jump from 4.52% (of total loans) to 4.80% is the largest since Q1 2010 and hit as mortgage rates spiked following President Trump’s election and Fed Chair Yellen’s jawboning and rate-hike. Of course, levels remain ‘low’ relative to the extreme highs of the financial crisis. One word springs to mind – “contained” […]
Painting a relatively optimistic economic picture during Congressional testimony this week, Janet Yellen confirmed the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates gradually. It was clear in the sessions, though, that other factors would soon weigh on interest rates and markets. Fiscal policy could make the Fed more hawkish. Yet the political agenda of financial deregulation, coupled with President Donald Trump’s choices for several vacancies on the Fed’s […]
ROME The agenda of Syrian peace talks due to begin in Geneva next week will be line with a U.N. Security Council resolution aimed at ending the conflict and will not be changed, U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said on Wednesday. De Mistura, speaking in Rome, said the U.N. resolution 2254 was based on three main points: establishing governance, coming up with a new constitution, and […]
BEIRUT The Syrian opposition wants face-to-face negotiations with the government about a political transition at peace talks that are due to begin in Geneva next week, a leading Syrian opposition politician said on Wednesday. Salim al-Muslit, spokesman for the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), said there could be no role for President Bashar al-Assad in the transition, saying “the heavy price paid by the Syrian people” would have […]
Submitted by Don Quijones via WolfStreet.com, Spain’s three biggest banks, Banco Santander, BBVA and Caixa Bank, have got off to a flying start this year having issued €8.6 billion in new debt, seven times the amount they sold during the same period of last year. The last time they rolled out so much debt so quickly was in 2007, the year that Spain’s spectacular real estate bubble […]
As central bankers seek to wean markets off quantitative easing and exit the dangerous experiment of negative rates, they increasingly fret about the resilience of credit markets. How worried should they be? The US Treasury’s Office for Financial Research, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England have all issued warnings in their financial stability reports voicing concern over whether we might see fire sales that […]
SoftBank’s billionaire founder Masayoshi Son, who has boasted of creating the “Berkshire Hathaway of tech”, has thrown himself into the world of private equity and hedge funds with a $3.3bn acquisition of US alternative asset manager Fortress Investment Group. The deal, which follows the Japanese group’s traditional focus on telecoms and internet, comes just as SoftBank is emerging as one of the world’s largest investors with the […]
Goldman Sachs shares shattered a 10-year record to reach a fresh closing high on Tuesday, buoyed by hopes that the Trump administration will bring a profit-boosting mix of higher interest rates, lower taxes and lighter regulation. All banks have rallied hard since November 8, when Mr Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the race to the White House. But only a handful have done as well as Goldman, […]
