Photo President Trump and Prim Minister Netanyahu entering the White House on Wednesday. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times President Trump came forward with a nonsensical statement on Wednesday as he dangerously backed away from the two-state solution, which has been central to America’s Mideast policy for more than 20 years and remains the only just answer to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “So, I’m looking at two-state and […]
Thursday 05.10 GMT Overview The dollar was on the back foot in afternoon Asia trading on Thursday as US Treasuries steadied and oil prices found their footing after dipping on news of growing US stockpiles. Hot topic The dollar index tracking the greenback against a basket of peers was off as much as 0.3 per cent, as a rally spurred by US Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen’s […]
China ended a six-month streak disposing of its US Treasury holdings in December, adding to its position for the first time since last May as the country’s central bank seeks to manage capital flight. The country, which ceded its status as the world’s largest owner of haven Treasuries in October to Japan, added $9.1bn of US sovereign debt to its reserves in the final month of 2016, […]
The reflation trade is back, in earnest. On Wednesday, all-world stock indices traded at all-time highs for the first time since spring 2015. US 10-year bond yields rose back to 2.5 per cent. Bank stocks rallied, with Goldman Sachs at an all-time high for the first time in a decade. So did tech stocks — Apple is back at a record. All of this after a hawkish […]
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 […]
The chief executive of General Motors has flown to Germany as the US carmaker seeks to assuage concerns from local managers and unions about job losses amid talks to sell the carmaker’s ailing European business to French rival PSA Peugeot Citroën. Mary Barra and key lieutenant Dan Ammann arrived at Opel’s headquarters, GM’s subsidiary, on Tuesday morning, while PSA chief executive Carlos Tavares is pushing to meet […]
Kim Jong Un’s brother, who was killed in Malaysia on Monday, begged the North Korean leader to spare his life after escaping an earlier assassination attempt, the head of South Korean intelligence said on Wednesday. Kim Jong Nam wrote to the supreme leader in 2012 to ask him to spare his life and those of his family, Lee Byung-ho, director of the National Intelligence Service, told lawmakers […]
Why am I telling you this story? Because Israel is getting closer every day to wiping out any possibility of a two-state solution. Just last week, Netanyahu’s government pushed through the Knesset a shameful new law declaring that wildcat Jewish settlers who had illegally set up caravans on private West Bank Palestinian land, and erected their own settlement there, will have their settlements legalized, although the Palestinian […]
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 […]
By Patricia Zengerle | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Benjamin Netanyahu’s first Trump-era Washington visit offers a chance to repair ties to Democrats that frayed during years of chilly relations under the Obama administration, but many party members said they do not expect much improvement given the Israeli prime minister’s close alignment with Republicans. “There’s a lot of mending of fences that has to happen between the Netanyahu government and […]
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, […]
The reaction to a strike at the world’s largest copper mine underlines the sharp reversal in fortune in one of the world’s key metals over the past four months. Copper has jumped 5 per cent in the past two days to a two-year high after a strike at the Escondida mine in Chile raised supply fears about a market that has been starved of investment. The dispute […]
Winter is coming to Battlefield 1. Developer DICE released the patch notes of the “Winter Update” of its World War first-person shooter Battlefield 1. The game was launched on Oct. 21, 2016 to positive reviews, with most of the praises heaped on the game’s WWI theme and single player campaign. Electronic Arts published Battlefield 1 developed by DICE, a Swedish studio. The ‘Winter Update’ will be out […]
The US economy and fiscal policy face an uncertain path under the administration of Donald Trump, Janet Yellen warned on Tuesday as she declared “monetary policy is not on a preset course” but said it would be “unwise” to raise rates too slowly. Testifying before Congress on Tuesday, the Federal Reserve chair painted a picture of an economy with accelerating growth, higher inflation and a robust labour […]
Greece is planning to appoint Rothschild to advise on its debts as the country attempts to end a long-running creditor stand-off and avert default. Government officials hope to finalise the appointment before a gathering of eurozone finance ministers on February 20 that has been described as the last chance for Greece’s lenders to overcome their differences before European attention shifts to general elections in eurozone countries. Unless […]
Credit: Michigan Technological University Interested in making an investment that promises a 100 percent return on your money, and then some? Buy a low-cost, open-source 3-D printer, plug it in and print household items. In a recent study published in Technologies, Michigan Technological University Associate Professor Joshua Pearce set out to determine how practical and cost effective at-home 3-D printing is for the average consumer. He […]
Call me old-fashioned, but I always prefer phone calls over texts. They somehow have a different level of connection when it comes to communication. You can actually tell if the person you’re talking to is excited, happy, sad or even bored with what you’re saying. And yet this may be the exact reason why people dislike phone calls these days – the fear of people’s reactions. There’s […]
Kim Jong Nam, the older half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, has been assassinated at Kuala Lumpur airport, Korean-language media reported late on Tuesday. He was reportedly killed by two women using poisoned needles who fled the scene by taxi, the reports said. The older Mr Kim was once considered to be an heir to the late Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s former leader, but […]
A few days before the retreat, I met up with the man who, perhaps more than any other figure in the conservative movement, had maneuvered the party toward complete and unbending opposition to Obamacare: Michael Needham of the Heritage Foundation. Needham, 35, is the chief executive of Heritage Action for America, a feral cur of a lobbying organization established by the venerable conservative think tank in 2010 […]
A striking feature of global financial markets since the crises of 2007 and 2008 has been the high propensity of many wealthy private investors to sit out all the turmoil, holding cash in bank accounts rather than in riskier assets. Might that be about to change? The word among bankers in conservative Switzerland — the world’s largest centre for cross-border private wealth management — is that it […]
Google added a neat and useful new feature with the latest Google Maps update, now allowing users to create shareable lists. It may not seem like a major feature at first, but the more you think of it, the more it makes sense and you come to wonder why Google hasn’t offered this option so far. Shareable Google Maps lists make the whole experience more social and even […]
After a five-hour delay, Toshiba has finally unveiled a $6.3bn nuclear writedown. The company announced that Shigenori Shiga, the chairman of Toshiba, will step down after the struggling Japanese industrial group warned that it would book a ¥712.5bn ($6.3bn) writedown to reflect massive cost overruns and delays linked to several nuclear projects in the US. For the full year through March 2017, the company said it anticipates […]
US markets regulators have delayed enforcement of new derivatives rules due to come into effect in two weeks’ time because few of the hundreds of pension funds, insurers and asset managers affected would be ready in time. There were fears that the widespread lack of readiness to comply could have caused market disruption if they were enforced as planned on March 1. The rules require some derivatives […]
