Shares in Italian banks opened sharply lower Monday morning after voters rejected the country’s constitutional reform referendum, with investors questioning whether some of Italy’s largest financial institutions will now be able to raise capital needed to shore up their finances. Milan’s stock market benchmark, the FTSE Mib, was down 1.4 per cent to 16,857.0 in opening trading, led lower by its banks after Matteo Renzi, Italy’s prime […]
Submitted by Michael Shedlock via MishTalk.com, On the same day Matteo Renzi suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of alleged “populists” in Italy, German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble ruled out debt relief for Greece ahead of a eurozone finance minister meeting. Schäuble says Greece Must Reform or Leave Eurozone. Greece must implement economic reforms if it is to keep its place in the eurozone, Germany’s finance […]
Discuss the law of large numbers with statisticians and they mean using large samples to improve experiments. Analysts take the phrase to mean no company or economy can grow stratospherically forever. China watchers have another approach, forecasting eye-popping numbers for future foreign investment into Chinese financial markets. Expected long-term inflows via the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect, launched on Monday, are no exception. But in the short term, […]
By Crispian Balmer and Gavin Jones | ROME ROME Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said he would resign after suffering a crushing defeat on Sunday in a referendum on constitutional reform, tipping the euro zone’s third-largest economy into political turmoil. His decision to quit after just two and a half years in office deals a blow to the European Union, already reeling from multiple crises and struggling […]
The cashless society is catching up to all of us. As SHTFPlan.com’s Mac Slavo notes, Most of Europe has shifted that way, and now India is forcing the issue. In the United States, people are being acclimated to it, and may soon find that no other option is practical in the highly-digitized online world. Once that takes hold, the banksters, bureaucrats and hackers will have total […]
By Nichola Saminather and Wayne Cole | SINGAPORE/SYDNEY SINGAPORE/SYDNEY The euro was under the gun on Monday, skidding to a 20-month low after Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said he would resign following a stinging defeat on constitutional reform that could destabilise the country’s shaky banking system. The single currency, which slumped to as low as $1.0505 EUR= in early Asian trade after opening at around $1.0685, […]
Two days after Donald Trump created a diplomatic dispute with China over Taiwan, the president-elect took to Twitter on Sunday evening to criticise Beijing and defend his decision to speak with the Taiwanese president. China issued a protest on Saturday after Mr Trump spoke on the phone with Tsai Ing-wen, the first such contact with a Taiwanese leader since the US severed diplomatic ties in 1979. Although […]
WASHINGTON U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s phone conversation with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on Friday, which prompted a diplomatic protest from China, was simply a “courtesy call,” Vice President-elect Mike Pence said on NBC on Sunday. Asked whether any shift in policy should be read into the call, Pence said: “I don’t think so.” The call with Tsai was the first by a U.S. president-elect or president with […]
Submitted by Robert Parry via Strategic-Culture.org, Under the cover of battling “fake news,” the mainstream U.S. news media and officialdom are taking aim at journalistic skepticism when it is directed at the pronouncements of the U.S. government and its allies. One might have hoped that the alarm about “fake news” would remind major U.S. news outlets, such as The Washington Post and The New York Times, about […]
Like Christmas ornaments on Main Streets across America, Wall Street banks’ forecasts for the year ahead keep coming out earlier every year. At least this year analysts have something substantive to sink their intellectual teeth into: the impact of incoming president Donald Trump. The results are fascinating — especially for bonds. The fixed income market has been one of the biggest victims in the “Trumpflation trade” that […]
By Sinead Carew and Chuck Mikolajczak | NEW YORK NEW YORK The rally in regional U.S. bank stocks that followed last month’s election of Donald Trump may not be over, but investors may have to wait for policy to take shape for the massive move to extend further. The S&P 600 index of small-cap banks has surged more than 20 percent since Trump’s surprise Nov. 8 victory, […]
Businesses operating in GCC countries should brace themselves for further government action to raise non-oil revenues, according to a new ICAEW report. The accountancy and finance body said that given the weak outlook for oil prices, imposing tax measures, along with subsidy reforms, spending cuts, and a freeze on public sector recruitment and pay, will help to close the fiscal gap. Its Economic Insight: Middle East Q4 […]
All of a sudden, it’s executive pay time. Here is The Purposeful Company, the product of a steering group of seven grandees, a task force of nine more, plus a dozen contributors, together demonstrating that those getting today’s executive pay have nothing useful to say on the subject, as Neil Austin forcefully pointed out on our letters page this week. This followed an earlier suggestion that incoming […]
Authored by Steve H. Hanke of the Johns Hopkins University. Follow him on Twitter @Steve_Hanke. During the past year, the Chinese yuan (CNY) has shed a bit more than 7 percent of its value against the greenback. That’s only one aspect of the CNY’s weakness. Another concerns the quality of the CNY. As Jerry Jordan pointed out recently at the Cato Institute’s 34th Annual Monetary Conference, a […]
BEIJING Chinese President Xi Jinping told former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger on Friday that China was watching U.S. politics “very closely” following the presidential election won by Republican Donald Trump. Trump lambasted China throughout the U.S. election campaign, drumming up headlines with his pledges to slap 45 percent tariffs on imported Chinese goods and to label the country a currency manipulator. A few days after […]
India has emerged as one of the most prominent victims of November’s market turmoil. The twin shocks on Nov. 8 of Donald Trump’s U.S. election victory and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s currency crackdown have unleashed a wave of selling in stock and foreign-exchange markets. It is the latest reversal for Western investors banking on an economic revival in the world’s second-most populous nation. Mr. Modi has […]
Investors poured money into US equity funds and pulled it from European ones in a week dominated by hopes for an acceleration in US economic growth and anxiety over Italy’s referendum on constitutional reform this weekend. European equity funds lost $2bn in the week to November 30, according to data from EPFR, while US funds attracted $4.4bn. That takes the total inflow for US equity funds since […]
ABU DHABI // When John Schneider-Merck landed in the UAE in 1976, he immediately saw it as a country of opportunity. Mr Schneider-Merk was 35 years old when he arrived from Germany to oversee a family business. The business would later shut down, but instead of heading home, he decided to stay and start his own business. “I didn’t know Dubai at all. I looked at the […]
The pound climbed to its highest level against the euro in almost three months after a rare public comment from the government on its strategy for leaving the EU, adding further momentum to the currency’s November rally. The pound was worth €1.1940 for the first time since September 7 after David Davis, so-called Brexit secretary, told MPs the UK would consider paying for access to the single […]
By James Pearson | SEOUL SEOUL Impoverished North Korea is not known for a bustling manufacturing industry but has earned a reputation in some African states for a highly visible export – its huge socialist-style statues. On Wednesday, the U.N. Security Council imposed new sanctions aimed at cutting North Korea’s annual export revenue by a quarter in response to its fifth and largest nuclear test in September. […]
The month that stunned investors with Donald Trump’s US election victory was a record-breaker in markets. The prospect of big tax cuts and fiscal spending from the incoming administration has stirred the market’s animal spirits, driving Wall Street into record territory, while bond prices have been hit hard by expectations of higher inflation. Here is how November played out in numbers: 13 — The dollar index — […]
Law Blog rounds up the morning’s legal news: Bitcoin ruling: A federal court ruled that the IRS can serve digital-currency-services company Coinbase with a “John Doe summons” that seeks detailed information on its customers’ transactions from 2013 to 2015. [WSJ] Community policing: Gary, Ind., is among six cities in a program that fights crime by asking officers […] (via WSJ)
By Crispian Balmer | ROME ROME A ‘No’ vote in Sunday’s referendum on constitutional reform would be a slap in the face to Europe, said the head of the rightist Northern League, pledging to pull Italy from the euro if he wins the next national elections. Matteo Salvini, who has said he would run for prime minister, has helped lead the campaign against the government’s planned overhaul […]
The Indian Parliament’s canteen–where Prime Minister Narendra Modi was photographed digging into a vegetarian lunch last year–now boasts a card machine to help lawmakers pay for their meals in the midst of a cash crunch. The move comes after parliamentarians said they faced problems settling their bills in the canteen following the government’s action last month to replace large currency bills to curb corruption. The canteen serves […]
