The sudden military escalation in Ukraine in recent days has, according to JPMorgan’s Alex Kantarovich, reduced the earlier hopes that the high level meeting in Minsk on 26 August would help to defuse the conflict. As Kantarovich warns, the markets are now bracing for the US/EU responses. In the worst case scenario, now appearing more likely, severe pressure on stocks may extend.
Employers have been creating jobs at a good clip this year, but Americans are too exhausted and discouraged by the pain of the recession and slow recovery to see much cause for optimism. That’s the conclusion of a new report surveying the economic sentiment of workers, released Thursday by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.
It’s bad enough that you don’t make any interest holding your money in a checking or savings account at the bank. But at least it’s safe, right? Not so much, as Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer announced this month that instead of banks receiving bail-out money (from taxpayers) when they experience financial problems, they have now planned for a bail-in (by depositors and investors).
Wall Street banks are getting hit by cyber attacks every single minute of every single day. It is a massive onslaught that is not highly publicized because the bankers do not want to alarm the public. But as you will see below, one big Wall Street bank is spending 250 million dollars a year just by themselves to combat this growing problem.
At the height of the financial crisis in 2008 the U.S. government forced some of the countries largest banks to take “bailout” funds amounting to billions of dollars in order to keep them from going bankrupt.
Markets could soon face a fall of up to 60 percent, two experts told CNBC on Wednesday. A jolt to international confidence in central banks will lead to a 30 to 60 percent market decline, David Tice, president of Tice Capital and founder of the Prudent Bear Fund, told CNBC’s “Power Lunch.” When this happens, he said, markets will face a “period of extreme turmoil.
According to Russia’s RIA Novosti, citing business daily Kommersant, Gazprom Neft has agreed to export 80,000 tons of oil from Novoportovskoye field in the Arctic; it will accept payment in rubles, and will also deliver oil via the Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline (ESPO), accepting payment in Chinese yuan for the transfers. Meaning Russia will export energy to either Europe or China, and receive payment in either Rubles or Yuan, in effect making the two currencies equivalent as far as the Eurasian axis is conerned, but most importantly, transact completely away from the US dollar thus, finally putin'(sic) in action the move for a Petrodollar-free world. More on this long awaited first nail in the petrodollar coffin from RIA:
IMF chief Christine Lagarde, one of the world’s most powerful women, announced Wednesday she had been charged with “negligence” over a multi-million-euro graft case relating to her time as French finance minister. The shock announcement came a day after she was grilled for more than 15 hours by a special court in Paris that probes ministerial misconduct, the fourth time she has been questioned in a case that has long weighed upon her position as managing director of the International Monetary Fund. “The investigating commission of the court of justice of the French Republic has decided to place me under formal investigation,” she said in exclusive comments to AFP.
Moments ago a stunning article appearing in the “Foreign Affaird” publication of the influential and policy-setting Council of Foreign Relations, titled “Print Less but Transfer More: Why Central Banks Should Give Money Directly to the People.” In it we read the now conventional admission of failure by Keynesians, who however, unwilling to actually admit they have been wrong, urge the even more conventional solution:
Burger King announced that it has reached a deal to buy Canadian doughnut chain Tim Hortons and base itself in Canada, a controversial transaction that raises questions about business taxes and corporate patriotism. The deal is the latest example of a U.S.
Nearly all of the state’s citrus groves are affected in varying degrees by greening disease, and researchers, growers and experts agree that the crisis has already started to compromise Florida’s prominence as a citrus-growing region. Florida is second in the world, behind Brazil, in growing juice oranges, producing about 80 percent of juice in the U.S.
New parents be warned: It could cost nearly a quarter of a million dollars to raise your child — and that’s not even including the cost of college. To raise a child born in 2013 to the age of 18, it will cost a middle-income couple just over $245,000, according to newly released estimates from the U.
Home flipping – buying a home and reselling it within 12 months, hopefully for a profit – is the American entrepreneur’s reaction to the vagaries of the housing market. When these gutsy people perceive a big profit opportunity, such as soaring home prices, they pile into the market, and profit grows on trimmed trees and freshly painted walls and rehabbed bathrooms, and flipping volume soars, and the time it takes to complete a flip drops, and nothing can go wrong. Then something goes wrong.
Are you living in poverty? Or are you living near it? Are you living in a “slumurban” home?
Americans receiving food stamps were caught selling and bartering their benefits online for art, housing and cash, according to a new federal report that investigates fraud in the nation’s largest nutrition support program. Complicating the situation is the fact states around the country are having trouble tracking and prosecuting the crimes because their enforcement budgets have been slashed despite the rapidly-rising number of food stamp recipients, according to the Government Accountability Office report. Under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, 47 million people have been awarded $76 billion in benefits.
Sears is in huge trouble. The department store has been bleeding cash, posting its ninth straight quarterly loss this morning. Sears CEO Eddie Lampert said that the company would close even more stores and cut costs in the coming months to combat the “unacceptable” losses.
Remember all those allegations that Obamacare would be an unmitigated disaster for businesses, especially smaller companies? Well, now we have proof. As the Philly Fed, which mysteriously soared at the headline level even as the vast majority of its components tumbled, reported moments ago, “in special questions this month, firms were asked qualitative questions about the effects of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and how, if at all, they are making changes to their employment and compensation, including benefits.
Russia said on Thursday it was investigating dozens of McDonald’s restaurants, in what many businessmen said was retaliation for Western sanctions over Ukraine they fear could spread to other symbols of Western capitalism. Russia’s food safety watchdog said it was looking at possible breaches of sanitary rules at McDonald’s, but many in the business community said it was a reflection of the deterioration in relations between Russia and the West over Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country are fighting against government forces. “Obviously, it’s driven by the political issues surrounding Ukraine,” said Alexis Rodzianko, president and CEO of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia.
