Month: February 2018

Venezuela's central bank on Monday announced a devaluation of more than 99 percent of its official exchange rate with a new foreign exchange platform. The central bank said the first auction of its new DICOM system yielded an exchange rate of 30,987.5 bolivars per euro, equivalent to around 25,000 per dollar. That is a devaluation of 86.6 percent with respect to the previous DICOM rate and 99.6 percent from the subsidized rate of 10 bolivars per dollar, which was eliminated last week. The new rate is still dwarfed by the black market rate for greenbacks, currently at 228,000 bolivars per dollar according to website DolarToday, which is used as a reference. Venezuela is undergoing a major crisis, with quadruple-digit inflation and shortages of food and medicine. Economists consistently describe the…

U.S. President Donald Trump's tax reform could bring almost $2 trillion back to the United States as U.S. firms repatriate cash piles from foreign affiliates, a U.N. report said Monday. Ending the incentive to hoard cash overseas could produce a stimulus effect in the United States, and Trump has credited the tax reform with spurring a $350 billion investment plan by Apple. "Now is the perfect time to bring your business, your jobs, and your investments to the United States of America," Trump told the World Economic Forum in Davos last month. The reform ends a system whereby companies defer tax on foreign earnings until the funds are repatriated. Instead it treats those earnings as if they were being repatriated, with an 8 percent tax on non-cash assets and a…

U.S. stocks plunged in highly volatile trading on Monday, with both the S&P 500 and Dow Industrials indices slumping more than 4.0 percent, as the Dow notched its biggest intraday decline in history with a nearly 1,600-point drop and Wall Street erased its gains for the year. The declines for the benchmark S&P500 index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were the biggest single-day percentage drops since August 2011, a period of stock-market volatility marked by the downgrade of the United States' credit rating and the eurozone debt crisis, as a pullback from record highs deepened. The question now for investors, who have ridden a nearly nine-year bull run, is whether this is the long-awaited pullback that paves the way for stocks to again keep rising after finding some value,…

Recent losses on global financial markets, including those in the U.S., have some investors concerned about expectations for their holdings and plans for the future. The Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 2.5 percent Friday, its largest percentage drop since Britain's decision in June 2016 to leave the European Union. The Dow and the broader U.S. Standard & Poor's 500 Index ended the week roughly 4-percent lower, their biggest weekly drops since early 2016, amid fears of inflation and disappointing quarterly corporate earnings results. Key stock indexes in Europe also fell Friday. Germany's DAX index dropped 1.7-percent, while France's CAC 40 Index declined 1.6-percent. In Asia, Japan's Nikkei 225 Index slid nearly 1-percent and South Korea's Kospi fell 1.7-percent. Meanwhile, U.S. bond yields climbed and contributed to the sell-off after the U.S.…

Over the last decades, growing economic hardships forced people in cities and villages around the world to leave their hometowns to find work in other countries. Dreaming of returning one day and enjoying a better life where they grew up, many invested most of their savings buying houses back home. But often, these houses remain empty, making many communities look like ghost towns. Faiza Elmasry has the story. Faith Lapidus narrates. ...

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's Latin American tour took him Saturday to Argentina, where he talked with officials about conservation and diplomacy. Traveling from Mexico City after meeting with the Mexican president and other senior officials on Friday, Tillerson arrived in Bariloche, a lakeside resort town in Argentina’s Nahuel Huapi National Park. Local news reports said Tillerson met with park rangers to discuss progress made in joint U.S.-Argentine projects on science and conservation issues. He also met with a student selected for the U.S. Fulbright scholarship program. Tillerson was scheduled to visit the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, to meet with his counterpart, Jorge Faurie. On Monday, Tillerson is set to meet with Argentina President Mauricio Macri to discuss regional issues, including upcoming elections and the political crisis in Venezuela.…

The window opened Friday for oil, gas, uranium and coal companies to make requests or stake claims to lands that were cut from two sprawling Utah national monuments by President Trump in December, but there doesn’t appear to be a rush to seize the opportunities. For anyone interested in the uranium on the lands stripped from the Bears Ears National Monument, all they need to do is stake a few corner posts in the ground, pay a $212 initial fee and send paperwork to the federal government under a law first created in 1872 that harkens back to the days of the Wild West. They can then keep rights to the hard minerals, including gold and silver, as long as they pay an annual fee of $155. It was unclear…

Britain has made clear its desire to be part of China's so-called 'One Belt One Road Initiative' — a cornerstone of President Xi Jinping's vision to boost Chinese investment and influence across Asia, Europe and Africa. There are, however, concerns over the financial and humanitarian costs of the vast infrastructure projects being undertaken. As Henry Ridgwell reports, the United States has issued a blunt warning over what it sees as the dangers of being tied to China's huge investment projects. ...

Another solid month for the U.S. economy as American companies added 200,000 new workers to their payrolls last month. The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.1 percent, but wages are rising. Although the number of unemployed Americans continues to fall, recruiting agencies say they've never been busier. Mil Arcega explains. ...

U.S. stocks slumped Friday, pulling down the Dow Jones industrial average by more than 650 points and handing the market its worst week in two years. Technology, banks and energy stocks accounted for much of the broad slide. Several major companies, including Exxon Mobil and Google's parent company, Alphabet, sank after reporting weak earnings. Fears of rising inflation sent bond yields higher and contributed to the stock market swoon after the government reported that wages grew last month at the fastest pace in eight years. The sharp drop follows a long period of unprecedented calm in the market. Stocks haven't had a pullback of 10 percent or more in two years, and hit their latest record highs just one week ago. "We've enjoyed low interest rates for so long, we're…

Stocks closed sharply lower in New York on Friday, extending a weeklong slide, as the Dow Jones industrial average plunged more than 600 points.  The drop capped stocks' worst week in two years. The Dow's drop was its biggest in percentage terms since June 2016. Several giant U.S. companies' shares dropped after reporting weak earnings, including Exxon Mobil and Alphabet. Apple and Chevron also fell. Bond yields rose sharply after the government reported the fastest wage growth in eight years, stoking fears of inflation. The Dow fell 665 points, or 2.5 percent, to 25,520. The Standard & Poor's 500 index dropped 59 points, or 2.1 percent, to 2,762. The S&P is down almost 4 percent since hitting a record high a week ago. The Nasdaq was off 144 points, or 2 percent,…

Britain has made clear its desire to be part of China's so-called "One Belt One Road" initiative — a cornerstone of President Xi Jinping's vision to boost Chinese investment and influence across Asia, Europe and Africa. But there are concerns about the financial and humanitarian costs of the vast infrastructure projects being undertaken. British Prime Minister Theresa May recently visited Beijing, leading a delegation of ministers and business leaders in an effort to boost trade after Britain's European Union exit. The two countries signed deals worth $12.7 billion, and May hailed a "golden era" of Sino-British relations. Her ambassador to Beijing, Barbara Woodward, earlier outlined Britain's hopes of cooperating in China's "One Belt One Road" initiative. "The first is, we'd like to collaborate on practical projects," she said. "The second…

With an eye on general elections next year, India has announced several populist measures that include a health insurance program for 500 million people, and billions of dollars for rural development and affordable housing in its annual budget.   Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the measures aimed at improving “ease of living” for citizens, the vast majority of whom live in rural areas.   The announcements came amid widespread rural distress due to falling crop prices. Several farmers protests, sometimes violent, took place last year. In a country where two thirds of the 1.3 billion people depend on agriculture, there are growing worries the anger in the countryside will pose a challenge for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government when it seeks reelection next year. Saying "my government is…

When Janet Yellen leaves the Federal Reserve this weekend after four years as chair, her legacy will include having shattered a social barrier: She is the first woman to have led the world's most powerful central bank, a position that carries enormous sway over the global economy.   Yellen will be remembered, too, for her achievements in deftly guiding the Fed's role in the U.S. economy's slow recovery from a crushing financial crisis and recession. She picked up where her predecessor, Ben Bernanke, had left off in nurturing the nation's recuperation from a crisis that nearly toppled the financial system. As Jerome Powell prepares to succeed Yellen as leader of the U.S. central bank, here are five areas in which Yellen's era at the Fed will be remembered:   Crisis…