Category: Business

U.S. stocks tumbled again Thursday as investors continued to fret about the possibility of rising inflation and higher interest rates.  For the second time in four days, the Dow Jones industrial average sank more than 1,000 points, or 4.2 percent, to end Thursday day at 23,860. The Standard and Poor's Index, the benchmark for many index funds, also shed 100.66 points, or 3.8 percent, to close at 2,581. It last hit that low in mid-November. The two indexes have dropped 10 percent from their all-time highs, set on January 26. That means they are in what is known on Wall Street as a "correction," fueled by fears that a long stretch of low interest rates and tame inflation, which helped driven up stock prices, might be coming to an end. As…

China’s export growth accelerated in January amid mounting trade tension with Washington while imports surged as factories stocked up ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday. Exports rose 11.1 percent compared with a year earlier to $200.5 billion, up from December’s 10.9 percent growth, trade data showed Thursday. Imports surged 36.9 percent to $180.1 billion, up from the previous month’s 4.5 percent. China’s politically sensitive trade surplus with the United States widened by 2.3 percent from a year ago to $21.9 billion, while its global trade gap narrowed by 60 percent to $20.3 billion. “Export growth remained robust in January, indicating steady global demand momentum,” said Louis Kuijs of Oxford Economics in a report. “While we expect the favorable external setting to continue to support China’s exports, rising U.S.-China trade…

Dutch lender Rabobank’s California unit agreed Wednesday to pay $369 million to settle allegations that it lied to regulators investigating allegations of laundering money from Mexican drug sales and organized crime through branches in small towns on the Mexico border. The subsidiary, Rabobank National Association, said it doesn’t dispute that it accepted at least $369 million in illegal proceeds from drug trafficking and other activity from 2009 to 2012. It pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States for participating in a cover-up when regulators began asking questions in 2013. The penalty is one of the largest U.S. settlements involving the laundering of Mexican drug money, though it’s still only a fraction of the $1.9 billion that Britain’s HSBC agreed to pay in 2012. It surpasses…

The rollercoaster ride continued in financial markets Tuesday, with sharp swings rocking major indexes from Asia, Europe and North America. The volatility intensified just a day after the steepest drop on Wall Street on Monday, after the Dow Jones Industrial index plunged nearly 1,200 points. But if the sharp sell-off came as a shock to some, analysts who spoke with VOA say it's a shock many had been anticipating for some time. Mil Arcega explains. ...

In the heartland of the tequila industry, in Mexico's western state of Jalisco, a worsening shortage of agave caused by mounting demand for the liquor from New York to Tokyo has many producers worried. The price of Agave tequilana, the blue-tinged, spiky-leaved succulent used to make the alcoholic drink, has risen six-fold in the past two years, squeezing smaller distillers' margins and leading to concerns that shortages could hit even the larger players. In front of a huge metal oven that cooks agave for tequila, one farmer near the town of Amatitan said he had been forced to use young plants to compensate for the shortage of fully grown agave, which take seven to eight years to reach maturity. He asked not to be identified because he did not want…

Peru’s trade minister defended China as a good trade partner on Tuesday, after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned Latin American countries against excessive reliance on economic ties with the Asian powerhouse. Eduardo Ferreyros said Peru’s 2010 trade liberalization deal with China had allowed the Andean nation of about 30 million people to post a $2.74 billion trade surplus with Beijing last year. “China is a good trade partner,” Ferreyros told foreign media, as Tillerson met with President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in Lima, a stop on Tillerson’s five-nation Latin American tour. “We're happy with the results of the trade agreement.” The remarks were the Peruvian government’s first signal since Tillerson’s warning that it does not share Washington’s concerns about growing Chinese influence in the region. Before kicking off his…

U.S. stock prices fluctuated wildly Tuesday after regaining ground following a sharply lower open on the heels of selloffs earlier in the day in Asia and Europe. The volatility continued unabated one day after The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed the most points in one day in its more than 120-year history. The Dow fell 530 points at the market open and the more broad-based Standard & Poors 500 Index (S&P 500) tumbled 1.3 percent. The technology heavy Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 1.1 percent. Earlier Tuesday, Asia's benchmark stock indexes collapsed, as Monday's massive selloffs on Wall Street rolled across the globe. Japan's Nikkei 225 index lost as much seven percent of its value at one point during the trading session, before closing at 21,610 points, a loss of nearly…

China's decision last month to ban the import of certain types of waste and crack down on "foreign garbage" has had a ripple effect worldwide, forcing countries to quickly rethink their waste strategies. That includes China, where its own fight against recycled waste has only just begun, analysts say. Prior to the ban, China was the final resting place for about half of the globe's metal, plastic and paper recyclables. But in an effort to protect the environment and public health, Chinese authorities have banned the import of 24 categories of solid waste, sending shock waves through the international waste processing industry. In the wake of the ban, most developed countries including Britain, the United States and Australia are grappling with a growing mountain of unprocessed rubbish and trying to…

The U.S. trade deficit hit the highest level in nine years in 2017, defying President Donald Trump's efforts to bring more balance to America's trade relationships.   The Commerce Department said Tuesday that the trade gap in goods and services rose to $566 billion last year, the highest level since $708.7 billion in 2008. Imports set a record $2.9 trillion, swamping exports of $2.3 trillion.   The U.S. ran an $810 billion deficit in the trade of goods and a $244 billion surplus in services such as banking and education.   The goods deficit with China hit a record $375.2 billion in 2017, and the goods gap with Mexico rose to $71.1 billion. Trump has sought to reduce the deficits with China and Mexico. His administration is weighing whether to…

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…

A new political dawn in Zimbabwe has sparked talk among farmers of land reform and the return of some whites who lost their land and livelihoods to President Robert Mugabe during a 37-year rule that drove the economy to collapse. Mugabe, 93, resigned in November after the army and his ZANU-PF party turned against him, prompting optimism among some of the thousands of white farmers ousted in the early 2000s on the grounds of redressing imbalances from the colonial era. For colonialists seized some of the best agricultural land that remained in the hands of white farmers after independence in 1980 leaving many blacks effectively landless and making land ownership one of Zimbabwe's most sensitive political topics. Now some white landowners hope the post-Mugabe regime may address the land issue,…

Many refugees would like to buy low-carbon stoves and lights but poor access in camps and a lack of funding is forcing them to rely on "dirty and expensive" fuels, a report said Tuesday. Millions of refugees worldwide struggle to access energy for cooking, lighting and communication and often pay high costs for fuels like firewood, which are bad for their health. Yet two-thirds would consider paying for clean cookstoves and more than one-third for solar household products, according to a survey by the Moving Energy Initiative (MEI), a partnership among Britain, the United Nations and charities. "Energy providers don't tend to think of refugees as potential energy consumers, but the opportunities to build a relationship with them are huge," Mattia Vianello, one of the report's authors, told the Thomson…

A colorful paint job has transformed one of Mumbai's drab hilltop slums into a tourist destination, even prompting comparisons with Italy's picturesque Amalfi Coast. During a recent journey on a Mumbai metro train, Dedeepya Reddy was struck by the grim appearance of a slum in Asalpha in the city's eastern suburbs as she stared out from her air-conditioned carriage. Reddy, a Harvard University-educated co-founder of a creative agency, was keen to brighten the lives of slum residents, while also changing the perception of slums being dirty and dangerous, and decided on a simple makeover. Armed with dozens of cans of colorful paint, Reddy and a team of about 700 volunteers painted the walls and alleyways of the hilltop slum over two weekends last month. Residents, at first skeptical, also got…

Hackers who stole around $530 million worth of cryptocurrency from the Coincheck exchange last week — one of the biggest such heists ever — are trying to move the stolen “XEM” coins, the foundation behind the digital currency said on Tuesday. NEM Foundation, creators of the XEM cryptocurrency, have traced the stolen coins to an unidentified account, and the account owner had begun trying to move the coins onto six exchanges where they could then be sold, Jeff McDonald said. Hackers made off with roughly $533 million worth of the cryptocurrency from Tokyo-based exchange Coincheck Inc late last week, raising fresh questions about security and regulatory protection in the booming market. The location of the hackers’ account was not known. “(The hackers are) trying to spend them on multiple exchanges.…

Middle Eastern countries should pursue fiscal policies to support growth and build broader tax bases to fund infrastructure projects and social spending, the head of the International Monetary Fund said Tuesday. "A key priority is building broader and more equitable tax bases. All must pay their fair share, while the poor must be protected," IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde told an economic conference in Marrakech, organized by the Washington-based fund and the kingdom. That would allow them to spend more on social safety nets, health and education services than the current 11 percent of gross domestic product in the region. "Fiscal policy can and must be redesigned to support inclusive growth in the region," Lagarde said. More efforts are also needed to support the private sector, she said. The state, the dominant…