NEW YORK | In the idyllic setting of the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland 63 miles from the White House, world leaders gathered on Friday for the G8 summit. This time, the agenda has real economic substance. Will the intimacy of the lodges in the wilderness help to solve the eurodrama? The pressure is expected to be high on Mrs Merkel. She is the only one representing the “austerians” versus the…
NEW YORK | One of the biggest company stock market flotation on history is about to take place this Friday. With more than 900 million users around the world, Mark Zuckerberg’s company could be valued at $104 billion, that is more than Disney, Ford and Kraft Foods. The excitement grew as Zuckerberg announced that it would offer more shares to investors: 421 million, 25 percent more than it had previously planned…
NEW YORK | “Cutting alone really doesn’t do it, and that’s why I’m linking the serious budget reductions — real increase to austerity — with a plea to the voters: please increase taxes temporarily on the most affluent and everyone else with a quarter of a cent sales tax,” California governor Jerry Brown said in releasing his $91 billion general fund budget plan this week. These are not easy days for…
NEW YORK | “Errors”, “sloppiness” and “bad judgements”. Whatever. The fact is that JP Morgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon, no matter what he pleads, is the ultimate responsible for the bank’s 2 billion dollars loss through risky trade with its own money. A big embarrassment that made their stock price plummet around one tenth of their value on Friday session dragging the rest of the banking sector. Washington, Wall Street and financial…
NEW YORK | One of the keys of the severe financial crisis in the US were “liar loans”, given to people who did not even have a job. Four years later, many worthy homebuyers are paying for that. Banks have become so restrictive in their mortgages that many citizens are frozen out of the housing market, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Thursday. Bernanke said home mortgage credit outstanding…
NEW YORK | U.S. investors are looking forward to this Thursday’s jobless claims figures after the pretty lame monthly jobs report last week. Wall Street needs a sweetener, otherwise investors will keep on the sidelines of the stockmarkets. Only a better than expected (366,000 new jobless claims) figure could boost U.S. market and economical confidence. Indeed, last Friday’s report was shocking: America is creating employment almost at the same rate…
NEW YORK | Restless and suspicious. That is how Wall Street seems to be feeling after France and Greece’s pushback against austerity measures. U.S. stock futures fell on Monday, while Treasuries gained. Investors wonder whether the stimulus advocated will derail bailout deals. And what will happen now that the Sarkozy-Merkel tandem is broken and the Greek parliament will have three new anti-bailout parties represented. This added to the uncertainty created by…
NEW YORK | For each dollar a man earns in the U.S., the average female professional gets only 80 cents, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Only twelve out of 500 companies in the Fortune index are run by women. Apparently it will take them 40 years to match their peers in the corporate world, non-profit organization Catalyst points out. The truth is that women who have reached the…
NEW YORK | Microsoft entered the battle for the e-readers this week thanks to a strategic partnership with Barnes & Noble. Their alliance, dubbed as NewCo, gives Windows creator a 17.6 percent equity stake for a $300 million investment and values B&N’s remaining 82.4% stake at $1.4 billion. According to Goldman Sachs analyst Matthew Fassler, the deal is a “game-changer.” “The shift to digital is putting the world’s libraries and…
NEW YORK | The debate between austerity or growth to cure Europes illness is in full swing. Austerians are, though, losing support. A consensus is growing that current cuts alone aren’t likely to tackle the euro zone crisis. For US celebrity economist and director of the Earth Institute Jeffrey Sachs, “Fiscal policy alone won’t save Europe,” he said in the launch of the Center on Global Economic Governance at Columbia…