US

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The war on taxes

“I don’t mean to get all class-warfare on you… But unless we find a way to spread the burden upward and cut the middle class some slack, it isn’t Greece we will soon be resembling”, writes Ellis Henican for Fox News, “it’s those old Caribbean islands Jimmy likes to sing about. Where a few super-rich families own just about everything. Where the vast majority of others have hardly anything at all.”



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IMF sharply reduces US growth forecasts

From Bankia, a Wednesday alert on global economic developments: the International Monetary Fund warns that the global economy is entering yet another new dangerous phase: “activity is weakening across the board, the agents’ confidence has plummeted, regional disparities persist and there are increasing risks of downturns in all different scenarios. “The IMF has revised its general forecasts pointing out a significant downturn: global growth would stand at 4% for both…


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The Fed's twist in the words of JP Morgan

JP Morgan expects that US Federal Reserve will announce that it is to auction between $300bn and $400bn in Treasuries with one to three years to reach maturity, and that it will concentrate 70% of its purchases on seven to 12 year-maturity securities while the other 30% will be on longer maturities. The bank believes that the Fed will carry out these acquisitions within the next 6 months. “The benefit…


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The Fed’s twist in the words of JP Morgan

JP Morgan expects that US Federal Reserve will announce that it is to auction between $300bn and $400bn in Treasuries with one to three years to reach maturity, and that it will concentrate 70% of its purchases on seven to 12 year-maturity securities while the other 30% will be on longer maturities. The bank believes that the Fed will carry out these acquisitions within the next 6 months. “The benefit…


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OECD figures put EMU's unemployment at 10%, US's at 9%

Link analyst note | “The unemployment rate among the member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) remained stable in July compared to June, at 8.2%, a level maintained for the fifth consecutive month. The OECD notes that the largest increase in that month was recorded in Luxembourg (three tenths, up to 4.6%), while the largest fall was in Mexico (five tenths, down to 5.3%). Spain, where…


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OECD figures put EMU’s unemployment at 10%, US’s at 9%

Link analyst note | “The unemployment rate among the member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) remained stable in July compared to June, at 8.2%, a level maintained for the fifth consecutive month. The OECD notes that the largest increase in that month was recorded in Luxembourg (three tenths, up to 4.6%), while the largest fall was in Mexico (five tenths, down to 5.3%). Spain, where…


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Is austerity making things worse?

NEW YORK | It seems that there is already a critical mass of economists suggesting that the whole austerity passion that all of a sudden possessed world leaders is just the wrong passion. In this Monday CNN’s interview, Nobel economics laureate Joseph Stieglitz said he thinks the US government has to go away from austerity and go for a growth strategy. The same applies to Greece: if they continue to…


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Time to charge against Basel III, says Mr Dimon

NEW YORK | Financial Times’s interview with Jamie Dimon was intended to create momentum. JP Morgan’s chief executive is now attacking new banking rules by Basel committee, trying to convince against the new regulation to water down Basel III the same way the major US banks have lobbied in Washington to water down Dodd-Frank Act, Obama’s new set of rules after the financial crisis. Dimon’s argument goes like this: the Basel…


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Buffett, the socialist

You’ve certainly read by now Warren Buffet’s op-ed column in The New York Times “Stopping to coddle the super-rich”. Mr Buffett talked about raising the tax rate to the “rich” and “super-rich” in an effort to reduce the huge deficit in the US. While in Europe some members of the wealthy elite –like Maurice Lévy, chairman and chief executive of the French advertising firm Publicis or multimillionaire chairman of Ferrari…