Month: April 2018

The Federal Reserve on Tuesday proposed new rules that could allow some large banks to reduce the amount of capital they must hold as a cushion against a future economic shock. The proposal may clear the way for some large banks to reduce their capital levels in the future, but the largest firms on Wall Street are not likely to get such relief, the Fed said. The proposal is expected to reduce bank paperwork and also make it easier for regulators to monitor the health of banks, said Randal Quarles, the top Fed official in charge of regulations. “Our regulatory measures are most effective when they are as simple and transparent as possible,” Quarles, the Fed vice chairman for supervision, said in a statement. The Fed said the proposed changes were likely to somewhat increase the amount of capital required for the 30 largest banks known as GSIBs, or global systemically important banks. The measures should modestly decrease the amount of capital required for banks smaller than the GSIBs, the Fed said. “No firm is expected to need to raise additional capital as a result of this proposal,” the Fed said in a statement. Banks and other stakeholders will have 60 days to comment on the proposal, which is likely to take effect next year, said the Federal Reserve. The new capital standards would be the first reform of capital standards conceived after the decade-old financial crisis. …

The Federal Reserve on Tuesday proposed new rules that could allow some large banks to reduce the amount of capital they must hold as a cushion against a future economic shock. The proposal may clear the way for some large banks to reduce their capital levels in the future, but the largest firms on Wall Street are not likely to get such relief, the Fed said. The proposal is expected to reduce bank paperwork and also make it easier for regulators to monitor the health of banks, said Randal Quarles, the top Fed official in charge of regulations. “Our regulatory measures are most effective when they are as simple and transparent as possible,” Quarles, the Fed vice chairman for supervision, said in a statement. The Fed said the proposed changes were likely to somewhat increase the amount of capital required for the 30 largest banks known as GSIBs, or global systemically important banks. The measures should modestly decrease the amount of capital required for banks smaller than the GSIBs, the Fed said. “No firm is expected to need to raise additional capital as a result of this proposal,” the Fed said in a statement. Banks and other stakeholders will have 60 days to comment on the proposal, which is likely to take effect next year, said the Federal Reserve. The new capital standards would be the first reform of capital standards conceived after the decade-old financial crisis. …

Russian retailers warned of price increase after ruble tumbles European electronic and household goods manufacturers have warned Russian retailers of a possible 5 to 10 percent rise in prices after the ruble tumbled this week due to U.S. sanctions, retailers said on Tuesday. Eldorado, which operates over 400 stores in Russia, said the hikes may mean it has to adjust its retail prices. “Suppliers have already started warning of a possible 5-10 percent adjustment in prices,” a spokesperson for Eldorado told Reuters, adding that the warnings had primarily come from European manufacturers that do not produce goods in Russia. A spokesperson for M.Video, which operates a network of 424 stores, also said that some of its suppliers had told them of plans to raise prices by between 5 and 10 percent. The ruble fell sharply on Monday as investors took fright after a new round of U.S. sanctions against Moscow, targeting officials and businessmen around Russian President Vladimir Putin. The ruble extended its losses on Tuesday, shedding over 3 percent of its value against the dollar, as investors continued a sell-off of assets fueled by fears that Washington could impose more sanctions and a realization that Russian credit and market risks had substantially increased. …

The Turkish lira Tuesday hit another historic low against the U.S. dollar amid growing financial market concerns that the Turkish economy is overheating. With elections on the horizon, the government is stoking economic growth. The latest figures saw growth running at over 7 percent, making Turkey one of the fastest-growing economies in the developed world. But international investors are becoming increasingly alarmed at the cost of such growth, with double-digit inflation and a surge in imports widening Turkey’s current account deficit (the difference between imports and exports). “Investors are disappointed by the fact the government is pushing growth even faster, rather than addressing the imbalances that show up, such as high inflation and wide current account deficit.” said economist Inan Demir of Nomura banking. “Some people say this: ‘Too much growth is not a good thing,’ ” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a speech Monday aimed at challenging financial critics. “Why? Because they are jealous. It is nothing else.” In another move aimed at defying critics, Erdogan also announced a new $34 billion economic stimulus package. Much of Turkey’s rapid growth has been achieved by the government injecting billions of dollars into the economy. Erdogan further challenged international markets by renewing his strong opposition to increasing interest rates, which orthodox economic theory demands to protect a falling currency. “If there isn’t an increase in interest rates, the likelihood will be the lira will continue to depreciate,” warned Demir. “More or less, the lira will remain at the mercy …

Future Russian gas transit flows through Ukraine to Europe may be between 10 and 15 billion cubic metres per year, Alexei Miller, head of Russian gas giant Gazprom, said on Tuesday, which is a significant decline from current levels. Miller issued his comments after German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the planned new Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany could not go ahead without clarity on Ukraine’s role as a transit route for gas. “We have never raised an issue about abandoning the Ukrainian transit. However, the Russian resource base has been moving northward and there won’t be the same resources in the central gas transportation corridor as it was in the past,” Miller said in a statement. “That’s why a certain transit could still be in place, in the amount of 10-15 bcm per year, but the Ukrainian side has to explain the viability of the new transit contract,” he said. He did not give a time frame for when the transit could be 10-15 bcm a year. Ukraine has been a key route for carrying Russian gas to Europe where it supplies around a third of gas needs, but Moscow and Kiev have clashed frequently over energy. Last year, the transit amounted to more than 93 bcm, while Gazprom’s total exports to Europe and Turkey reached an all-time high of 194 bcm. Last year, Ukraine earned around $3 billion in Russian gas transit fees. Gazprom said last month it would terminate its gas contracts with Ukraine …

Tuesday, April 10, is Equal Pay Day in the United States. Advocates designated the day to mark how much longer women must work, on average, to earn as much as men averaged in the previous year.  Germany recognized Equal Pay Day on March 10. The Czech Republic will observe it on April 13. While assigning a date to the gender pay gap is a way to make a point, it makes for an easy gauge of whether the pay gap is getting worse or better from one year to the next. In 2017, the U.S. Equal Pay Day was April 4 — meaning the pay gap is slightly worse this year than last. There are a number of explanations for historic gender gaps in pay. One of the major ones is known as “occupational segregation,” meaning a particular job is seen as “men’s work” or “women’s work” and is dominated by that gender. In a study by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research in 2017, among the most common occupations for women and for men in the United States, only six occupations overlap. In the fields that pay best, men tend to dominate, said the IWPR’s Chandra Childers. She adds that when men start to leave a field and women start to move in, the average pay for that field begins to drop. Some say the pay gap is due to more women taking time off work or assuming less demanding professional roles so they can care for their families. …

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday promised to open the country’s economy further and lower import tariffs on products including cars, in a speech that comes amid rising trade tensions between China and the United States. Xi also said China would raise the foreign ownership limit in the automobile sector “as soon as possible” and push previously announced measures to open the financial sector. “This year, we will considerably reduce auto import tariffs, and at the same time reduce import tariffs on some other products,” Xi said at the Chinese Boao Forum for Asia in Hainan province. The comments sent U.S. stock futures, the dollar and Asian shares higher. They come amid rising trade tensions between China and the United States following a week of escalating tariff threats sparked by U.S. frustration with China’s trade and intellectual property policies. Xi said that China will take measures to sharply widen market access for foreign investors. China will also speed up opening of its insurance sector to foreign investors, Xi said. …

In war-torn Afghanistan, honey is regarded as a traditional cure-all but for one schoolgirl, the sticky commodity has also created sweet opportunities to work and own a business in a country where few women do so. Three years ago, Frozan, now 19 years old, obtained a small loan, bought two beehives and learned about apiculture from Hand in Hand International, a non-governmental organization that focuses on poverty. The bees collected nectar from flowers growing near her home in the Marmul district in the northern Balkh province. Their first harvest produced about 16kg (35lb) of honey, which enabled Frozan to pay back her loan and still have money left over. She now has 12 beehives and last year collected 110kg of honey, which earned her 100,000 Afghanis ($1,450) in a country where GDP per capita is only about $600. “The village I live in is a traditional village and women are not allowed to work outside,” says Frozan, who goes by one name. “But when I started beekeeping I realized that it’s an easy task. I told the people about beekeeping and then they accepted it.” Since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the lives and status of women in society have improved significantly. But traditions, insecurity and recently a decline in international donors, have slowed progress. A Human Rights Watch report, quoting government officials, says 85 percent of the 3.5 million children who don’t go to school are girls. Only 37 percent of adolescent girls are literate compared with …

Iran unified the country’s official and open market exchange rates, state media said, after its currency, the rial, plunged to an all-time low on Monday on concerns over a return of crippling sanctions. The U.S. dollar jumped in a day from 54,700 rials to 60,000 rials in the open market in Tehran on Monday. A dollar was worth 36,000 rials in mid-September. After an emergency cabinet meeting, Iran’s First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri was quoted by the state media as saying that from Tuesday the price of the dollar would be 42,000 rials in both markets, and for all business activities. Iran has long been trying to unify its open market rate, used for most commercial transactions, with the official rate, which is a subsidized rate that is only available to government departments and some importers of priority goods. Jahangiri said from Tuesday the government would not recognize any rate but the official rate, and “it would be illegal to trade dollars with an unofficial rate.” U.S. sanctions lifted under Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers in 2015 will resume unless U.S. President Donald Trump waives them again on May 12. Trump has effectively set that as a deadline for European powers to fix what he called “the terrible flaws” of the deal. President Hassan Rouhani warned on Monday that Trump will regret it if he pulls out of the nuclear deal. …

Brazil’s government has been told that development projects, including hydropower dams, in protected areas can no longer go ahead without the prior approval of lawmakers. Last week’s ruling by the supreme court followed the use by the government in recent years of the controversial “provisional measure”, a legal instrument that allowed the president to approve projects by reducing the size of protected areas. Campaigners said the decision should ensure the country’s forests and reserves, including the Amazon rainforest, were better protected. “This decision puts an end to a spree of provisional measures in the name of environmental de-protection,” said Mauricio Guetta, a lawyer at Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), an advocacy group. In recent years, the government has used the measure to open up protected areas for controversial projects, including building two of Brazil’s largest hydropower dams – the Jirau and Santo Antonio – in the Amazon. The use of the measure to shrink protected areas with immediate effect had brought “irreversible consequences, irreversible damage to the environment,” Guetta told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone. The eight-judge bench ruled unanimously that using the provisional measure to reduce the size of protected areas for any reason was unconstitutional.   It followed a lawsuit in which the court heard the measure had been used in 2012 to allow trees in six protected areas of the Amazon to be felled to make way for five hydropower dams. “The (provisional measure), later converted into law, reduced the level of environmental protection by deactivating due legislative …

Apple on Monday said it had achieved its goal of powering all of the company’s facilities with renewable energy, a milestone that includes all of its data centers, offices and retail stores in 43 countries. The iPhone maker also said nine suppliers had recently committed to running their operations entirely on renewable energy sources like wind and solar, bringing to 23 the total number to make such a pledge. Major U.S. corporations such as Apple, Wal-Mart and Alphabet have become some of the country’s biggest buyers of renewable forms of energy, driving substantial growth in the wind and solar industries. Alphabet’s Google last year purchased enough renewable energy to cover all of its electricity consumption worldwide. Costs for solar and wind are plunging thanks to technological advances and increased global production of panels and turbines, enabling companies seeking to green their images to buy clean power at competitive prices. “We’re not spending any more than we would have,” Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president for environment, policy and social initiatives, said in an interview. “We’re seeing the benefits of an increasingly competitive clean energy market.” Renewable energy projects that provide power to Apple facilities range from large wind farms in the United States to clusters of hundreds of rooftop solar systems in Japan and Singapore. The company has also urged utilities to procure renewable energy to help power Apple’s operations. Encouraging suppliers to follow suit in embracing 100 percent renewable energy is the next step for Apple. The suppliers that pledge …

China’s Foreign Ministry said Monday that trade talks with the United States are impossible under current conditions. The comment from spokesman Geng Shuang during a briefing with reporters came a day after U.S. President Donald Trump predicted there would be a resolution of the U.S.-China standoff on tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of goods the world’s two biggest economies are threatening to impose on each other. “China will take down its Trade Barriers because it is the right thing to do,” Trump said, without offering any direct information. “Taxes will become Reciprocal & a deal will be made on Intellectual Property. Great future for both countries!” Regardless, Trump said that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping “will always be friends, no matter what happens with our dispute on trade.” The threats Washington and Beijing have lobbed at each other in recent days have rattled world stock markets, with wide swings of hundreds of points in stock indexes. U.S. stocks plunged more than 2 percent Friday after Trump threatened to impose tariffs on an additional $100 billion worth of Chinese goods beyond the $50 billion worth of products he had already said would be affected. Beijing responded in kind, saying it would impose tariffs on U.S. goods “until the end at any cost.” Both countries have published lists of goods they intend to tax, with the U.S. hitting steel and aluminum imports from China, along with aerospace, tech and machinery goods. Other levies would target medical equipment, medicine and …