The U.S. Treasury on Tuesday criticised China for resuming intervention-esque efforts to control the value of the yuan, but stopped short once again of labeling the country as a “currency manipulator” despite the yuan falling to its lowest level against the dollar in more than a year.
The world of the popular HBO series Game of Thrones bear striking similarities to that of Western Europe during the 18th century. But whereas the Industrial Revolution saw a rapid advancement in Europe’s society and economy, Westeros has remained the same for some 6,000 years.
Westeros, the primary location of Game of Thrones, has much in common with Western Europe of the Middle Ages. Its technology is similar, society is feudal and even the climate is roughly the same – save for the odd chilly spell.
The U.S.’s annual deficit is expected to fall by nearly $188 billion – from $680 billion in 2013 to $492 billion – this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Monday.
The CBO, a nonpartisan agency that advises Congress on budget policy, predicted that the deficit would be equivalent to 2.8 percent of gross domestic product, marking the smallest deficit by percentage since 2007.
Even as ECB officials continue to play down the generalized risk of deflation in region and claim that inflation expectations remain anchored, experts are calling on the central bank to undertake unconventional measures to combat weakness in price pressures that threatens to undermine the euro area’s recovery. The issue is no longer if the ECB will undertake quantitative easing, but when.
Worldwide military expenditure fell by 1.9 percent to $1.75 trillion last year, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), mainly due to large decreases in spending in the west; as large investments were noted in Asia, Russia, the Middle East and Africa.
In a study published Monday, SIPRI noted that worldwide military spending would have actually increased by 1.8 percent last year, if the researchers had excluded U.S. data.
Prices for bitcoins fell sharply on Thursday after China’s Central Bank ordered domestic financial institutions to close down the accounts of all local bitcoin exchanges by April 15.
On Wednesday afternoon, the price for bitcoins was roughly around $450, before falling to $400 early Thursday morning. At present, the price of one bitcoin has fallen to $374.24, according to WorldCoinIndex.
Nearly all Chinese bitcoin exchanges have received official deposit shutdown notices from their banks.
The large influx of foreign workers into Singapore has begun to cause tension between immigrants and locals. The obvious solution for the Singaporean government, would be to drastically decrease the number of foreign workers. But here there is a problem: its development model relies on foreign workers.
It appears counter-intuitive to suggest that a cosmopolitan hub like Singapore might have a problem with xenophobia.
The eight largest banks in the U.S. must increase their capital levels by at least $68 billion from 2018 onwards, said federal regulators on Tuesday, in order to meet new rules designed to lessen the risk of a financial collapse.
According to Reuters, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Treasury’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency had voted to require those banks to raise their minimum ratio of capital to loans from 3 percent to 5 percent.
If America’s distributional game continues to create a few big winners and many who consider themselves losers by comparison, the losers will try to stop the game – not out of envy but out of a deep-seated sense of unfairness and a fear of unchecked power and privilege. Then we all lose.
In a move to crackdown on government waste and boost revenue, Italian authorities are putting 151 state-owned luxury cars up for sale on popular online auction site eBay.
The government first started listing cars last week, reported CNBC, which included models from BMW, Alfa Romeo, and Lancia.
