Inspired by recent efforts by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to lift the economy, the Japanese division of lingerie maker Triumph International on Wednesday unveiled a special edition bra, dubbed the “Branomics Bra” after “Abenomics”, which promises to give a “boost” to women.
China has engaged in widespread cyber espionage in a bid to extract information about America’s foreign policy deliberations and military capabilities, said the Pentagon in the most explicit U.S. statement yet charging that it is China that is behind at least some of the many intrusions into U.S. government computer systems.
The recent chit fund scam in India saw thousands of depositors, mostly poor people in villages and small towns, lose their hard-earned money after Saradha Group, who were believed to be running a wide variety of collective investment schemes, collapsed. As the case demonstrates, there is still a clear need for more transparency, corrections & regulations in not just India, but at the highest levels of global financial markets.
Nearly one in four British children – 3.4 million – could be living in relative poverty by 2020, warned an independent think-tank on Tuesday, taking the nation’s child poverty levels back to the turn of the century when then-Prime Minister Tony Blair first announced plans to “eradicate” it.
China is leading an international effort to eliminate the ranking of countries in the World Bank’s Doing Business Report, claimed the Financial Times on Monday, after officials last year criticised the Bank for utilising “wrong methodologies” to rate China, leading to a poor score for the world’s second largest economy.
The Group of 7 nations will meet in the UK later this week where discussions will focus on combating tax evasion as well as whether austerity policies are the most effective route for reviving growth.
Monday, May 6
Weeks into Japan’s paradigm shift in economic policy, optimism that the country may end a quarter-century of economic stagnation is balanced by fears that the authorities’ new approach may make things worse. And, while debate naturally focuses on Japan’s internal manoeuvres, the tipping point may lie abroad.
Global credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s on Thursday cut Indonesia’s debt outlook from “positive” to “stable”, arguing that recent economic reforms had lost its momentum, while a weaker external profile had reduced the chance of an upgrade over the next 12 months, reported Bloomberg.
The significance of the decision by the BRICS to create a new development bank that they will fund cannot be overemphasized. Emerging markets and developing countries are taking the future into their own hands – at a time when rich countries are muddling through their own self-inflicted problems.
Since injecting more than $2 trillion into the financial system through three rounds of quantitative easing, the U.S. Federal Reserve is gradually realising that their experiment to kick-start the economy with near-zero interest rates has failed. Contemplating an exit strategy however may prove to be far more difficult; as loose monetary policy over the last five years has boosted leverage and risk-taking in financial markets; increasing the risk of a credit and asset bubble as large, if not larger, than the previous one.
