The fallout from Saturday’s deal to bailout Cyprus is expected to extend to global markets this week, renewing fears over the euro and regional stability. In the United States, both the President and VP will be out of the country on the same day, at least for a few hours – a rarity in itself.
Monday, March 18
China, over the last decade, saw a 162 percent increase in its weapons exports, said a report by a Swedish think-tank on Monday, marking the first time the nation has been among the world’s top five arms exporters since the end of the cold war.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), China supplied close to 5 percent of all arms exported from 2008-2012, with the U.S. occupying the top spot (30 percent) ahead of Russia (26 percent), Germany (7 percent), and France (6 percent).
The developing world’s rapid growth has sharply cut extreme poverty and by 2030, up to 80 percent of the world’s middle class will be from developing countries, said a United Nations report published on Thursday.
According to the world body, higher economic growth in at least 40 developing countries has help lift hundreds of millions of people from poverty, and pushed billions more into a new global middle class.
Until recently, Brussels has supported primarily frontload austerity measures. When President Hoover tried similar policies in 1930s America, a severe recession morphed into a devastating Great Depression. Is Europe following in the footprints?
On Monday (11 March), the President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso, urged the EU leaders to stay the course on debt reduction and economic overhauls.
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service is urging nearly 1 million Americans to file their federal tax returns for 2009 by April 15 or risk losing out on $917 million in unclaimed tax refunds, reported the Associated Press on Friday, with about half of the potential refunds larger than $500, estimated the agency.
The Chinese government will allow its currency, the renminbi, to float on international markets sometime within the next five years, said Charles Li, the chief executive of Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing Ltd (HKEx) on Wednesday, after more than a decade of stable currency policies, which have been routinely criticised overseas, particularly by the U.S.
They may be small in number, but immigrants are leading the way in business startups and attaining degrees in highly lucrative fields, such as science and mathematics, driving the entrepreneurial and economic change America.
Recent immigrants and their children are a growing component of the United States population, making up almost 13 percent of the country. As their numbers grow in size, immigrants themselves take various paths toward socioeconomic advancement, including opening new businesses or working in particularly lucrative niche industries.
Hundreds of U.K. companies may soon be at risk of defaulting due to highly-leveraged buyouts made by private equity funds prior to the 2008 financial crisis, warned the Bank of England on Thursday, with the entire U.K. financial system believed to face massive instability unless the debt can be refinanced or restructured.
India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday predicted that the nation’s economy would return to a high growth trajectory path within the next 2-3 years, admitting that the government must take further steps to address domestic issues and promote inclusive growth.
Singh, who was speaking at a session of the lower house of the Parliament, said that the economy has slowed primarily to international factors, though the government was also taking responsibility for future action.
A major cyberattack on the United States could cripple the country’s infrastructure and economy, warned a top spy agency, posing the most dangerous immediate threat to U.S. national security.
In his annual assessment of security threats, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the top national security threats are now in the cyber arena, ahead of global terrorist networks.
