What we have seen post the 2008 global financial crash, as the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of England and the ECB have sought to pump money into their respective real economies in order to get growth going again, is an absolutely enormous transfer of wealth from savers to borrowers.
Portugal has decided to forgo to a final 2.6 billion euros in funds due under its international bailout programme, choosing rather to finance itself in bond markets, reported Reuters on Friday.
Finance Minister Maria Luis Albuquerque told journalists that the decision was taken because of a “calendar incompatibility”, as the government was still waiting on the nation’s constitutional court to approve budget measures.
Russia has threatened to shut off its natural gas supply to Ukraine by 06:00 GMT on Monday, after last-minute talks in Kiev failed to resolve a long-running dispute over prices.
On Sunday night, a top official from Russia’s state gas firm Gazprom told AFP that the EU-brokered talks failed to bridge the two sides’ disagreements over price and that negotiators from Russia were already heading home.
Russia and Ukraine are set to resume talks today to resolve a dispute over natural gas prices, despite already missing a deadline for Kiev to pay off some its debts without Moscow cutting off supplies.
On Tuesday, eight hours of negotiations in Brussels failed to overcome differences over pricing, but Moscow agreed not to cut off gas to Kiev just yet, with further talks scheduled.
Cybercriminals – i.e. hackers, industrial or corporate spies etc. etc. – are causing nearly $445 billion in economic damage every year, according to a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), with the damage for businesses nearly double that for individuals.
“Cybercrime remains a growth industry,” said the Washington-based think-think. “The returns are great, and the risks are low.”
A massive oversight saw France’s national train operator SNCF purchase 341 new trains that were “too wide” for about 1,300 of its existing platforms, reported Radio France Internationale on Wednesday.
According to RFI, SNCF had spent over $4 billion on the acquisition, only to discover that many of the nation’s train stations were unable to fit the new trains.
After decades of negotiation, Russia and China on Wednesday finally signed a $400 billion natural gas deal, which will Russian state gas giant Gazprom provide a trillion cubic metres in gas to the world’s second largest economy over 30 years.
The deal was announced after meetings in Shanghai between presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, marking a significant shift in economic relations for Russia from the west to the east.
Putin called the deal a “watershed event” and said implementation would start “tomorrow.”
In its most aggressive action taken against China thus far, the U.S. Justice Department on Monday charged five Chinese military officials for economic cyber-espionage, issuing a formal indictment and even “wanted” posters against the accused.
“This administration will not tolerate actions by any nation that seeks to illegally sabotage American companies and undermine the integrity of fair competition in the operation of the free market,” said U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. at a news conference in Washington.
The Russian government has poured over $200 billion in loans and economic aid into Ukraine over the last 20 years, claimed Minister of Economic Development Alexei Ulyukaev on Monday, emphasising why Russia has shown such strong interest in the future of Ukraine.
“Perhaps our European and US friends don’t understand that we supported the Ukrainian economy,” the minister said in an interview with RT News.
The U.S. Department of Energy has been ordered to end a 31-year-old scheme that had charged electricity consumers for the future construction of a nuclear waste dump, after collecting over $40 billion over the years placed into a trust fund.
Last Friday, the Energy Department finally removed the fee from electric bills having fought with power companies and state regulators over the issue, with a federal appeals court calling the fee “quite unfair”.
