BTC China, one of the country’s leading bitcoin exchanges, has installed China’s first bitcoin ATM in Shanghai, defying recent government efforts to prohibit widespread usage of the digital currency, reported Reuters on Wednesday.
The machine, located in a cafe at a mall in Shanghai’s Zhangjiang technology park area, allows people to buy bitcoin directly from the exchange for yuan inserted into the machine.
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 Russian economy may not see any growth in 2014, admitted Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, as capital flight accelerates in the wake of the Ukrainian standoff.
Speaking at a government meeting, as cited by Russian news agencies, the Finance Minister claimed that nearly $63 billion had left Russia in the first three months of 2014, while more capital outflow is expected if tensions continue to rise between Moscow and the West.
“Continuing capital flight lowers the opportunities for economic investment and creates risk of an unbalanced budget,” said Siluanov.
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.
Germany, Europe’s top economy, on Monday announced that it could no longer accept applicants for its “Job Of My Life” programme – a scheme created last year giving vocational training to unemployed youth from the rest of the continent.
According to the German labour ministry, the programme was vastly oversubscribed by jobseekers, particularly from struggling Spain and Hungary, while Berlin has had to triple its budget for the scheme due to the overwhelming interest.
Chile’s government is introducing new regulations that will prevent the wealthy from writing off groceries as a corporate expense, reported Bloomberg on Monday.
The month-old administration of President Michelle Bachelet will reportedly grant tax inspectors power to review every credit card purchase on a business account; while supermarket spending claimed as a tax deduction will be rejected out of hand, though people can appeal.
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 long-troubled Greek economy successfully returned to international bond markets on Thursday, raising 3 billion euros ($4.2 billion) from bond issues, with nearly 90 percent of the sum coming from foreign investors.
“Greece today took one more decisive step toward exiting the crisis,” said Prime Minister Antonis Samaras in a televised address afterward. “International markets are now expressing in the most undoubted way possible their confidence in the Greek economy.”
Some careers simply pay better than others. Yet few would guess that a garbage man in Newport Beach, California could potentially earn more than what a teacher or even a sales manager earn on average in the U.S..
Check out this infographic, which looks at some jobs that pay out far higher than what the public think they do.
Related: Lowly-Paid US Fast-Food Workers Require $7 Billion a Year in Public Aid: Study
