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.
Germany on Wednesday presented a budget that would allow the federal government to reach a structurally balanced budget in 2014, a year earlier than expected.
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.
President Francois Hollande on Tuesday admitted that France’s public deficit will “without a doubt” be 3.7 percent of its output this year, significantly above the 3 percent he promised to cut it to during his election campaign last year.
During the French elections last year, Hollande had repeatedly vowed to bring the deficit down from 4.5 percent to 3 percent this year, and had insisted this was possible until his admission of defeat yesterday.
In what can be interpreted as a damning verdict against recent regional crisis efforts, Germany’s central bank on Tuesday said that it had set aside nearly double its risk provisions from 2012, warning that the eurozone crisis “is not over despite the interim calm on financial markets.”
Former civil war foes Sudan and South Sudan on Tuesday agreed to restart joint crude oil exports with the next three weeks, reported Reuters, after production had abruptly been shut more than a year ago over a bitter dispute regarding pipeline fees.
China’s banking regulator has launched a nationwide probe on the pooling of wealth management product-linked assets at several banks. Already, some wealth funds are said to be at risk of defaulting, sparking fears of a crisis similar to the 2008 U.S. subprime lending crash.
