Russian Prime Minister, and prospective Presidential candidate, Vladimir Putin intends to implement a luxury tax on his nation’s super-rich population, reported the Moscow Times on Wednesday, after the Prime Minister claimed that the country’s oligarchs were spending too much on expensive houses and cars.
The U.S. and Mexico have reached a cooperative agreement for oil and gas drilling along the maritime border in the Gulf of Mexico, ending years of negotiation that has left the area untapped for more than a decade.
The agreement signed on Monday by the United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Mexico’s foreign minister Patricia Espinosa, establishes a legal framework for U.S. companies to develop offshore energy projects with Mexico’s national oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex).
Less than two weeks before presidential elections, which Vladimir Putin is largely expected to win, Putin has pledged more defense spending and called for a stronger army, saying that diplomacy is fallible and Russia must rearm itself to prepare for new threats.
As Prime Minister Vladimir Putin inspected Russia’s new fleet of stealth fighter jets, he said that a stronger military would give Russia greater presence on the world stage.
Financial regulators in the US could finally be ready to switch the financial reporting measures for US companies to the globally accepted standards for accounting, said the chief accountant at the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday during an interview with Reuters.
Israel will begin using revenues from its newly-found natural gas fields to establish a sovereign wealth fund, said the Israeli Prime Minister’s office on Sunday during a draft law presented to the cabinet.
The fund is expected to have at least $80 billion under its management by 2040, and will be tasked to protect the country’s financial stability during times of national emergency, as well as to provide a stable income stream for government-approved education and defence projects.
A quick preview of the key economic events for the upcoming week:
After being held hostage by the Greek drama, leaders from the eurozone are expected to meet again this week. But the important question is – when will the drama stop?
On the other hand, a series of eurozone and U.S. economic data this week will reveal how the two economic powerhouses are keeping up.
Monday, February 20
The Obama administration has asked the Congress for a $800 million ‘Middle East Incentive Fund’ – a fund that would help ‘Arab Spring’ countries in transition and create incentives for long-term economic, political and trade reforms.
As part of America’s 2013 fiscal plan, President Barack Obama asked Congress for $800 million for the Arab Spring countries engulfed in revolutions, while asking to maintain $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt.
China’s central bank on Saturday lowered the reserve requirement ratio (RRR), the mandated amount of cash holdings banks must keep, boosting lending capacity by an estimated 400 billion yuan (US$63.5 billion).
The cut, which analysts have been eagerly anticipating, came days after Japan loosened its own monetary policy, underscoring global central banks’ drive to shield their economies from the eurozone debt crisis by flooding the financial system with cash.
In a thorough report, the Chinese central bank said:
A group of natural resources companies, including Royal Dutch Shell and BHP Billiton, are set to oppose new anti-corruption and transparency rules put forward by the US and the EU, claimed a report by the Financial Times on Sunday, after a Shell spokesman lambasted the proposals to have“limited impact and unclear benefits”.
A Californian audit has uncovered gross levels abuse in foreclosures, with almost 84 percent of all foreclosures illegal and two-thirds of all foreclosures with at least four violations or irregularities.
The study, commissioned by Phil Ting, a San Francisco accessor-recorder, studied 400 foreclosure sales in the city from January 2009 to November 2011 and uncovered rampant abuse similar to lender fraud and faulty documentation found in other parts of the United States.
