Archives for October 2016

Russian Central Bank keeps key interest rate unchanged

October 28, 2016 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Russian bonds ruble gain on expectation Central Bank will hold rates steady

The Russian ruble remained stable on Friday as the decision was in line with analysts’ expectations.

“The Bank of Russia will assess inflation risks and compliance of economic performance and inflation with the baseline scenario, when it makes its key rate decision in the upcoming months,” the bank said in a statement, stressing that it wouldn’t reduce the base rate until the end of 2016.

Consumer inflation has slowed to 6.2 percent as of late October, down from 6.4 percent a month earlier, according to the regulator. The decline in inflation was down to the strength of the national currency with higher-than-expected oil prices as well as increased demand for Russian government bonds. Also a good crop yield has seen a slowing of prices for food products.

Following moderately tight monetary policy, the regulator expects annual growth in consumer prices to be less than 4.5 percent by next October with a drop to the target of four percent by the end of 2017.

However, the bank warned it may not meet its target due to domestic inflation expectations, falling household savings and rising real wages not supported by higher labor productivity.

The country’s GDP is expected to drop 0.5-0.7 percent this year with the fourth quarter showing slight growth, the regulator said. In 2017, economic growth is expected to be below one percent.

The next rate setting meeting is scheduled for December.

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/364556-central-bank-keep-key-rate/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

EU-Canada trade deal in shambles with Belgium’s arbitration revision demand

October 28, 2016 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Belgium reaches EU-Canada trade deal compromise

The Belgian government admitted on Friday that the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) will only be applied provisionally and will face a challenge to its legality under EU law.

The EU will scrutinize the compromise offered by Brussels to its Wallonia region in order to broker the deal.

In return for Wallonia’s support, ministers in Brussels agreed to refer the most controversial aspect of the deal to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for a ruling. It involves the secret arbitration procedure to solve disputes between corporations and governments.

Without this revision, the Belgian government reportedly will not sign CETA which needs the support of all 28 EU countries to be ratified.

“Belgium will request an opinion from the European Court of Justice on the compatibility of the ISDS (the Investor-state dispute settlement) with the European Treaties,” the county’s government said as quoted by the UK Daily Express.

The ISDS allowing foreign businesses to sue elected governments for policies that affect their profits, would be ruled incompatible with EU treaties.

The critics of the free trade deal say the secretive arbitration system undermines democracy by letting multinational corporations dictate state policy.

The ECJ has been used by companies to sue governments for banning advertising on cigarette packets, introducing green taxes to cut pollution or raising the minimum wage.

The Belgian government said the country’s other regions gave no promises that they would vote in favor of the current version of CETA.

The statement from the regions said: “Unless otherwise decided by their respective parliaments, the Walloon Region, the French Community, the German Community, the French Community Commission and the Brussels-Capital Region do not intend to ratify CETA on the basis of the dispute settlement system between investors and parties provided for in chapter eight of the [the deal], as it is the day of the signing of the [the deal].”

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/364539-ceta-not-sealed-yet-belgium/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

Small Factories Emerge as a Weapon in the Fight Against Poverty

October 28, 2016 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

For the first three decades of Marlin’s existence, the company almost exclusively made simple, sturdy, welded-wire bagel baskets. As the Jewish breakfast staple exploded in popularity outside the Northeast, Marlin prospered along with it.

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But by the early 2000s, the bagel craze was fading, and the popularity of the Atkins diet and carb-phobia started hurting bagel sales. China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 presented traditional manufacturers — and what is more old-school than bagel baskets? — with an existential threat.

Chinese versions of Marlin’s products were selling for $6 each, or less than what the steel alone cost in Marlin’s baskets. The other $5 that Marlin charged, to cover salaries, taxes, equipment and a sliver of profit, was now just red ink.

Mr. Greenblatt did what organisms threatened with extinction have always done to survive: He evolved.

He moved the factory to Baltimore in 1999, with eight of his Brooklyn employees following him, including one who is still working on the floor. Then he began going after what economists call value-added goods, products that were more specialized and sophisticated what than the Chinese were making, and therefore able to command higher prices.

But producing baskets with very specific requirements, or tolerances, as they are known, for automakers or aerospace giants could not be achieved by hand. “If a bagel falls out the bottom, that’s 10 cents,” Mr. Greenblatt said. “A single airplane part can cost thousands of dollars, so there’s no room for error.”

Over the course of a decade, he invested in robots that churned out baskets almost a hundred times as fast as human beings. He trained his workers to operate the robots, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each, and hired engineers to help design ever-more-sophisticated products to win customers and stay ahead of overseas rivals.

“In Brooklyn, eight fellows could do 300 bends an hour,” Mr. Greenblatt recalled. “Now two guys running robots can do 25,000 bends per hour.”

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Today, in fact, many of Marlin’s robot-made baskets are designed specifically to be handled by other robots.

Automation did not mean the elimination of jobs — in fact, it saved the company. But it does mean producing many more baskets with only a few more workers. So, while Marlin’s revenue has grown to over $5 million today, from $800,000 when Mr. Greenblatt arrived, the company’s work force has increased by just a third, to 24 people from 18 people.

Marlin’s comeback isn’t exactly a secret. In 2012, the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, visited the plant. Mr. Greenblatt is a well-known booster in industry circles.

Less publicized is how the company’s survival has transformed the lives of its workers, even as the Westport neighborhood around the factory, and other poor sections of Baltimore, remain deeply scarred. “Some are dead, some are locked up,” said Edward Derrill, 23, of the guys he grew up with in West Baltimore. “I didn’t want to end up like that.”

With an associate’s degree in computer science from Morgan State University, a historically black college in Baltimore, workers like Mr. Derrill can earn at least $50,000 a year. Besides health insurance, they also have access to a 401(k) plan and two weeks’ paid vacation, a rarity at many local employers.

“You can work your way up and get raises,” he said. Mr. Derrill hopes to become a team leader soon, supervising other workers. Marlin also pays for its employees to go back to school and get degrees in related subjects like engineering, giving workers who never had a chance to attend college additional options.

Nationwide and for men in particular, whether black or white, the erosion of manufacturing work has been especially devastating.

Drew Greenblatt, owner of Marlin Steel, said, “This isn’t theoretical. Manufacturing bootstraps people out of poverty.” Credit Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times

In the 1950s, says Lawrence Katz, a prominent labor economist at Harvard, nearly one-third of the men who went to work after high school were employed in factories. Those jobs and that era are never coming back, Mr. Katz said, “but a job as a physical therapist or a home health aide doesn’t fit the identity of someone who is a welder or a machinist.”

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And while not all the workers at Marlin are men — the split is about 80-20 — for many blue-collar men there and elsewhere, the idea of working with one’s hands and building things is closely connected to finding a purpose in life, and in the workplace. “I call it an identity mismatch, and I think it’s a huge issue for men,” Mr. Katz said. “Pure physical labor isn’t much valued today, but we need to try and rebuild the service sector for men without college degrees.”

Brent Fox, 34, served with the Marine Corps in Iraq and is now the weekend shift supervisor at Marlin, a position that can pay well over $50,000 a year. While the money is a draw, Mr. Fox also said working in a service-type role doesn’t appeal to him.

“‘You want fries with that?’ No way,” he said. “I like being able to take raw material and make it into something. There’s pride in making things — you don’t get that in a lot of service jobs.”

New employers have appeared in Baltimore, including an Amazon warehouse that employs more than 3,000. But with hourly wages of over $15 an hour, that is still less than what most Marlin workers earn.

“This isn’t theoretical,” Mr. Greenblatt said, shouting over the din of metal pounding on metal. “Manufacturing bootstraps people out of poverty.”

‘Honest, Hard Work’

Up Annapolis Road from the small industrial park that Marlin calls home, in the Westport neighborhood, the deindustrialization of urban America wreaked havoc. Derelict rowhouses line the streets, with rotting stoops and garbage-filled yards. Only 6 percent of residents have college degrees, and more than a quarter do not have a high school diploma.

“Try to get a job,” said John Brooks, who has lived in Westport for most of his 63 years. “They won’t hire people from here.”

Ticking off Baltimore employers of yesteryear — like Bethlehem Steel, and Carr Lowrey, a glassmaker that shut its doors in 2003 after 114 years down by the Patapsco River — Mr. Brooks shook his head.

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“McDonald’s, you might not even get that,” he said. “There used to be plenty of factories here. You didn’t even need a high school diploma to work at Bethlehem Steel.”

Once upon a time, Mr. Branch, the Marlin machine operator, also lacked a high school diploma. He earned one through an equivalency test, and later helped other prisoners earn their G.E.D.s during his time inside.

After Popeyes and his course at the Magna Baltimore Technical Training Center, Mr. Branch landed a job at Crown Cork Seal in a suburb of Baltimore. “I don’t know if anyone else would have taken a chance on me,” he said.

In the autumn of 2015, after 123 years of making cans in Baltimore, Crown Cork Seal shut down the plant where Mr. Branch worked. But he was determined to find another manufacturing position and not go back to the streets.

“The worst feeling in the world was watching my kids get up and leave after they visited me in prison,” he recalled. “I promised them I wouldn’t put them through that again.”

Mr. Greenblatt had worked with Magna, and when a headhunter steered Mr. Branch to Marlin Steel, it was a natural fit. “I like being creative,” Mr. Branch said, as he entered figures that would determine the diameter and angles of the parts that his machine produces.

“God gave me a lot of blessings,” he said. “When you lived that life on the corner, you never knew which day would be your last. Now I can come home, sit on my couch, look at my big-screen TV and appreciate it because it came from honest, hard work. That’s a great feeling, and nothing can take that away.”

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Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/business/small-factories-emerge-as-a-weapon-in-the-fight-against-poverty.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Small Business

Russia-led EEU & Israel may ink free trade pact in 2017

October 28, 2016 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Vietnam joins Russia-led free trade zone

“Before the end of the year the first round of talks [on a free trade area creation] is scheduled with Israel. Negotiations are to start with Serbia and a number of other states,” Medvedev said during a meeting of the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council.

According to the EEU Commission’s Minister of Trade Veronika Nikishina, Israel may sign a deal in 2017.

Israeli Minister Zeev Elkin said last December the country wants a free trade agreement with the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union as soon as possible.

In February, Russian Deputy Agriculture Minister Sergey Levin said Moscow and Tel Aviv were planning the agreement in the near future as they “aim at maximizing cooperation in terms of agriculture and new technologies; as well as creation of joint ventures.”

Russia is a traditional grain supplier to Israel and plans to broaden the range of exported agricultural produce, according to Levin. He added that Israel could increase trade with the EEU by six to eight percent, while Russia would see an increase in investment and technology transfer.

The EEU is a trade bloc established in 2015 on the basis of the Customs Union of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus. It was later joined by Armenia and Kyrgyzstan. This month Vietnam officially became the first non-regional country to join the bloc which is designed to ensure the free movement of goods, services, capital and workforce between member countries.

More than 40 countries and international organizations, including China, Indonesia, and Iran have expressed interest in a free trade deal with the EEU.

The Prime Minister of Kazakhstan Bykytzhan Sagintayev said this week the EEU has already held negotiations with South Korea, Egypt, Iran and India. He added that South American countries have also showed interest in cooperation.

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/364530-eeu-israel-deal-talks/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

Saudi Arabia & Gulf allies ready to slash oil output 4%

October 28, 2016 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

No price jump as Iraq refuses to join OPEC production deal

Saudi Arabia proposed the plan to Russian Minister Aleksandr Novak last week, according to the source. However, Novak reportedly said Moscow would prefer to freeze at current levels.

According to Reuters, the proposal to cut production by four percent will likely be raised on the eve of the November 30 OPEC meeting, where the cartel and other producers, including Russia, will discuss joint action to stabilize prices.

Iraq, OPEC’s second-biggest producer, said this week that it would not cut production, as it needs more oil revenue to fight Islamic State.

“We are not going back in any way, not by OPEC not by anybody else,” said Falah al-Amri, the head of Iraq’s state oil marketing company.

“If there is a cut, then everyone must cut. No exemptions,” one OPEC source told Reuters, in response to Iraq’s refusal.

Three OPEC sources said only Libya, Nigeria and Iran could be excluded because they were recently affected by wars or sanctions.

Russia Saudi Arabia agree to stabilize oil market – minister

Oil producing countries want to reduce the global estimated glut of 1.0 million to 1.5 million barrels per day. On September 28, OPEC agreed to curb daily production by 700,000 barrels.

The details of how the production cuts will be shared are still to be worked out and are expected to be signed at the OPEC meeting in Vienna on November 30.

Novak said production freeze talks are less likely to collapse, as OPEC means business this time around.

“I see the attitude of OPEC. They want to ensure that the decisions announced in Algeria were formally finalized… It is important to be consistent when making decisions, it is important for the market, too,” the Russian energy minister said.

Global markets were less positive about the upcoming meeting as oil prices continued their weekly decline. Brent crude was trading at $50.38 per barrel, while US WTI cost $49.56.

“Doubts linger about OPEC’s ability or willingness to implement any production cuts. The market has been wary of reading too much into the rhetoric ahead of the next meeting scheduled for the end of November,” said analysts at Cenkos Natural Resources.

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/364522-saudi-arabia-oil-cuts/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

Luxury car sales skyrocket in Ukraine’s cash-strapped capital

October 27, 2016 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

IMF approves delayed $1bn tranche to Ukraine

The report says 13,931 new cars were sold in Ukraine’s capital, an increase of 55 percent compared to 2015. Sales of Lexus surged 165 percent, Mercedes 90 percent, BWM sales increased by 51 percent. Range Rover and Porsche showed sales growth of 65 percent.

Top politicians and businessmen account for the increase in demand for luxury cars, according the head of the Ukrainian Association of Automobile Importers and Dealers Oleg Nazarenko.

“Status as well as necessity to constantly get around using good and reliable cars obliges the owners to upgrade their vehicle fleet on the first failure. These people have neither opportunity nor wish to spare time on car service centers and waiting for a vehicle to be fixed,” he told the newspaper.

Sales of mid-priced vehicles have also increased, according to the association. Renault Logan, Volkswagen Polo and KIA Sportage were the segment leaders.

“People didn’t know what would happen the next day; they watched their money, buying only bare essentials. Businessmen were not sure if they could work in Ukraine or would have to urgently leave. Now citizens are getting adjusted to the new living conditions and spending their savings,” said Nazarenko, stressing the colossal black economy with backdoor salaries is still a regular feature of Ukraine.

At the same time, Ukrainians’ income fell 22 percent last year, according to the country’s State Statistics Committee. Data from the Ukrainian Association of Suppliers to Retail Chains showed that sales of food decreased by 20 percent in the first six month of this year.

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/364371-ukraine-luxury-car-sales/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

Samsung profits plunge after Note 7 smartphone debacle

October 27, 2016 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Samsung ends Note 7 production, may kill off entire line

The company’s overall operating profit fell to $4.6 billion which is the lowest level in two years. Its mobile division’s operating profit collapsed 98 percent to just $88 million.

Samsung said this month it will lose approximately $3.1 billion on the Note 7 recall over the next six months.

The company has scrapped the entire line less than two months after its launch due to safety considerations. That followed a global recall of at least 2.5 million phones due to faulty batteries that could ignite. The manufacturer assured customers fixed devices were safe but the problems with overheating and fires continued.

After weeks of unsuccessful attempts to save the brand’s image, the electronics firm announced it was ending the production and sale of the Note 7’s.

The troubled smartphones have been banned by major airlines worldwide.

“Regarding the mobile business, the company will focus on expanding sales of new flagship products with differentiated design and innovative features, as well as regaining consumers’ confidence,” Samsung said on Thursday.

The company’s new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy Note 8 is expected to be released in February.

“Samsung has lost consumer confidence, but I think it still has at least one more chance. Rather than rushing to release the next product, it should conduct a thorough inspection and explain the results of its investigation into the Note 7,” Greg Roh an analyst at HMC Investment Securities told the BBC.

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/364282-samsung-profit-falls-smartphone/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

Philippines turns back on US and pivots to Asia

October 27, 2016 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

US shouldn’t treat Philippines like ‘dog with leash’ – Duterte

Mindanao is known for its copper, gold, iron, aluminum, as well as natural gas and oil deposits. According to WikiLeaks, the island’s untapped mineral resources may be worth up to $1 trillion.

From food to minerals, “the entire gamut of resources is open to development,” Dominguez said during a CNBC interview on Thursday.

His comments follow President Rodrigo Duterte’s visits to Japan and China to bolster Manila’s ties with its Asian neighbors and shift away from the United States.

Dominguez said an alliance with Asian countries is similar to ones like the European Union, NAFTA and Mercosur.

“Of course, there are political implications, but they will merely foster more cooperation and friendlier ties,” he told the media.

“The Chinese have expressed interest but they don’t have too much activity. Our previous administration barely spoke to the Chinese government while we have been in close cooperation with the Japanese for over 60 years,” said the finance secretary.

“So far, Japan has been the largest ODA [official development assistance] provider to the Philippines, with $5.7 billion invested. The Chinese have offered ODA assistance of $6 billion but that’s just the start…We’re happy to get support from both neighbors,” said Dominguez.

As of 2015, Philippines was the 39th largest economy in the world with a gross domestic product of $292 billion, only a fraction less than Singapore and more than EU members Ireland, Finland, Portugal and Greece.

From 2012 to 2015, the country’s economy annually grew on average 6.47 percent based on a surge in investment and strong consumption.

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/364277-philippines-japan-china-investment-us/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

Public Sacrifice: An Annuity for the Teacher — and the Broker

October 26, 2016 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Brokers still find ways to win face time with teachers, however. Many schools allow them to make presentations for their 401(k)-style counterparts — known as 403(b) plans — at the end of faculty meetings. Or they might hang out in break rooms and provide free meals on professional development days.

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“Teachers are still being preyed upon by salespeople,” said Dan Otter, founder of the advocacy and educational site 403bwise.com, and a longtime teacher now working at the University of New Mexico. “The problem is their first experience with a 403(b) is in a sales environment.”

At Axa — which has about $16.3 billion in 403(b) assets held for employees of elementary, middle or high schools — sales representatives often start the conversation with prospective clients using a so-called yellow pad presentation, several former brokers said, even if they don’t always have it written down on the yellow pads all teachers are familiar with.

Brokers are trained to start by explaining how a teacher’s state pension works, how the tax-advantaged 403(b) operates and what sort of gap might have to be filled with savings to help maintain the teacher’s standard of living in retirement. Many — even those who later became disenchanted with their jobs — said they believed they were helping teachers save and realize their long-term goals.

Only after setting the stage does the broker introduce the main performer. For Axa’s brokers, that role is usually assigned to Axa’s Equi-Vest variable deferred annuity. It isn’t simple: To get the full rundown on how it works, people must sift through a document that is 460 pages long.

And it doesn’t come cheap. The most popular version of the Equi-Vest annuity has a total annual cost that can range from 1.81 to 2.63 percent, according to an analysis from Morningstar.

In contrast, large 401(k) plans usually charge an annual fee of less than half a percent of assets, according to a May report by BrightScope using 2013 data. Large, federally regulated 403(b) plans charge a bit more.

“Teachers are still being preyed upon by salespeople,” said Dan Otter, who founded the website 403bwise.com and teaches at the University of New Mexico. Credit Steven St. John for The New York Times

Then there is the surrender fee. An Equi-Vest annuity owner who wants to transfer savings into another 403(b) product or roll it over into an I.R.A., for example, would pay 5 percent to Axa on any of the withdrawal that was contributed in the previous six years.

Axa said that annuity owners can withdraw up to 10 percent of their money without penalty annually, as long as it is permitted under the tax code, and that the fee can be waived for hardships and other reasons.

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Beyond Axa, other large players in this market include Voya, Valic, Lincoln Financial Group and MetLife (whose retail adviser force was recently acquired by MassMutual), according to the retirement industry publication PlanSponsor. Last year, Axa sold roughly $2.2 billion worth of Equi-Vest annuities within retirement plans, according to Morningstar, which include different versions of the product.

The charges for such complex annuities are intended to provide plenty of incentive for sales representatives and their managers. At Axa, for example, a broker can earn roughly 5 to 7 percent of the total amount teachers deposit in their 403(b)’s for the first year (though some pocket only half that amount, a former broker said, depending on their pay structure).

In a statement, Axa said that it offered a range of approaches and products to meet each individual client’s needs, and that the company appropriately disclosed all benefits, risks, fees and restrictions. “The variable annuity product we make available in the 403(b) space offers guarantees not available in mutual funds or index funds,” an Axa spokesman said, “which can significantly reduce our clients’ exposure to market loss.”

Selling annuities also creates a continuing income stream for the brokers. Axa pays a commission of 1.5 percent to 2 percent on every future dollar an employee contributed to a 403(b) annuity. The annuity sold to the teacher, in a sense, becomes an annuity for the sales rep and the company’s managers.

While that translates into a healthy living for some brokers, many others are poorly compensated, dependent largely on commissions. This is particularly true for those fresh out of college.

Many of these practices are plainly stated on Axa’s website, including the fact that brokers are paid more to sell annuities than to sell mutual funds. Axa said that reflected the complexity of selling annuities.

To qualify for Axa’s health insurance plan and retirement benefits, moreover, brokers must sell a certain amount of proprietary insurance-related products, including annuities.

Justin Victor, a certified financial planner who left Axa in 2008 after three years, recalls the intensity of that pressure. “I am not going to lie,” he said. “When you have your health insurance on the line in the commission-based financial advisory world, you will do whatever you can to get a commission.”

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Axa said certain tax rules required its insurance sales representatives to solicit and sell mostly insurance products, including annuities, so they could receive employer-provided benefits.

Axa managers take a healthy cut from the younger recruits they oversee, according to a former broker who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared repercussions from the firm. Figures can vary widely, but managers might earn, he said, up to 36 percent of a new broker’s commissions on proprietary products sold during the first three years of service.

“It is really designed for the experienced advisers to take advantage of the younger advisers’ enthusiasm,” said Mr. Bergeron, who left Axa in 2014 after a year and a half. He later held two short-lived jobs in the industry, but struggled financially. He has since decided to leave the field altogether.

“It was a mental drain working as an adviser,” he added. “I became a little depressed at the end of it and wanted nothing to do with it.”

Mr. Bergeron’s testimony is echoed by others. Several former brokers said they left Axa — and the 403(b) business over all — because they decided this was not the type of product they would sell to their own family members.

Despite their misgivings, several sales representatives said they understood how some of their former colleagues justified selling high-fee products: If it weren’t for us, they reason, many teachers would not be saving for retirement, beyond their pensions, at all.

Brian Jenkins, now a consultant for firms that raise money for start-up companies, shared that mind-set. He worked for more than 30 years in the media industry before joining Axa, where he covered the Barrington school district, in an affluent Illinois suburb where his children attended school, among others.

“Many school employees would have never taken the initiative to open a retirement account if I had not been there,” said Mr. Jenkins, who left Axa in 2014. “The fees that were built into the annuity product paid for a field staff of agents to go into the schools and reach out to people. I feel good about what I was able to do for them.”

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He said he was always encouraged by his managers to be upfront about the various charges, which he fully disclosed to his customers, many of whom did not know what 403(b) options they had.

Still, those fees erode workers’ balances over time, leaving retirees with significantly smaller nest eggs.

Take an employee with a starting salary of $40,000 who saved 6 percent of her salary over a 40-year career. She would retire with about $175,000 when paying annual fees of 2 percent, assuming a 4 percent return after inflation, according to an analysis conducted by Vanguard. (The analysis also assumes that her salary rises 1 percent annually, also adjusted for inflation.)

But she would have 25 percent more, or a total of nearly $218,000, if fees had been 1 percent, and almost $260,000 if she paid 0.25 percent in fees.

Mat Burridge, a sixth-grade teacher in Hannibal, N.Y., said he had trouble untangling exactly how much he paid for his variable annuity from Voya (which invests in a collection of subaccounts similar to mutual funds). After several phone calls, he learned that he paid at least 1.2 percent for the annuity, in addition to the various fees for 15 underlying funds his broker chose.

After reading about how much that will cost him over time, he decided to stop contributing and redirect his savings into an I.R.A. at Vanguard, known for its rock-bottom costs.

“It really hit home because we just refinanced our mortgage,” Mr. Burridge, 30, said. “You are talking a significant amount of money.”

More in the Public Sacrifice Series

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Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/27/your-money/403-b-retirement-plans-teachers-brokers-fees.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Your Money

China to overtake US nuclear capacity

October 26, 2016 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Beijing nuclear expansion leads to buying Canadian uranium

The country will overtake France to have the second-largest number of nuclear reactors by 2020, according to WNA director general Agneta Rising.

China’s push to develop nuclear energy comes from the need to improve air quality in its rapidly growing cities as well as reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with international commitments. The country has one of the highest rates of air pollution related deaths in the world.

“For China, the air pollution is a major driver,” Rising was cited by Reuters.

The WNA report showed that in Asia 134 operable reactors generated 400 terawatt hours of electricity last year, making up 16 percent of global nuclear generation. There are firm plans to increase that figure, with 39 reactors comprising 47.4 gigawatts (GW) currently under construction in Asia. Twenty of those are to be built in China.

Beijing has set a goal to generate 58 GW of nuclear energy by 2020. A gigawatt of power provides enough energy for about 700,000 homes.

By 2050, nuclear power generation in China is expected to exceed 350 GW, including about 400 new nuclear reactors at a cost of over a trillion dollars.

“There is history in the region, where you have high-skilled people with very good university education and they have been working on research reactors… so I think there is basis of knowledge,” Rising said. “The big driver (in Asia) is to have electricity for people.”

According to the report, there are plans for more than 50 reactors providing more than 50,000 MW in nine new countries in the region. Most of them plan to have their first nuclear reactors enter operation before 2030.

New reactor construction is mostly led by industrializing countries which have enjoyed high levels of economic growth with an accompanying increase in energy demand, the WNA said.

It added that four countries – China, Russia, India and South Korea – are expected to account for 70 percent of reactors commissioned through 2030.

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/364191-china-largest-nuclear-capacity/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

Archives for October 2016

Russian Central Bank keeps key interest rate unchanged

EU-Canada trade deal in shambles with Belgium’s arbitration revision demand

Small Factories Emerge as a Weapon in the Fight Against Poverty

‘Honest, Hard Work’

Russia-led EEU & Israel may ink free trade pact in 2017

Saudi Arabia & Gulf allies ready to slash oil output 4%

Luxury car sales skyrocket in Ukraine’s cash-strapped capital

Samsung profits plunge after Note 7 smartphone debacle

Philippines turns back on US and pivots to Asia

Public Sacrifice: An Annuity for the Teacher — and the Broker

More in the Public Sacrifice Series

China to overtake US nuclear capacity

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