Archives for January 2017

Trump defends ‘extreme vetting’ order, says visa restrictions to be lifted after 90 days

In a letter to employees, Starbucks Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz said the company would do everything possible to support affected workers. He said the hiring would apply to stores worldwide and the effort would start in the United States with the focus on immigrants “who have served with US troops as interpreters and support personnel.”

“I am hearing the alarm you all are sounding that the civility and human rights we have all taken for granted for so long are under attack,” Schultz said, adding that Starbucks would aim to communicate with workers more frequently.

On Friday President Trump put a four-month hold on allowing refugees into the United States and temporarily barred travelers from Syria and six other Muslim-majority countries. He explained the decision, which has sparked widespread international criticism, as motivated by the urge to be “protecting our own citizens and border.”

READ MORE: Nestle admits possibility of slave labor in its coffee supply chain

According to the Starbucks CEO, the company plans to strengthen its business in the “critically important market” of Mexico, which has also been a target of Trump’s policies. The US president wants to build a wall on the border with Mexico to stem illegal immigration.

Schultz said the company has been open for business in Mexico since 2002, and have since opened almost 600 stores in 60 cities across the country, which together employ over 7,000 Mexican people.

He added that Starbucks would help support coffee growers in Mexico, provide health insurance to eligible workers if the health care law is repealed and employees lose health care coverage.

“We stand ready to help and support our Mexican customers, partners and their families as they navigate what impact proposed trade sanctions, immigration restrictions and taxes might have on their business and their trust of Americans. But we will continue to invest in this critically important market all the same,” Schultz said.

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/375578-starbucks-plans-hire-refugees/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Last year, the Cupertino-based technology giant sold 12 million units, capturing just two percent of all smartphones bought by Chinese users.

Age of Apple is over, says Peter Thiel

“Apple with slowing traction for its flagship iPhone 6S during last year saw its negative double-digit growth being somewhat offset by relatively healthy demand for the newer flagship iPhone 7 series in Q4 2016,” the research said.

The flagship model produced by China’s Oppo Electronics reached sales of almost 17 million units. The brand has rapidly won popularity among the Chinese due to its high-spec low-priced devices sold in brick-and-mortar stores.

The report notes that 2016 became a tough year for the iPhone maker in China. Despite smartphone shipments rising six percent over the same period last year, reaching an all-time high, Apple’s position is tenuous in the world’s second-largest economy.

“Apple still remains in a vulnerable position, and there is higher expectation already with the next year flagship which is rumored to be a substantial upgrade from both design and components perspective,” the research says.

READ MORE: Apple bets $1bn on Chinese Uber rival

Apple has been fighting for the Chinese market for the last several quarters. Greater China revenue dropped 30 percent in the three months to September 24, 2016, against the same period a year ago.

The company’s market share in China fell from 14.3 percent in 2015 to 10.4 percent last year, according to Counterpoint.

Last year, Apple announced plans to invest $45 million in building a research and development center in Beijing.

READ MORE: China’s largest social network launches alternative to Apple App Store

On the higher end of the market, iPhones have been squeezed by Huawei in China as well as abroad, while in the mid-tier price range Oppo and Vivo have been aggressively capturing market share.

“While the smartphone user base is at an all-time-high and maturing, still the bulk of the popular models are still skewed toward mid-end which puts a cap on growth for players such as Apple,” said Counterpoint.

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/375311-apple-not-first-china/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

“While the devastating human suffering caused by war is the most obvious impact, the long-term cost to the economy can be crippling for a region’s infrastructure and stability,” IEP said in its Economic Value of Peace report.

The figures in the report are expressed in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms.

The major contributor to global violence containment costs is military expenditure, the study found. Military spending reached $6.16 trillion or 45 percent of the economic impact of violence in 2015.

Internal security expenditure including police, judicial and prison system spending exceeded $3.5 trillion or approximately 26 percent of global violence costs.

The economic impact of homicide in 2015 was approximately $1.79 trillion (13 percent of global violence costs).

Iraq, Afghanistan, and Venezuela are the countries where the impact of violence is more than 40 percent of GDP, the IEP said. The Syrian economy is the most affected by violence, at 54.1 percent of GDP, it added.

Regionally, the cost of violence has surged in Latin America as well as in the Middle East and North Africa.

According to the research, violence reduces investment in capital intensive sectors, lowering productivity and reducing returns.

Cost of US post-9/11 wars approaching $5trn – report

Businesses tend to shift investment to conflict-related goods instead of investing in the production of consumption and exportable goods. Investors also “shift from high risk, high return long-term investment to low risk, low return and short-term projects.”

Foreign direct investment declines due to risks associated with violence and the higher cost of crime to businesses.

The study pointed to the fact that the world continues to spend vastly disproportionate resources on creating and containing violence compared to what it spends on peace.

In 2015, UN peacekeeping spending of $8.27 billion was only 1.1 percent of the estimated $742 billion of economic losses from armed conflict, the IEP said.

“Although peace-building and peacekeeping expenditure has approximately doubled during the last nine years, these numbers suggest a severe under-investment in the activities that build peace and demonstrate that the international community is spending too much on conflict and too little on peace.”

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/375305-violence-cost-world-economy/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

‘Not one euro more’ of austerity, says Greek Prime Minister

Speaking at the end of the regular monthly meeting of eurozone finance ministers on Thursday, Sapin cautioned the spate of elections in Europe in 2017 would soon dominate the agenda and would close the political space for Greece’s deal to be reached.

The bailout review has to be finalized by February 20.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem who heads the eurozone’s finance ministers also said: “there is a clear understanding that a quick finalization of the second [bailout] review is in everyone’s interest.”

During the Thursday meeting, Greece’s Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos again rejected the IMF’s calls for Athens to immediately legislate policy measures it would activate after 2018 if the country’s primary budget surplus falls below agreed targets.

The IMF is also urging for more austerity, insisting Greece should cut the income tax threshold and pensions to meet the target.

According to the Financial Times, Tsakalotos said it was “not correct to ask a country to legislate two to three years beforehand what it would do in 2019.”

“It is a commitment that goes well beyond the framework of democracy and the ethical values that inspired Europe,” he added.

The French finance minister said it was legitimate to ask Greece “to describe the measures it would take to reach objectives that have been fixed.”

“I could imagine the reaction in the French parliament” to it being asked to do the same, said Sapin.

Eurozone suspends Greek debt relief over Christmas bonus for pensioners

Greece’s Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras promised this week the government wouldn’t pass any new austerity measures. “There is no way we are going to legislate even one euro more than what was agreed in the bailout,” said Tsipras.

Meanwhile, the EU’s Economy Commissioner Pierre Moscovici has praised Greece’s recent strong economic performance, saying that the country was exceeding its targets under the program. Greece’s primary budget surplus nearly doubled last year.

READ MORE: Greece jobless rate eases to 23%, still highest in eurozone       

Athens and its international creditors have been seeking ways to conclude negotiations on the current review of Greece’s €86 billion aid package. The bailout program was agreed two years ago and is the third since 2010.

Greece has received about €32 billion so far but needs billions in new bailout loans by July at the latest, when it has large debts to repay. The country’s debt – about 180 percent of GDP – is still the highest in the eurozone at over €300 billion.

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/375274-france-greece-bailout-deal/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

“People are furious down here with him,” said protest organizer Joe Hart, as quoted by Business Insider.

Hart, a farmer who lives close to the billionaire’s estate, is reportedly encouraging people to blow conch shells and bang drums.

Mark Zuckerberg reconsiders suing Native Hawaiians over their ancestral land

The Facebook founder purchased 700 acres of beachfront land for a reported cost of $100 million two years ago.

However, a tiny part – eight acres – of Zuckerberg’s property still belongs to several Hawaiian families in accordance with the Kuleana Act of 1850, which allows native people to own the land they once lived on.

Local residents have been reportedly prevented from entering the areas that are legally theirs. Hawaiians say they are confronted by security guards while walking along a public beach adjacent to the billionaire’s property.

“We were walking along, and they tried to say that this was private. I’ve been walking on this since I was a little kid,” said Hart.

According to Hart, the security team is using intimidation tactics to keep people off the public beaches and trails that intertwine with the mostly undeveloped estate.

“They told me I was on private property. They were threatening to take my picture and have me arrested. They were aggressive, rude and disrespectful,” Naoshi Grady told the local newspaper.

Last summer, the owner of the world’s largest social network erected a six-foot wall along part of his property.

Mark Zuckerberg: “Instead of building walls, we can be building bridges.” …the 6ft. wall he built around his massive 700-acre Kauai property.

A video posted by Kaniela Ing (@kanielaing) on Jan 24, 2017 at 8:02pm PST

Six months later, Zuckerberg filed eight lawsuits against families who collectively inherited 14 parcels of land through the Kuleana Act. The move had been widely criticized and the billionaire said he would ‘reconsider’ taking legal action, offering excuses via posts on his Facebook page.

“We want to make sure we are following a process that protects the interests of property owners, respects the traditions of native Hawaiians, and preserves the environment,” he said in a statement.

The locals plan to protest at the wall every weekend until Mark Zuckerberg drops the lawsuits and meets them in person.

“We just want to bring this light to issue. He’s made his money stealing everyone’s information, which we’ve let him do, but to come down here and start suing everyone, that’s not going to fly down here,” said Hart.

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/375272-hawaii-protest-wall-mark-zuckerberg/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

UK economy sped up in the Brexit vote run-up

The preliminary estimates from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show the economy grew by 0.6 percent October to December, which was a touch better than the 0.5 percent rise expected by City economists. The Q4 GDP growth was also in line with the 0.6 percent growth seen in the third and second quarters.

READ MORE: By choosing Brexit people in UK opted to become poorer – Dutch PM

Growth for the year as a whole was two percent, also above expectations but slower than the previous two years, which showed growth of 2.2 percent and 3.1 percent respectively. The annual figure means UK was the fastest growing economy in the G7 last year.

The UK economy’s strong performance came on the back of a booming services sector, which grew 0.8 percent from the previous three months. Services make up roughly 80 percent of the country’s GDP.

“Strong consumer spending supported the expansion of the dominant services sector, and although manufacturing bounced back from a weaker third quarter, both it and construction remained broadly unchanged over the year as a whole,” Darren Morgan, the ONS’ head of GDP said in a statement.

Chancellor Philip Hammond said every major sector of the economy had grown last year, which was “further evidence of the fundamental strength and resilience of the UK economy.”

Though the latest figures refuted predictions the UK economy could fall into an immediate recession after the Brexit vote, economists continue to predict it will have long-term economic costs.

“The economy’s brisk growth at the end of 2016 has all the hallmarks of being driven by an unsustainable consumer spending spree,” said Samuel Tombs, the chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.

“We continue to expect slowdowns in business investment and consumer spending to cause GDP growth to slow to an average quarter-on-quarter rate of just 0.2 percent or so in 2017 – slow enough to keep interest rate hikes at bay despite high inflation,” he added.

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/375167-uk-gdp-fast-growth/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Hedge funds take short positions on assets when they expect their price to fall, in effect betting against the stock.

Hundreds of the billionaire investor’s short positions dating back to 2012 were made public on the regulator’s website, due to “human error,” according to the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM).

Soros teaming up with MasterCard to help refugees

The short positions, bets on a stock declining, were “between 0.2 percent and 0.5 percent,” of shares outstanding in the companies shorted, said an AFM spokesman.

Earlier this week, the website revealed Soros bet against Dutch ING Group, taking a short position of 0.3 percent in it in June 2016. The leaked information was quickly erased once the error was discovered.

The watchdog also unveiled the secretive Medallion Fund, run by Renaissance Technologies for its employees, shorted a number of small cap Dutch stocks. The fund made an annualized return of over 70 percent in the 20 years from 1994 to 2014.

“On the afternoon of Tuesday 24 January, after the close of the market, the AFM inadvertently published a list on its website that included net short positions of less than 0.5 percent instead of publishing the daily list of net short positions of 0.5 percent and higher,” the AFM said in a statement on its website.

“The AFM corrected this mistake and posted the correct list of net short positions of 0.5 percent and higher on the morning of Wednesday, 25 January. We regret this error,” the watchdog added.

Short trading commonly involves borrowing the stock of a company from an investor, selling it and then buying it back at a later date for a lower price, making a profit out of the difference.

READ MORE: Billionaire Soros doubles bet against US stocks

Under EU regulations, hedge funds are obliged to disclose to the public short positions of over 0.5 percent in a particular company’s stock, while positions of over 0.2 percent must be disclosed only to the domestic markets regulator, updated for each additional 0.1 percent.

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/375164-regulator-accidentally-published-soros-bets/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Duterte vows to ban online gambling in Philippines

Despite a slowdown in the fourth quarter, the country’s GDP grew 6.8 percent last year, according to data from the Philippine Statistics Authority.

The annual growth was the fastest since 2013, according to the government.

“Our economy remains robust and is growing at a healthy and steady pace,” said Economic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia.

As for the fourth quarter last year, GDP slowed down to 6.6 percent from seven percent in the previous one due to a decline in agriculture and services.

The industrial sector showed the fastest growth at 7.6 percent from October through December, up from 6.5 percent in the same period the previous year.

Household consumption grew 6.3 percent in the fourth quarter compared to the same period the year earlier with business investment up 15 percent.

According to the Statistics Office, trade, manufacturing, real estate, renting and business activities were among the major drivers.

“The current government has sustained the economic policies that have been responsible for a trend growth of 6.2 percent in the last six years. The economic team is also a solid team and has a significant influence on the President’s economic decisions,” said Joey Cuyegkeng, senior economist at multinational financial services company ING, as quoted by CNBC.

The latest numbers are partially the results of policies pursued by the previous Philippine administration that erased bureaucratic barriers to infrastructure spending.

READ MORE: Philippines President Duterte calls off US rifle deal

“This momentum has sustained since then, and as a result, investment continues to make a near-record contribution to the structure of growth,” said Joseph Incalcaterra, an economist with HSBC, as quoted by FT.

“There are definitely some risks on the horizon stemming from protectionist policies in the US, but we think the Philippines is less at risk compared to other Asian economies,” the analyst added.

The Philippine economy is currently among the fastest growing in Asia, topping China’s 6.7 percent growth. India is yet to reveal its economic data for 2016.

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/375144-philippine-economy-growth-duterte/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Trump orders construction of border wall, threatens cuts to sanctuary cities

“I regret and condemn the decision of the United States to continue construction of a wall that, for years, has divided us instead of uniting us,” the Mexican president said in a brief televised message to his nation.

“Mexico does not believe in walls. I have said it time and again: Mexico will not pay for any wall,” he added.

Nieto is due to meet Trump at the White House next week also said he had ordered Mexico’s 50 consulates in the US to act as legal counsel for the rights of Mexican migrants.

“Our communities are not alone. The government of Mexico will offer legal counsel that will guarantee the protection they need,” he said.

US House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said in an interview with MSNBC that the Congress would fund the construction of the wall along the US-Mexico border.

“We’re going to pay for it and front the money up,” Ryan said, adding “there are a lot of different ways of getting Mexico to contribute to doing this.” He also confirmed the declared cost of the project stood at $8 billion to $14 billion.

Experts, however, estimate the cost will be much higher, at up to $25 billion.

Trump’s wall would require around seven million cubic meters of concrete and 2.4 million tons of cement, according to investment firm Sanford C. Bernstein Co.

“Most of the cement producers in North America are Mexican,” Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at forecasting firm IHS, was cited by Yahoo Finance. “As an infrastructure program, [the wall] could boost the Mexican economy. It could benefit Mexican companies,” he added.

Building a 2,000 mile (3,200km) barrier along the Mexican border was one of Trump’s key pledges in the election campaign.

“A nation without borders is not a nation. Beginning today, the US gets back control of its borders,” Trump said on Wednesday after signing orders to step up immigration enforcement and secure the US-Mexico border.

Back in 2006, US President George Bush signed the so-called Secure Fence Act. The law was supposed to help secure America’s borders – to decrease illegal entry, drug trafficking, and security threats by building 700 miles (1,100 km) of physical barriers along the US-Mexico border. The Bush and Obama administrations have constructed 652 miles so far.

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/375140-mexico-us-wall-payment/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

‘Euro was a mistake,’ says Nobel Prize-winning economist

In an interview with the BBC, Malloch predicts the euro “could collapse” in the next 18 months.

“I think it is a currency that is not only in demise but has a real problem and could in fact collapse in the coming year, year and a half…The one thing I would do in 2017 is short the euro,” he told the British broadcaster.

“I am not the only person or economist of that point of view. Someone as acclaimed as Joseph Stiglitz – the World Bank economist – has written an entire book on this subject,” he added.

Malloch added that Washington and London could clinch a free trade deal within 90 days of the UK triggering Article 50 to leave the EU.

“I remind people that the largest merger and acquisition deals in history are often done in about that time frame,” he said.

“Some of us who have worked on Wall Street or in the City know that if you get the right people in the right room with the right data and the right energy and Trump is certainly high energy, you can get things done,” Malloch added.

The US is expecting a “clean” Brexit from Britain. Once the UK is out of the single market, it could bypass “the bureaucrats in Brussels” and sign a free trade treaty with the US, Malloch said.

Not allowing Britain to talk about a trade agreement with the US is “absurd” and resembles a husband “trying to stop his wife having an affair,” Malloch said.

“The fact is that when your wife is having an affair with someone else, you tell her to stop it, but oftentimes that doesn’t stop the relationship,” he said.

Brussels is demanding the UK not talk about trade deals until it leaves the EU.

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/375130-brexit-trump-uk-malloch/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS