The Jeep brand of Auburn Hills’ Stellantis has partnered with Razor Scooter to unveil an adult e-scooter designed expressly for off-road use. 

The eco-friendly Jeep RX200, which comes in Army green, is designed to traverse rough terrain with 8-inch, air-filled pneumatic tires, allowing for a top speed over 12 mph. It is equipped with a wide standing platform and riser-style handlebars. 

“Razor is always looking for creative ways to excite our riders and provide an exhilarating adventure,” says Jim Wagner, president of Razor. “We are thrilled to collaborate with the iconic Jeep brand to create the RX200, which is powerful enough for off-road capability to go explore the outdoors.”

The RX200, which is priced at $499, doesn’t have an official riding range in miles, but the company says it can go up to 40 minutes per charge. The scooter’s heavy duty tires have a knobby tread to handle rough terrain.

READ MORE: Nike sues maker of virtual shoes

The name of Jeep has been featured on a slew of products, including the Jeep Wrangler Lego set, the Rubicon Buzzy Pedal Kart, and the North Face Recycled Beanie.

The release of the new e-scooter will be supported through cross-promotion marketing efforts by both the Jeep brand and Razor, including across social media platforms.

“Our collaboration with Razor to introduce its new electric scooter is a natural extension for the Jeep brand’s licensing portfolio,” says Kim Adams House, head of licensing and merchandising of all brands for Stellantis.

“With its rugged Jeep brand style-and-feel attributes, the Jeep RX200 is made for adventure, capturing the spirit of the brand’s core DNA to go anywhere and do anything.”

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Facebook’s parent company Meta has agreed to make a $90 million payment to settle a lawsuit filed 10 years ago. The case alleges that the social network violated users’ privacy through a browser plug-in that let it track them even after they logged off from its website.

The settlement between Meta and the plaintiffs, which was submitted on Monday in the San Francisco federal court, is subject to a judge’s approval. If it goes through, it will be one of the 10 biggest class-action data privacy settlements ever, according to the document.

The lawsuit alleges that, between April 2010 and September 2011, Facebook violated privacy and wiretapping laws by using plug-ins to store cookies tracking users’ visits to third-party websites that contained “Like” buttons. The social media platform had users’ permission to track them while they were logged in but promised to stop when they logged out.

The $90 million compensation sum will be distributed among affected users. As part of the settlement, Facebook also agreed to delete data improperly collected through the practice.

“Reaching a settlement in this case, which is more than a decade old, is in the best interest of our community and our shareholders and we’re glad to move past this issue,” a Meta spokesperson told CNN. The company has denied any wrongdoing as part of the deal.

The lawsuit was dismissed in 2017 when a federal judge said plaintiffs had failed to show they had a reasonable expectation of privacy or that they suffered economic harm. The plaintiffs appealed the dismissal and in 2020 a federal appeals court revived the case, saying there was economic harm in such a situation.

Facebook has been mired in legal battles for years. Last year, Mark Zuckerberg’s company agreed to pay $650 million to settle another privacy lawsuit over collection of biometric data without prior notification and written consent. On Monday, the Texas attorney general announced the state is suing Meta over Facebook’s now-defunct facial recognition program.

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Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/549535-facebook-lawsuit-user-tracking/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

The Chinese government is planning to work with other Asian nations to strengthen the use of local currencies in trade and investment as part of a broader plan to bolster regional economic strength, according to Yi Gang, the governor of the country’s central bank.

“Emerging markets should improve their resilience,” Yi said on Wednesday during a televised speech at a G20 event hosted by Indonesia. “This is where regional cooperation has a key role to play.”

The official highlighted that the latest progress in using local currencies of emerging Asian nations in trade and investment strengthened the region’s financial safety net against external shocks.

According to Yi, bilateral currency swaps among the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regional grouping – China, Japan and South Korea – have reached $380 billion.

The head of the regulator also called for deeper market communication among the central banks from advanced economies, adding that it would help to mitigate the spillover effect from pandemic-related risks.

READ MORE: Countries accelerate shift away from US dollar

In January, the People’s Bank of China extended a bilateral currency swap agreement with Bank Indonesia for three years to promote deeper financial cooperation and boost investment activity.

Jakarta expressed full support for the expanded use of local currencies in trade and investment, instead of the US dollar, to ensure stability in global financial markets as pandemic-era stimulus is withdrawn. According to Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, local currency settlement (LCS) arrangements, which cut demand for the US dollar, should be replicated more broadly globally to manage shocks.

Asian nations are raising concerns over potential capital outflows from emerging economies as the US Federal Reserve had previously signaled a tightening of the US state monetary policy. The Fed is expected to launch its tightening cycle in March, with an interest rate hike of 25 basis points. Meanwhile, some analysts project a more aggressive half-point move to stamp down inflation.

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Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/549540-china-asia-dumping-us-dollar/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

JPMorgan Chase announced on Tuesday the opening of a lounge in the Decentraland virtual world, becoming the first bank to arrive in the metaverse. According to the Wall Street bank, the metaverse has a market opportunity of $1 trillion in yearly revenue, as creators tap Web3 to monetize their work in new ways.

The Onyx Lounge, named after JPMorgan’s in-house blockchain payments system, was unveiled alongside a report from the bank detailing metaverse-related growth opportunities for businesses and the causes of its “explosive interest.”

Visitors to the lounge, situated in Decentraland’s Metajuku Mall, are greeted by a roaming tiger and a digital portrait of the bank’s CEO, Jamie Dimon. If players walk upstairs, they can watch an executive’s presentation on the economics of cryptocurrency.

“When you think about the economics of the metaverse – or metanomics – there are opportunities in almost every market area,” the bank wrote. “We are not here to suggest the metaverse as we know it today will take over all human interactions, but rather, to explore the many exciting opportunities it presents for consumers and brands alike.”

The report points out that the average price of virtual land doubled from $6,000 to $12,000 between June and December last year. JPMorgan predicted that in-game advertising spending will reach $18.4 billion per annum by 2027.

“This democratic ownership economy, coupled with the possibility of interoperability, could unlock immense economic opportunities, whereby digital goods and services are no longer captive to a singular gaming platform or brand,” said the bank.

It also noted an increasing mainstream adoption of the metaverse, driven by interest from major brands like PWC, Walmart, Nike, Verizon, Gap, Adidas, Hulu, and Atari.

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Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/549519-jpmorgan-leaps-into-metaverse/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

The US real estate market could crash this year, leading economist Desmond Lachman predicted in an interview with Nikkei Asia on Tuesday. Adjusted for inflation, house prices in America are now higher than they were 15 years ago, before the last housing bust, he added.

Lachman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former deputy director at the International Monetary Fund, explained that last year the US government was buying large quantities of bonds, which created an equity price bubble, and led to “equity valuations at levels only seen once before in the last hundred years.”

According to Lachman, the trigger for the real estate market collapse would be a hike in interest rates, which is expected to be introduced by the US Federal Reserve in March in an attempt to curb soaring inflation.

“Those bubbles in the equity and the housing markets, they’ve been premised on the assumption that interest rates would stay low forever. So, as soon as the Fed starts raising interest rates in an aggressive way, there’s the real risk that it bursts the asset price bubbles and that could, then, move us into a recession,” Lachman said.

READ MORE: Why China is on track to replace the US as the world’s financial center

Last time the housing bubble burst in the US in 2008, the country was plunged into the so-called Great Recession. The stock market and housing crash were caused by the unprecedented growth of the subprime mortgage market as lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made home loans accessible to borrowers with low credit scores. By the fall of 2008, high numbers of borrowers were defaulting on subprime mortgages, causing turmoil in the financial markets, the collapse of the stock market, and the Great Recession.

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Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/549524-us-housing-bubble-to-burst/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS