Author: News Room

In the $30 billion rescue attempt of First Republic on Friday, Too Big To Fail Banks led by J.P. Morgan Chase, Citi, and Bank of America BAC finally stepped up to help stave off a crisis. Days earlier, in the stunning government seizure of Silicon Valley Bank and crypto lender Signature Bank SBNY , the Fed, FDIC, and Treasury were the stars. But a separate cast of unsung heroes also was at work, and this shows what private enterprise can do. Soon after SVB’s shares took a tumble in the after hours market on Wednesday night, March 8, sending a…

Silicon Valley Bank had a rather spectacular collapse this week. The bank run was due to a drawdown in venture capital depositor funding, rising interest rates causing an asset/liability mismatch, and the firm’s sale of government bonds at an enormous loss to raise capital. Cutting right to my points — the three major misconceptions on Silicon Valley Bank that appeared repeatedly on social media this past week— 1) “This is 2008 all over again”. This statement is incorrect, but we are having some severe financial dislocations, probably brought on by the Fed keeping interest rates under the inflation rate for…

By Leika Kihara TOKYO (Reuters) -Japan’s new central bank chief will take baby steps in any shift away from the radical monetary experiment of his predecessor, if recent comments are any guide, but a deeper history of his thinking shows a taste for bolder action. Markets are rife with speculation that Kazuo Ueda, who becomes Bank of Japan (BOJ) governor on Sunday, will dismantle incumbent Haruhiko Kuroda’s massive stimulus programme that has drawn criticism for distorting market pricing and crushing bank profits. In a sign he will be in no rush to shift policy, Ueda told a parliamentary confirmation hearing…

By Ambar Warrick Investing.com– Most Asian currencies fell on Monday, while the dollar firmed as a rally in oil markets, following a surprise OPEC+ production cut, brewed concerns that inflation could remain buoyed by high fuel prices. A raft of weak Asian economic data also weighed, as a post-COVID rebound in China appeared to be running out of steam. The lost 0.3% after a private survey showed that the country’s barely expanded in March amid weakening output and demand. Softening growth in China bodes poorly for broader Asian markets, given their dependence on the country as a trading hub. On…

By Ahmed Rasheed and Maha El Dahan BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq said on Tuesday it has agreed to a smaller 30% stake in TotalEnergies long-delayed $27 billion project, reviving a deal that Baghdad hopes could lure back foreign investment into the battered country which craves stability. The deal was signed in 2021 for TotalEnergies to build four oil, gas and renewables projects with an initial investment of $10 billion in southern Iraq over 25 years. But it has experienced several setbacks amid disputes between Iraqi politicians over terms. Iraq’s cabinet said in a late Tuesday statement that it had approved…

4/4 © Reuters. The logo of Arquus, a unit of Volvo AB, is pictured at the production plant in Limoges, France, April 6, 2023. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier 2/4 By Clotaire Achi LIMOGES, France (Reuters) – French armoured truck maker Arquus, specialised in manufacturing high-tech off-road military vehicles, has gone back to producing more low-tech undercarriages for howitzers as the ground war in Ukraine boosts demand for artillery. Despite an industry trend towards more high-tech weaponry like drones and autonomous missiles, traditional battlefield equipment like tanks and howitzers such as France’s Caesar canons and U.S.-made HIMARS have helped bend the trajectory of…

While the stress in the banking sector made it hard to know what was the appropriate interest-rate policy, another one-quarter-percent rate hike seemed reasonable, Boston Fed President Susan Collins said Thursday. “I currently anticipate some modest additional policy tightening and then holding through the end of this year,” Collins said, in a speech to a National Association for Business Economics conference. Collins’ position matches the median forecast of Fed officials in their latest economic projections released last week. Collins said this forecast on one rate hike and then steady rates until 2024 “reasonably balances the risk of monetary policy not…

When you buy a bag of potato chips from the neighborhood grocery store, how much of your money goes toward growing the potatoes and how much covers shipping the chips to the store? A new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office answers those questions and examines the factors that affect retail food prices. It comes as grocery-store shoppers have been coping with bigger checkout bills: While food prices typically rise about 2% annually, they shot up 11% between 2021 and 2022 — the biggest annual jump in 40 years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Here’s a look…

Apple founder Steve Jobs has continued to inspire since he passed away in 2011. Just this week, in fact, Tim Cook — Apple’s AAPL, +0.55% current CEO — mused in a GQ interview on life lessons that he learned from his predecessor.  And now anyone who wants to get an intimate glimpse of Jobs’s wisdom and reflections on his life, which was cut short in 2011 when he was just 56, will be able to download a curated collection of his personal correspondence, speeches and interviews on April 11 — for free. ““He has been written about, but this is…

Investors can’t wait for the Federal Reserve to start pivoting. This past week’s action—illuminated by a pink full moon—shows that they might have to wait a bit longer. The S&P 500 index slid 0.1% in the shortened trading week, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 0.6% and the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.1%. But while equity markets were little changed, bond yields declined in the early part of the week as weakening economic data stoked fears of a recession among fixed-income traders. The stock market is known to be a forward-looking mechanism, but with the S&P 500 trading at 18…