Tax Overhaul Could Jolt Dollar as U.S. Companies Bring Home Cash
Posted: December 26, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Global, Law & Justice, White House | Tags: Corporate tax rate, Currency, Financial Markets, Investors, Tax Policy, Taxation, U.S. Dollar Leave a comment
Corporations could repatriate as much as $400 billion in earnings and cash from abroad.
Companies could bring back as much as $400 billion, according to one estimate, as they take advantage of a one-time cut for repatriation of earnings and cash held overseas written into the GOP tax overhaul. That typically requires them to sell foreign holdings and buy assets denominated in dollars, which could boost the U.S. currency.
Gauging the dollar’s trajectory is crucial to both investors and corporations. The currency’s climb over the past several years has been blamed for pressuring profits among U.S. multinational companies and making exporters’ goods less competitive abroad.
Its trajectory also influences prices for raw materials like oil, copper and gold, which are denominated in dollars and become more expensive to foreign investors when the dollar rises.
Many investors expected the dollar to strengthen in 2017, boosted by the Trump administration’s fiscal-stimulus and infrastructure-spending pledges. Instead, the currency as of Friday had fallen nearly 7% against its peers, as key White House initiatives stalled.
[VIDEO] 3 Ways Bitcoin Is Promoting Freedom in Latin America
Posted: November 29, 2016 Filed under: Economics, Mediasphere, Think Tank | Tags: Barack Obama, Bitcoin, Capital Controls, Caribbean, Currency, Donald Trump, Fidel Castro, Latin America, Nicolás Maduro, Pope Francis, Raúl Castro, Venezuela Leave a comment
How bitcoin is allowing Venezuelans to circumvent capital controls, Brazilians to get around tariffs—and might one day improve Latin America‘s overall business climate.
Japan to Print Additional ¥10,000 Bills as More People Hoard Cash at Home
Posted: April 7, 2016 Filed under: Asia, Economics, Japan | Tags: Bank of Japan, Bond market, Currency, European Central Bank, Exchange rate, Government of Japan, Haruhiko Kuroda, Interest rate, Japan, JGB (band) Leave a comment
The Finance Ministry plans to increase the number of ¥10,000 bills in circulation, amid signs that more people are hoarding cash.
It will print 1.23 billion such notes in fiscal 2016, 180 million more than a year earlier. The number of ¥10,000 bills issued annually leveled off at around 1.05 billion in the fiscal years from 2011 to 2015.
Some financial market sources believe it is because more people are keeping their money at home rather than in banks, because interest rates on deposits have fallen to almost zero after the Bank of Japan introduced a negative interest rate in February.
The total amount of cash stashed at home is estimated to have surged by nearly ¥5 trillion to some ¥40 trillion in the past year, Hideo Kumano, chief economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute, said. Read the rest of this entry »
Capital Flight from China
Posted: September 17, 2015 Filed under: Asia, China, Economics | Tags: AllianceBernstein, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, China, Currency, Foreign-exchange reserves, Hong Kong, Hong Kong dollar, Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Indonesian rupiah, People's Bank of China Leave a comment
Lots of money is escaping China’s porous capital controls
The man who calls himself Jack is a caricature of a small-time gangster. Sporting a chunky Louis Vuitton belt, a gold necklace and gold-rimmed sunglasses, he chomps on a Cuban cigar. He says he has come to a pawnshop across the street from the Ponte 16 casino in Macau, a gambling Mecca and former Portuguese colony that is administered separately from the rest of China, only for its fine Cohibas. But when asked for advice about how to exchange yuan held within China for foreign currency—a transaction officially limited by China’s capital controls—he breaks into a laugh and flashes a Chinese bank card. “Just swipe it,” he says. “However much money you have in your China account, you can transfer it here.”
[Read the full text here, at The Economist]
Macau’s role as an illicit way station to move cash out of China, away from the government’s prying eyes, is nothing new. In recent months, though, things have been busier than normal. Capital outflows were already on the rise because of worries about the economy. During the summer, after the stockmarket crashed and the government let the yuan weaken, they soared. Official data indicate that more than $150 billion of capital left China in August—a record (see chart).
Faced with this exodus, the government launched a crackdown on underground banks, which run money across borders and arrange for matching onshore and offshore transactions. Police raided Macau’s pawnshops and arrested 17 people for laundering money. That appears to have slowed things down. When your correspondent visited pawnshops in Macau this week and asked whether they could help him shift 1m yuan ($157,000) out of China—three times what one can legally withdraw in a year—most demurred. Read the rest of this entry »
Gavin Andresen on Why Bitcoin Will Become Unreliable Next Year Without an Urgent Fix
Posted: August 29, 2015 Filed under: Mediasphere, Science & Technology, Think Tank | Tags: Autopackage, Bitcoin, Block size (cryptography), Contract, Crime, Currency, Electronic money, Payment system, Technology Review, Visa Inc. Leave a comment
The man who took over stewardship of Bitcoin from its mysterious inventor says the currency is in serious trouble.
Tom Simonite reports: The way things are going, the digital currency Bitcoin will start to malfunction early next year. Transactions will become increasingly delayed, and the system of money now worth $3.3 billion will begin to die as its flakiness drives people away. So says Gavin Andresen, who in 2010 was designated chief caretaker of the code that powers Bitcoin by its shadowy creator. Andresen held the role of “core maintainer” during most of Bitcoin’s improbable rise; he stepped down last year but still remains heavily involved with the currency (see “The Man Who Really Built Bitcoin”).
Andresen’s gloomy prediction stems from the fact that Bitcoin can’t process more than seven transactions a second. That’s a tiny volume compared to the tens of thousands per second that payment systems like Visa can handle—and a limit he expects to start crippling Bitcoin early in 2016. It stems from the maximum size of the “blocks” that are added to the digital ledger of Bitcoin transactions, the blockchain, by people dubbed miners who run software that confirms Bitcoin transactions and creates new Bitcoin (see “What Bitcoin Is and Why It Matters”).
[Read the full text here, at MIT Technology Review]
Andresen’s proposed solution triggered an uproar among people who use or work with Bitcoin when he introduced it two weeks ago. Rather than continuing to work with the developers who maintain Bitcoin’s code, Andresen released his solution in the form of an alternative version of the Bitcoin software called BitcoinXT and urged the community to switch over. If 75 percent of miners have adopted his fix after January 11, 2016, it will trigger a two-week grace period and then allow a “fork” of the blockchain with higher capacity. Critics consider that to be a reckless toying with Bitcoin’s future; Andresen, who now works on Bitcoin with the support of MIT’s Media Lab, says it is necessary to prevent the currency strangling itself. He spoke with MIT Technology Review’s San Francisco bureau chief, Tom Simonite.
How serious is the problem of Bitcoin’s limited transaction rate?
It is urgent. Looking at the transaction volume on the Bitcoin network, we need to address it within the next four or five months. As we get closer and closer to the limit, bad things start to happen. Networks close to capacity get congested and unreliable. If you want reliability, you’ll have to start paying higher and higher fees on transactions, and there will be a point where fees get high enough that people stop using Bitcoin. Read the rest of this entry »
Venezuela Jails 100 ‘Bourgeois, Barbaric, Capitalist Parasite’ Businessmen in Crackdown: Obama Observes Wistfully, Longingly…
Posted: November 15, 2013 Filed under: Breaking News, Global, Law & Justice, Politics | Tags: Currency, Hugo Chávez, Justice First, Maduro, Nelson Bocaranda, Nicolás Maduro, Price gouging, Reuters, Robert Mugabe, Venezuela 3 Comments
“Bourgeois, Barbaric, Capitalist Parasites! “Carlos Garcia Rawlins / Reuters
Andrew Cawthorne and Deisy Buitrago report: Venezuela‘s socialist government has arrested more than 100 “bourgeois” businessmen in a crackdown on alleged price-gouging at hundreds of shops and companies since the weekend, President Nicolas Maduro said on Thursday.
“They are barbaric, these capitalist parasites!” Maduro thundered in the latest of his lengthy daily speeches. “We have more than 100 of the bourgeoisie behind bars at the moment.”
The successor to the late Hugo Chavez also said his government was preparing a law to limit Venezuelan businesses’ profits to between 15 percent and 30 percent.
*Sigh*
Officials say unscrupulous companies have been hiking prices of electronics and other goods more than 1,000 percent. Critics say failed socialist economic policies and restricted access to foreign currency are behind Venezuela’s runaway inflation.
“Goodyear has to lower its prices even more, 15 percent is not enough, the inspectors have go there straightaway,” Maduro said in his evening address, sending officials to check local operations of the U.S.-based tire manufacturer.
Since the weekend, soldiers and inspectors have gone into 1,400 shops, taken over operations at an electronics firm and a battery-making company, and rounded up a handful of looters.
pundit from another planet 