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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Evening News, 4-14-15

From Bloomberg:

Surging Dollar to Boost Europe, Japan as U.S. Slows, IMF Says

The strengthening dollar is boosting growth in the euro area and Japan while taking some steam out of the U.S. recovery, the IMF said in its latest forecast.

The International Monetary Fund left its projection for global growth in 2015 unchanged from three months ago at 3.5 percent, according to its World Economic Outlook released Tuesday. Underneath the stable forecast, however, the IMF depicts a global economy being reshaped by swings in currency markets and the drop in oil prices. (Continue)

Ten Percent of S&P 500 Companies Avoid Paying U.S. Taxes

When it comes to taxes, corporate America is getting a bit less corporate. And a bit less American.

Fueled by a wave of inversions, a record 54 companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index of leading U.S. firms are now at least partially exempt from the corporate income tax. That’s more than twice the number four years ago. (More here)

Wells Fargo Lending Margin Falls Below 3% as Profit Declines

Wells Fargo & Co., the most valuable U.S. bank, said low interest rates pushed first-quarter lending margins below 3 percent for the first time since at least 1994. (Continue reading)

U.S. Stocks Fluctuate Amid Retail Sales Data as Energy Rallies

U.S. stocks fluctuated as weaker-than-forecast retail sales added to signs of slowing growth, while energy shares rallied with the price of crude.

JPMorgan gained 1.7 percent after reporting quarterly profit that beat analysts’ estimates. Chevron Corp. climbed 1.8 percent as oil rose for a fourth day. Google Inc. lost 1.3 percent while Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. declined. Norfolk Southern Corp. fell 5.6 percent after saying lower-than-expected revenue will probably lead to a decline in first-quarter earnings. (More)

The Chinese Economy Is Sputtering, So Why Are China's Stocks Soaring?

China's economy is slowing, sure. But few saw this one coming. 

Economists were expecting the country's trade surplus to slip to 250 billion yuan ($40.25 billion) in March after four consecutive months above 300 billion yuan. That would have been disappointing but a sign that the economy was gliding to a soft landing. The actual result: 18.16 billion yuan. Exports plunged nearly 15 percent year-on-year, and imports were down, too, falling 12.3 percent. (Continue here)

Zillow Drops as Forecast Falls Short on Trulia Integration

Zillow Group Inc. dropped as much as 13 percent after giving a 2015 revenue forecast that fell short, blaming delays in regulatory approval for its purchase of rival real-estate website Trulia Inc. (More)

Oil-Rich Nations Are Selling Off Their Petrodollar Assets at Record Pace

In the heady days of the commodity boom, oil-rich nations accumulated billions of dollars in reserves they invested in U.S. debt and other securities. They also occasionally bought trophy assets, such as Manhattan skyscrapers, luxury homes in London or Paris Saint-Germain Football Club. (Read more)

Canadian Stocks Fall as Railroad Slump Overshadows Energy Gains

Canadian stocks fell for a second day as a slump in railroad stocks led industrials shares lower, offsetting gains among energy companies.

Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. and Canadian National Railway Co. dropped at least 1.6 percent after Norfolk Southern Corp. reported weaker-than-forecast earnings, heralding a difficult season for railroad profits. Shares of energy producers increased 0.9 percent as oil gained for a fourth day. (Read here)

Swelling Distressed Bond Market Crashes U.S. Company Debt Party

The Federal Reserve may be putting off raising interest rates from near zero, but the days of cheap money for everyone in credit markets have already come and gone. (More)

Greek Securities Tumble as Negotiations Raise Specter of Crisis

Greece’s bonds dropped, with yields on the country’s 2017 notes rising the most in two months, as negotiations over the future of its financing stoked concerns of renewed turmoil in the nation. (More here)

EU Nations’ Flexibility on Carbon-Fix Date Called Limited

Mustering support from European Union governments for an early start of a planned carbon-market fix will probably be difficult, according to Alda Ozola, Latvia’s deputy state secretary for environment. (Read more)

From Around the Web:

Behind PayPal’s Foreign Assets Violations (TechCrunch)

Chen Amit is CEO and Co-founder of Tipalti, a Palo Alto software company focused on automating global payment processes for fast-growing companies.

In 2009, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) blacklisted an individual named Kursad Zafer Cire. Mr. Cire was believed to have run a network that facilitated the sale of nuclear technologies to countries such as Iran, Libya, and North Korea. He was a known bad actor. (More)

IBM HeadquartersIBM Launches New Health Unit, Teams Up with Apple, J&J, Medtronic (FoxBusiness)

International Business Machines Corp (IBM), deepening its partnership with Apple Inc (AAPL) to make use of health information gathered by millions of Apple devices, is creating a unit dedicated to providing data analytics to the healthcare sector.

Its new Watson Health unit plans to aggregate health information from a large number of devices and providers in the cloud and offer insights to health companies such as Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and Medtronic (MDT), which can then integrate results into services they sell to healthcare companies. (More here)

A resident checks products in an open-air market in Rio de Janeiro March 19, 2015.  REUTERS/Ricardo MoraesBrazil's retail sales seen showing biggest drop since 2003 (Reuters)

Brazil's retail sales in February probably took their sharpest drop in nearly 12 years as rising inflation and interest rates sent consumer confidence to record lows, a Reuters poll showed on Monday.

Sales volumes BRRSLY=ECI fell 2.05 percent from February 2014, down from an annual increase of 0.6 percent in January and at the fastest pace since October 2003, according to the median forecast of 20 economists. (Continue)

China's trade collapse raises fears of growth slowdown (Telegraph)

Fears of a slowdown in the world's second largest economy were revived on Monday as China's exports collapsed by a spectacular 15pc in March. (Read more)

Japanese court rejects bid to restart of 2 nuclear reactors (APNewsArchive)

A court issued an injunction Tuesday ordering two nuclear reactors in western Japan to stay offline, rejecting regulators' safety approval of the reactors' planned restart later this year, a decision that could further delay the government's restart plans.

The Fukui District Court ordered the operator, Kansai Electric Power Co., not to restart the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors at the Takahama plant in Fukui prefecture, which is home to about a dozen reactors. (Read more)

China is poised to report worst growth since the financial crisis (CNN)

China looks set to report its worst quarterly growth since the financial crisis, according to a CNNMoney survey of economists.

Gross domestic product is forecast to have expanded by 7.0% in the first quarter of 2015, compared to the same period last year, according to the survey's median estimate. (More)

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A marijuana joint being rolledA pot delivery service lands an investment from Snoop Dogg’s venture firm (QZ)

The numbers: Eaze, an on-demand marijuana delivery service (and one of several nicknamed the “Uber for weed”), has raised $10 million in a series A round. The San Francisco startup, founded by early Yammer employee Keith McCarty, raised $1.5 million in seed funding in November. It was one of the first pot companies to get support from institutional investors, who in the past have been skittish about putting their money in marijuana. (Continue reading)

Residential properties in Lisbon. As Euribor, an interest-rate benchmark commonly used in the eurozone for setting mortgage rates, heads into negative territory, banks face the possibility of having to pay borrowers.Tumbling Interest Rates in Europe Leaves Some Banks Owing Money on Loans to Borrowers (WSJ)

At least one Spanish bank, Bankinter SA, the country’s seventh-largest lender by market value, has been paying some customers interest on mortgages by deducting that amount from the principal the borrower owes.

The problem is just one of many challenges caused by interest rates falling below zero, known as a negative interest rate. All over Europe, banks are being compelled to rebuild computer programs, update legal documents and redo spreadsheets to account for negative rates. (More)

View of the Syncrude oil sands extraction facility near Fort McMurray in 2009. (Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)IMF trims Canada’s economic outlook on oil-price fallout (TheGlobeandMail)

The International Monetary Fund has slightly trimmed its forecast for Canadian economic growth, citing the continued downside risks posed by the oil shock.

In its spring World Economic Outlook, the IMF forecast that Canada’s real gross domestic product will grow by 2.2 per cent this year and 2.0 per cent next year. Both projections are down by 0.1 percentage point from the financial institution’s previous forecast, issued in January. (Read more)

cedar anderson honeyBeehive raises record-breaking $10 million (CNN)

Turns out, lots of people want honey on tap. Nearly 30,000 people have contributed to the Indiegogo campaign for the Flow Hive, making it the most successful crowdfunding operation in the site's history.

Flow Hive has raised just over $10 million, with six days still left to go. The founders were originally trying for $70,000, which it reached in 477 seconds. More than 6,100 people paid $600 for the full hive, which is expected to start shipping in December. (More)

Seattle boss raises entire company's minimum wage to $70,000 (FoxNews)

After hearing about a study that claimed income– to a certain level– directly affects one's emotional well-being, the founder of a Seattle-based credit card processing company announced Monday that he will take a large salary cut so he can increase the pay for each employee to at least $70,000 a year.

The New York Times reported that Dan Price, the head of Gravity Payments, told his 120-person staff about the plan after talking to friends about the difficulties of making $40,000 a year. (Read more)

In this Jan. 8, 2015 file photo, men work on an oil pump during a sandstorm in the desert oil fields of Sakhir, Bahrain. (Hasan Jamali/ASSOCIATED PRESS)OPEC should cut production by at least 5 per cent: Iran oil minister (TheGlobeandMail)

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries should cut its target daily production of oil by at least 5 per cent, or approximately 1.5 million barrels, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh was quoted as saying on Tuesday. (Continue)

 

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