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Friday, March 29, 2024

Frontrunning: March 16

Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.

  • Fed’s ‘dovish hike’ sends shares to record highs, dollar dips (Reuters); Markets Rally After Fed Rate Increase Decision (BBG)
  • Yellen Calms Fears Fed’s Policy Trigger Finger Is Getting Itchy (BBG)
  • Europe Gets Reprieve in Dutch Election, But the Center Fragments (BBG); Relief in EU capitals as Dutch PM sees off far-right’s Wilders (Reuters)
  • Trump’s first budget: military wins; environment, aid lose (Reuters)
  • Trump Says He Based Charge of Obama Wiretapping on Media Reports (BBG)
  • Trump Adviser Carl Icahn Lobbies for Rule Change That Benefits Icahn (BBG)
  • Queen formally approves law giving UK PM May power to trigger EU exit talks (Reuters)
  • Tillerson calls for ‘new approach’ to North Korea, no details (Reuters); Tillerson Tells North Korea It Has Nothing to Fear From U.S. (BBG)
  • Canadian households owed $2 trillion at the end of 2016 (CBC)
  • Lone Fed Move Dissenter Worries About Inequality (BBG)
  • Trump barnstorms to push healthcare plan; signs of conservative support (Reuters)
  • Cities Shop for $10 Billion of Electric Cars to Defy Trump (BBG)
  • In Trump era, some Mexican migrants head north – to Canada (Reuters)
  • Fury Road: Did Uber Steal the Driverless Future From Google? (BBG)
  • Swatch Takes on Google, Apple With Operating System for Watches (BBG)
  • Trump vows to appeal against travel ban ruling to Supreme Court (Reuters)
  • Fed-PBOC Moves Hint at Calibration Mooted a Year Ago at G-20 (BBG)
  • The ‘Very Strange’ Item on Trump’s 1040: Alternative Minimum Tax (BBG)

Overnight Media Digest

WSJ

– President Donald Trump will call for sharp cuts to spending on foreign aid, the arts, environmental protection and public broadcasting to pay for a bigger military and a more secure border in a fiscal 2018 budget blueprint set for release Thursday. http://on.wsj.com/2mLsUoI

– A federal judge in Hawaii issued a nationwide temporary restraining order that bars implementation of President Donald Trump’s revised executive order on immigration and refugees, a significant legal blow to the president. http://on.wsj.com/2mLl1zt

– The Federal Reserve said it would raise short-term interest rates and remained on track to keep lifting them this year, signaling the central bank is moving into a new policy phase as the economy strengthens. http://on.wsj.com/2mLiO7f

– The Dutch political establishment held on to power Wednesday, despite losing votes to anti-immigrant nationalists and other upstart parties, according to preliminary results published after the country’s most closely watched election in recent times. http://on.wsj.com/2mL59x6

– Federal authorities have charged four men, including two officers from Russia’s spy agency, with hacking computer systems at Yahoo and stealing personal data that affected hundreds of millions of Yahoo users, in the first such case to directly target the Russian government. http://on.wsj.com/2mLkUnA

– Japan’s central bank left its policy unchanged, sticking with its expansionary measures even as other major central banks shifted away from years of unusually aggressive stimulus. http://on.wsj.com/2mL4qf7

FT

With Brexit around the corner, seeds of doubt have been planted in the minds of Conservative MPs after finance minister Philip Hammond announced a budget U-turn on Wednesday that exposed Theresa May’s government to allegations of incompetence and division.

Ahead of a parliamentary debate on energy prices in UK, Centrica Plc Chief Executive Iain Conn has said that a cap on prices would reduce consumers choices as power companies would set their prices at, or near, the level of the cap.

British Defence Minister Michael Fallon is reducing the level of profit that companies can make on “single-source” contracts awarded without competition, saying the cut would mean “better value for money” for the Ministry of Defence, which is embarking on a 178 billion pounds ($218.67 billion) equipment-buying programme.

The British government has not carried out an assessment of what effect leaving the European Union without a new trade deal would have on the economy, Brexit minister David Davis said on Wednesday.

NYT

– The Justice Department charged two Russian intelligence officers on Wednesday with directing a sweeping criminal conspiracy that stole data on 500 million Yahoo accounts in 2014, deepening the rift between American and Russian authorities on cybersecurity. http://nyti.ms/2mZTsVd

– The Federal Reserve, which raised its benchmark rate on Wednesday for the second time in three months, this time to a range between 0.75 percent and 1 percent, is finally moving toward the end of its nine-year-old economic stimulus campaign, which began in the depths of the financial crisis. http://nyti.ms/2nufygw

– President Trump came to the heart of the auto industry on Wednesday with a manifesto for American manufacturing: to remove the shackles of regulation and restore an age of industrial glory. http://nyti.ms/2mR3w2x

– On Wednesday, American Media Inc, publisher of The National Enquirer and Radar Online, announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire Us Weekly from Wenner Media, which has owned it since 1985. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but two people who were briefed on the deal but requested anonymity because the terms were not public said the price was $100 million. http://nyti.ms/2n1Qbog

Britain

The Times

* The British government’s stake in Lloyds Banking Group has been reduced to below three percent. http://bit.ly/2muOHjj

* British Prime Minister Theresa May signed off a humiliating retreat over planned tax rises on the self-employed after finance minister Philip Hammond conceded, in a private meeting on Wednesday, that they breached the “spirit” of their party’s manifesto pledge. http://bit.ly/2ntOGwT

The Guardian

* Theresa May is expected to refuse a new Scottish independence referendum unless it is held after the UK has quit the European Union. Britain’s Scotland minister David Mundell and other UK government sources indicated on Wednesday that the prime minister was prepared for a drawn-out battle with Nicola Sturgeon’s government over the referendum’s timing and the question that will be asked. http://bit.ly/2muenf2

* Welsh-based international media company Tinopolis is for sale with a price of up to 300 million pounds. Tinopolis is understood to have circulated a memorandum to a number of media owners and private equity companies that says the firm is considering a range of options, including a sale of the company. http://bit.ly/2nGojmL

The Telegraph

* Sports Direct International Plc said that a report by Pensions and Investment Research Consultants “incorrectly claims that Sports Direct had a chief executive-to-average employee pay ratio of 400:1, the second highest in the FTSE 350”. http://bit.ly/2muP1yB

* The board of Bowleven Plc has been ousted from an African oil explorer with immediate effect following a bitter boardroom battle with an activist shareholder. http://bit.ly/2npi1vR

Sky News

* Sky News has learnt that British engineering group GKN’s board has appointed headhunters to identify a successor to Chief Executive Nigel Stein, who has run the company since 2012. http://bit.ly/2n15SMN

* A fresh deal to resolve the long-running dispute between Southern rail and train drivers’ union ASLEF over driver-only trains has been agreed. http://bit.ly/2nc6OhE

The Independent

* Rolls-Royce’s decision to award Warren East, its chief executive officer, a bonus of 916,000 pounds even after the aero-engine maker’s full-year earnings plunged was ill advised, according to the Institute of Directors, which represents UK business leaders. http://ind.pn/2mMKvhp

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