Business

US shale to surge after OPEC extension

Just as expected: OPEC and the group of non-OPEC countries led by Russia extended their production cuts for an additional nine months through the end of 2018. Read more “It’s been a good long day… in fact, it’s been a great day,” Saudi oil minister Khalid Al-Falih said at the presser. “I’m

Business

Bitcoin mining uses more electricity than 159 countries

Published time: 3 Dec, 2017 09:03 The surge of interest in bitcoin has triggered not only skyrocketing prices and endless debate on whether it's bubble, but also an enormous increase in electricity consumption all over the world. According to Digiconomist’s Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, as of November 20th bitcoin’s current estimated annual electricity

Business

Renting in retirement: How feasible is it?

Home ownership can be a thing of beauty. Just as you don a pair of fur-lined slippers and spend more time on the golf course, you find you have paid off your mortgage. For the rest of your life, accommodation is effectively free. But this utopian model is becoming the exception. High house prices mean we are borrowing more for longer. And more significantly, the UK is

Business

Russia & China could set international gold price based on physical gold trading

Published time: 3 Dec, 2017 01:45 Since Russia, China, India, Brazil & South Africa are all either large producers or consumers of gold, or both, it is highly likely that the BRICS bloc they constitute could focus its cross-border gold trading network on trading physical gold. Gold pricing benchmarks from such a system would be based on physical gold transactions,

Business

Do EU27 really want euro clearing?

Financial trading worth some €1 trillion per day may be forced to move into the EU after Brexit, according to a European Commission proposal which seeks to repatriate transactions of euro-denominated instruments from London. Not everyone wants the potentially poisoned chalice. The proposal was political through and through, but technocrats taking a closer look now warn

Business

Pierre Moscovici sees big leap for eurozone

WASHINGTON — European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs Pierre Moscovici said Friday he was confident eurozone countries would pursue an ambitious restructuring of their currency union after upcoming elections in France and Germany. “It will be a window of opportunity that we must not miss,” he said in an interview on the sidelines of the International

Business

Philip Hammond’s bid to buy his way out of trouble

LONDON — It was a budget born of weakness. Faced with gloomy economic forecasts, mounting political pressure from his Brexiteer critics who suspect the U.K. chancellor may not wholeheartedly support the country’s impending exit from the European Union, and a hung parliament making it difficult for the government to get anything done, Philip Hammond bowed to political

Business

G20 plays down trade differences with Trump

WASHINGTON — Recent tensions between the U.S. and other major economies over trade did not reemerge during Friday’s meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors, fueling hopes global policy makers can avert an open dispute with the Trump administration over globalization, top German officials said. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble and Bundesbank

Business

Global finance, Trump strike truce

WASHINGTON — When U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin took the stage of the International Monetary Fund’s marbled atrium this weekend, one might have expected a hostile response. The IMF elite, after all, represent the very “globalists” Donald Trump accuses of pulling America down by peddling trade policies that only benefit them. Instead of booing, however, the

Business

Eurogroup confronts own deficit: governance

For the past seven-plus years, as Greece’s debt crisis plays out in public in painful, blow-by-blow detail, the European body charged with its rescue has conducted its affairs away from prying eyes. Now there are growing calls to change the way the Eurogroup operates. Critics of the gathering of finance ministers from the 19 countries in the euro and officials from the