Tag: april 12 2022

Each week, we report instances where the money junky hedge funds, private equity groups and the already big companies swallow another piece of the global economy. Here are some more of what the BIGS have been gobbling up and how the Bigs keep getting bigger and the rich keep getting richer. TWO MAJOR INDIAN LENDERS...

Canada’s government is banning foreigners from buying homes there for the next two years in an attempt to control runaway housing prices.  The government also will provide billions of dollars in construction funds to add more affordable housing stock and introduce legislation to allow Canadians under age 40 to save up to C$40,000 tax-free toward...

General Motors and Honda Motor Co. will collaborate on technology that will underlie a variety of less-expensive electric vehicles (EVs), the companies announced on 5 April. Products will include compact, all-electric sport utility vehicles for China, North, and South America that will be priced under $30,000 and come to market in 2027, they predicted. In...

After suffering through a crisis that nearly toppled the industry, China’s property developers see a starkly different future than their freewheeling past, The Wall Street Journal said on 8 April. Chinese developers have realized that a two-decade boom in housing, commercial, and industrial building has ended, analysts told the WSJ, and the market will worsen...

Lockdowns in major Chinese cities including Shanghai, its most populous and home to the world’s busiest port, has crippled transportation and logistics across the country and Beijing’s “zero-tolerance” COVID policy continues to wreak havoc on the nation’s economy. At least 200 million people in 23 cities are under full or partial quarantine, according to Japanese...

China’s service sector grew by 33.5 percent in January and February this year, the country’s commerce ministry reported, turning in a value equivalent to $146.6 billion. Service exports were up 39.4 percent, year on year, with service imports rising 28.3 percent, yielding a 57.6-percent drop in China’s trade deficit in services compared to 2021, the...

The Chinese government has published a set of general guidelines intended to outline the shape and structure of what it calls a “unified domestic market that is highly efficient, rules-based, fair for competition, and open” the state-controlled Xinhua news service reported. The goals include “the efficient circulation and expansion of the domestic market, a stable,...

Japan has joined G7 and the European Union in barring imports of Russian coal, prime minister Fumio Kishida announced on 8 April. Japan will focus on expanding its use of renewable and nuclear power to offset the loss, he said. Last year, Japan imported more coal than any country other than China and India. Russia...

On 8 April, the European Union (EU) blacklisted four Russian banks already barred from using the SWIFT international payments system, including VTB, Russia’s second largest bank, which had already been sanctioned by the U.K. and U.S. Russian vodka, coal, and caviar have been banned, along with an array of other products. The sanctions also have...

The 31 member countries of the International Energy Agency (IEA) have agreed to release 60 million barrels of oil in addition to the 180 million the U.S. plans to release from its strategic reserve over the next six months, IEA director Fatih Birol announced.  “More details of specific contributions [by individual countries] will be made...