Tag: feb 2 2021

AIRLINES STILL IN A TAILSPIN. American Airlines reported a 2020 loss of almost $8.89 billion, JetBlue almost $1.4 billion, and Southwest Air $1.3 billion, its first annual loss in 48 years. The losses have continued into 2021’s first quarter.  Air carriers expect their fortunes to improve only when vaccines have been taken up by enough...

Lai Xiaomin, a former employee of Huarong Asset Management, was executed last week, three weeks after being convicted of bribery by a court in the city of Tianjin. He was convicted of taking about $280 million in bribes over ten years while he worked at Huarong and, before that, as a regulator at the Chinese...

Developing nations’ businesses and governments sold a record $115.2 billion in bonds to foreign investors during the first 27 days of this year, Bond Radar reported. The figure eclipses the previous record of $112.8 billion set last January as emerging markets struggled with burdensome debt. The new debt is in addition to the $847 billion...

COVID cases are dwindling in India after a severe lockdown, which shrank the economy by 15 percent from April through September. The contraction turned what had once been the world’s fastest-growing economy into one of the world’s worst performers.  However, despite infections dropping from 100,000 a day to less than 20,000 now, wary consumers have...

Germany’s consumer prices rose 0.7 percent in December, then the rate more than doubled to 1.6 percent in January, the country’s Federal Statistical Office reported. Analysts had expected a modest 0.5-percent bump. The price inflation was not due to an overall economic recovery but was caused by three factors, analysts say: Germany had reduced its...

The number of condominiums for rent in Canada’s largest city ballooned by 132 percent in the last quarter of 2020 year over year as the city reimposed a stringent lockdown, a 27 January report from the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board disclosed. The glut of empty flats pushed rental prices down. A one-bedroom condo was...

Canadian hotels, financially drained after months of occupancy rates below their break-even points, have seen their property insurance premiums skyrocket. In the province of Alberta, property insurance rates have risen 100 to 300 percent in the past year, according to the Alberta Hotel & Lodging Association. A group owning hotels in western Canada reported rates...

As the COVID pandemic ends, governments should not rush to reduce their debt but “rethink” their financial policies so they continue to support recovery and reduce joblessness, Vitor Gaspar, chief of fiscal policy for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in a 28 January public statement reported by the Financial Times. The position is a...