March, 2016

• 16 March

  Brazil’s unemployment jumps in 2015, adding to Rousseff’s woes

  

  Bloomberg Brazil’s national unemployment rate in 2015 rose to its highest since the data series began three years earlier, piling pressure on President Dilma Rousseff who was a prime target in one of the nation’s largest protests ever on Sunday. The unemployment rate in 2015 averaged 8.5 percent, up from 6.8 percent the prior year, according to data released by ...

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• 16 March

  Argentina’s lower house passes debt bill to settle holdouts

  

  Bloomberg Lawmakers in Argentina’s lower house of Congress voted on Wednesday to approve a bill that seeks to end a 15-year legal battle with disgruntled creditors from the 2001 default which would pave the way for the nation to return to international capital markets. Lawmakers voted 165 for and 86 against to support a package of measures that calls for ...

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• 16 March

  A Rio trucker’s woe and the threat it poses to President’s dream

  

  Bloomberg Of the 40 million people who climbed into Brazil’s middle class during the boom years of the previous decade, almost one in 10 has already slid back down. Marco Antonio dos Santos Correia fears he may be next. The 51-year-old trucker bought his vehicle and Rio de Janeiro apartment using borrowed cash, joining the millions of other Brazilians who ...

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• 16 March

  Rethinking crime and punishment

  

  Sen. John Cornyn recalls visiting a Texas prison where some inmates taking shop classes could not read tape measures. Cornyn, who was previously a district court judge and Texas Supreme Court justice, knows that prisons are trying to teach literacy and vocations, trying to cope with the mental illnesses of many inmates and trying to take prophylactic measures to prevent ...

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• 16 March

  ‘Mutuality’ will seal EU-Turkey migrant deal

  The EU-Turkey migrant draft deal touted last week as a breakthrough to settle the current refugee crisis faces difficulties, as some EU member states voiced resentment over Ankara’s demands, with Paris and Prague branding Turkey’s approach ‘Blackmail”. EU and Turkish leaders had agreed on a tentative plan that would see new migrants landing in Greece sent back to Turkey. For ...

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• 16 March

  A less costly stimulus for battling slump

  What should the U.S. government do to fight recessions? What should it do to fight slow growth? This is the eternal question of so-called countercyclical policy. The two mainstream ideas are fiscal and monetary stimulus. The fiscal version works by having the government borrow and spend money, either on useful things like infrastructure, or by simply mailing people checks. The ...

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• 16 March

  A Malaysia ‘pushback’ against China in South China Sea?

  On Monday, Malaysia’s defense minister Hishammuddin Hussein suggested if reports that China is placing military assets in the Spratlys are true, it would force the Southeast Asian state into a “pushback” against China. “If the reports we’ve received from various sources regarding the buildup and placement of military assets in the Spratlys are true – this forces us in a ...

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• 16 March

  Banks drag stocks lower as investors seek Fed support

  

  Bloomberg Banks dragged European shares lower, while investors awaited the Federal Reserve’s latest policy meeting for signals on the health of the world’s biggest economy and the trajectory of interest rates. Credit Suisse Group AG led declines among banks, sliding 6.5 percent, with four Europe-based traders citing the absence of Chief Financial Officer David Mathers from a conference in London ...

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• 16 March

  BofA sees Rajan pouring in funds as cash crunch worsens

  

  Bloomberg Bank of America (BofA) Merrill Lynch says India’s central bank should set a schedule for bond purchases to help bring down lending rates amid a cash crunch in the financial system. The Reserve Bank of India has bought 570 billion rupees ($8.5 billion) of sovereign debt since resuming open-market operations, or OMOs, in early December after almost two years. ...

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• 16 March

  PBOC gauges banks’ demand for loans at lower costs

  

  Beijing / Bloomberg The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) gauged demand for medium-term loans on Wednesday at an interest rate lower than it’s offered in the past, Reuters reported, citing people it didn’t identify. The monetary authority lowered the cost of the three- and six-month, and one-year Medium-term Lending Facility by 25 basis points to 2.5 percent, 2.6 percent and ...

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