Bloomberg Cape Wind, the offshore wind project off the coast of Massachusetts that drew the ire of the Kennedy and Koch families, is officially dead. Energy Management Inc. has ceased efforts to build what was once expected to become the first offshore wind farm in the US, according to an emailed statement from Chief Executive Officer Jim Gordon. The project’s ...
Read More »Bahrain says economy robust after S&P cut
Bloomberg S&P Global Ratings lowered Bahrain’s long-term foreign and local currency sovereign credit ratings to ‘B+’ from ‘BB-’, prompting Bahrain’s central bank to reaffirm the country’s currency peg to the US dollar. S&P Global Ratings said the rating cut was due to weak external liquidity and increasing financial risk due to more limited access to international capital markets. The Central ...
Read More »Trump rebuffs oil, rewards Iowa with steady biofuel quotas
Bloomberg The Trump administration, rebuffing oil industry demands for broad changes to the US biofuel mandate, largely maintained the status quo in setting final quotas for how much refiners must blend into gasoline and diesel. But the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision drew only tepid applause from Iowa politicians, Midwest corn farmers and producers of soy-based biodiesel, who say the targets ...
Read More »May fighting fires at home as EU’s Brexit deadline looms
Bloomberg UK Prime Minister Theresa May is battling to put out multiple political fires at home as she prepa- res for a crucial meeting in Brussels that she hopes will end the deadlock in Brexit talks. Euro-skeptics including members of May’s own Conservative party set out new “red lines†for the negotiations ahead of a lunch meeting she’ll have on ...
Read More »Ireland close to achieving Brexit goals: Varadkar
Bloomberg Ireland is well on its way to meeting its objectives in the Brexit negotiations, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said, as the European Union and the UK approach a deadline for moving on to talks about their future trading relationship. A day after European Commission President Donald Tusk said the EU would consult with Ireland before deciding whether to allow ...
Read More »Merkel to continue talks with SPD head to break German impasse
Bloomberg Chancellor Angela Merkel and the leader of the Social Democrats, Martin Schulz, agreed to keep talking as they stepped up joint efforts to break an impasse over forming Germany’s next government. Merkel told her Christian Democratic Union party’s board during a call that she and Schulz would continue to hold discussions on a way out of the political stalemate, ...
Read More »House GOP unveils plan to avert Dec 8 shutdown
Bloomberg House Republicans announced a plan to pass a two-week extension of federal government funding without Democratic votes and avoid a shutdown on December 8. The legislation would push the next deadline to the Friday before Christmas, giving House and Senate lawmakers time to knit together their respective tax-cutting bills into a single piece of legislation to present to President ...
Read More »Joyce set to return as Aussie deputy leader
Bloomberg Barnaby Joyce will return to parliament as Australia’s deputy prime minister after winning a special election, five weeks after he was forced to step down for being a dual national in breach of the constitution. Joyce, 50, claimed victory in the rural seat of New England, winning 63 percent of the vote to 11 percent for his nearest rival ...
Read More »The risky lure of passive investment proxies
The most commonly cited reasons for the surge of interest in passive investing products are fee savings and skepticism about the ability of active funds to outperform. Most likely, these two factors explain a dominant part of the record flow into an ever-widening range of these investments, including mutual funds and ETFs. But they may not be the only reasons. ...
Read More »The bitcoin is still sucking up all the crypto oxygen
With all this love for bitcoin, spare a thought for the little guy. Despite a plethora of new coins coming online in the past year, and the emergence of ethereum as an alternative cryptocurrency, bitcoin is still sucking up most of the oxygen. Without a doubt, the new coins’ sponsors owe a debt of gratitude to bitcoin for blazing a ...
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