Kenya’s security situation continues to deteriorate. Attacks along Kenya’s coast left roughly 65 dead in two separate attacks last week. The Somali Islamic militant group al-Shabaab, which has claimed responsibility for the attacks, was also behind the attack on the Westgate Mall in September 2013, which left at least 67 people dead, including many foreigners.
Thanks to its ubiquitous mobile products, Samsung may now be the best-known of the chaebols, the sprawling family-run conglomerates—including Hyundai and LG—that have dominated South Korea’s economy for decades. Founded as a simple trading firm under the Japanese occupation by Lee Byung-Chull in 1938, the Samsung corporate family, which is still controlled by his heirs, now includes:
The quarter that ended May 24 was the worst one in decades for the UK’s top food retailer, Tesco.
New Zealand’s economy continues to surge, despite a historically strong Kiwi dollar that should act as a drag on its dairy-based export economy. The antipodean island nation’s gross domestic product rose 1% during the first quarter. The economy rose 3.8% from the prior year, the largest jump since 2007.
South Korea punches far above its weight when it comes to spending on innovation. In 2012, Korea spent 4.4% of GDP on research and development. That’s the highest among the developed nations tracked by OECD, the Paris-based rich nation think tank. The private sector is a key driver. Private-sector R&D spending is up 35% between 2008 and 2011, and has more than doubled since 2003.
So the Fed is out with it’s latest monetary policy statement. It’s pretty much as expected. A continued taper, to the tune of a $10–billion-a-month reduction in the central bank’s bond-buying programs. The statement reflected some uptick in economic activity. But here’s the chart the markets are watching. It’s the Fed’s projections of where the benchmark Fed funds rate should be over the next few years. Each dot represents the prediction of one member of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the central bank’s governing board.
Sure, Apple shareholders aren’t seeing the kinds of gains that they used to. But let’s be clear: They don’t have anything to cry about. The company has doused investors with cash via dividends and buybacks recently. (It’s now among the world’s top dividend-paying companies.)
Today marks the conclusion of a two-day meeting of the US Federal Reserve, accompanied by a raft of Fed projections and a press conference appearance by chair Janet Yellen.
As an economic issue, inflation just isn’t a problem in the US.
Parents of pre-teens won’t be surprised to hear that the rubber band seems to be behind a bounce in sales for America’s largest arts-and-crafts retailer.
A fresh wave of corporate computer-buying is starting to materialize, which could be great news for both computer giants and the US economy.
Just in time Father’s Day, the rich-country think tank known as the OECD has issued its annual survey of the US economy. The Paris-based organization specializes in churning out reports that standardize data across national boundaries, enabling observers to compare countries against one another. The entire report is worth a glance, but its comparisons of government spending on social policies to support families really stood out to us.
And it wasn’t the World Cup.
The Wall Street Journal reports that there are signs of risky behavior returning to the leveraged loan market (paywall). To which most people respond: What is the leveraged loan market?
The grocery store business has never been easy, given its traditionally thin margins.
So it’s finally here. Brazil will kick off the World Cup today with a match against Croatia in Sao Paulo. Let’s hope the national side does well, because the mood in Brazil is already pretty bad.
First, the good news: Britain’s jobless rate fell to 6.6% in the three months through April.
By the standards of the terror-filled late 1980s and early 1990s, Italy is in the midst of something of a pax mafiosa.
More strong economic data confirms that the US economy seems to be shifting into a higher gear after a soft first quarter. The numbers reinforce last week’s message��from the labor market, where the US economy has generated more than 200,000 jobs a month for four months straight (something that hadn’t happened since the late 1990s).
Yields on Spanish government bonds have plummeted over the last year, as prices for the bonds have rallied. (Yields—the rate the market charges a country to borrow—move in the opposite direction from prices.) Today, that rally hit another significant milestone as yields on Spanish government bonds—just a few years ago seen as one of the riskiest assets in the financial world—fell below the yield on the US 10-year Treasury note, one of the financial world’s benchmarks of safety.
America’s addiction to credit cards is flaring up again. This is either really good news or really bad news.
