Washington begins the week with some hope for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an ambitious free trade deal that would span 12 countries, thanks to a bill ironed out by lawmakers from both parties that would give President Obama authority to finalize negotiations for a deal.
At a meeting of the top global economic institutions, US Treasury secretary Jack Lew warned a number of countries, including close US allies, that they are freeloading too much off of America’s growing economy.
The first time he worked for a Clinton, Goldman Sachs veteran Gary Gensler helped royally screw up the US financial system, pushing from his perch at the Treasury Department to deregulate the derivatives market during Bill Clinton’s presidency.
The next technology that could upend the space business might be batteries.
We waited with bated breath yesterday to see if SpaceX could land the first stage of its rocket—normally discarded into the ocean—on a floating platform, so that it could be reused. The rocket didn’t quite make it, but here is the official video, as viewed from the SpaceX chase plane:
Thunderstorms scrubbed yesterday’s attempt, but today (April 14) at approximately 4:10 pm eastern time, SpaceX is expected to launch its seventh mission to the International Space Station on behalf of NASA. But mostly the world will be watching to see if the company can successfully land the first stage of its launch vehicle on a platform floating in the ocean.
Senator Marco Rubio threw his hat into the presidential ring yesterday in front of a historic background: Miami’s Freedom Tower, the “Ellis Island of the South,” where Cuban refugees were processed after fleeing the Communist revolution.
Update, 4:32 p.m.: The launch was scrubbed after lightning and anvil clouds made the weather conditions too risky for launch. The next opportunity for take-off is tomorrow, April 14, at 4:10 p.m. EST, and we’ll be watching.
Time for one more shot at the glass ceiling.
We have over eighteen months to spend hashing out Hillary Clinton’s vision for the economy. I’ll save you the time: It will look a lot like what we’ve heard from Barack Obama—and that might be a problem for her campaign.
Update, 6.12.15: The podcast has now launched, and you can listen or subscribe to Actuality in iTunes.
It’s a heady time for global development finance. The World Bank is articulating a plan to end extreme poverty by 2030, and a new infrastructure fund created by China has raised eyebrows in Washington and dollars around the world. All the while, private-sector innovations are reshaping the needs of emerging market economies.
The outline of an agreement to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons is being hailed as the defining diplomatic achievement of the Obama administration, and indeed such a deal would be an accomplishment in nonproliferation. But it isn’t likely to have a huge impact on the security situation in the Middle East, where the current, dangerous dynamic is driven by non-state actors. And it doesn’t mean the American intelligence community can sleep easily; even if Iran doesn’t have the bomb, nuclear Pakistan and North Korea will keep US strategists up at night.
The biggest debate in the economics world—whether advanced economies like the United States or the European Union are doomed to stagnation—has pitted former US Treasury secretary Larry Summers against former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. One Nobel prize-winning economist already has weighed in to take Summers’ side over Bernanke’s. Now, the IMF is piling on.
Where will the online battle be waged in the next US presidential election?
Airbnb is one of the first US companies to head for Cuba, and the platform for renting someone else’s home, or a room in it, is ideally placed to take advantage of newly-relaxed restrictions on doing business in Cuba—but not for the reason you might think.
The president of the United States has declared a national emergency due to the threat presented by cyber attacks.
A reliable dog whistle for conservative politicians in the US—laws that use “religious freedom” to justify discrimination based on sexual orientation—may be starting to cost more than it once did. And Republican presidential candidates such as former Florida governor Jeb Bush and senator Marco Rubio might have missed the message.
Update, 6.12.15: The podcast has now launched, and you can listen or subscribe to Actuality in iTunes.
In the late 1960s, Wall Street had a paper problem. Every time a stock changed hands, a physical stock certificate had to be exchanged as well.
When American companies take advantage of loopholes to keep their earnings overseas and away from the American tax man, they typically justify the legal-but-embarrassing move by appealing to their responsibility to shareholders—anything to get them another buck.
Ashraf Ghani, the president of Afghanistan, plans to remake his war-torn country’s economy by relying on its traditional geographic advantage as the crossroads of Europe, the Middle East and Asia. It’s a plan that could leave the US with diminishing influence, even as it bears the costs of the country’s security.
In a January poll, US voters told the Pew Research Center that the environment, as an issue, was number 13 on their priority list. The top five? Terrorism, the economy, jobs, education, and social security—in other words, guns, and also butter.
Morgan Stanley CFO Ruth Porat is off to manage Google’s finances, and her new job has become a useful data point in the debate over the changes in Silicon Valley—but is it good news or bad?
