Skip to main content

Home/ Global Economy/ Group items matching "highlighted" in title, tags, annotations or url

Group items matching
in title, tags, annotations or url

Sort By: Relevance | Date Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
1More

Iowa Beef Processors, Boxed Beef and a New Big Four - 0 views

www.livinghistoryfarm.org/...money_17.html iowa beef processors highlighted
shared by Gene Ellis on 30 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Gene Ellis on 30 Dec 12
     
    Article by David Warsh on tech. change
6More

Ireland's Debt to Foreign Banks Is Still Unknown - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...24banks.html ireland debt banks unknown nytimes nytimes com com
shared by Gene Ellis on 11 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Mr. Weber, who is also a member of the European Central Bank’s governing council, said that the statistics reflected Ireland’s status as a financial center: much of what is recorded as claims on Ireland is in fact money funneled through Irish subsidiaries of German banks, and ultimately bound for elsewhere, Mr. Weber said. He said total German exposure was closer to $30 billion.
  • In both cases more than half of the exposure was to Ireland’s private sector, rather than lending to the government or Ireland’s beleaguered banks.
  • Taxpayers will bear the cost, but they may never find out how much. The bad bank, known as FMS Wertmanagement, has no plans to release financial statements, according to Soffin, the German government organization that oversees bank rescues.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • In Germany, Hypo Real Estate, a property and public sector lender owned by the government after a bailout, owed its near collapse largely to problems at Depfa, its subsidiary in Dublin. Last month Hypo transferred most of its troubled assets to a so-called bad bank that will slowly wind down the investments.
  • The latest figures from the Bank for International Settlements put total European bank exposure to Portugal and Spain at $853 billion, with Germany, France and Britain the biggest creditors.
  • That worst-case forecast highlights another potential hidden risk. Credit-default swaps are typically sold over the counter by investment banks, with little information available publicly about the financial strength of the sellers. “Only then will we know for sure if the institutions that wrote the credit-default swaps have the liquidity and the financial strength to perform as contracted,” Mr. Weinberg wrote in a note last week.
10More

A Driving School in France Hits a Wall of Regulations - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...its-a-wall-of-regulations.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 05 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • The other driving schools have sued them, saying their innovations break the rules.
  • partly because getting a driver’s license here is so difficult and expensive that it has inspired books on the subject,
  • their struggle highlights how the myriad rules governing driving schools — and 36 other highly regulated professions — stifle competition and inflate prices in France.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • In the case of driving schools, the government offers only a limited number of exams each year, and these are doled out to the driving schools depending on their success rate the year before. That fact alone gives the old guard a virtual monopoly,
  • calling for an overhaul of the written test, which he says goes far beyond making sure that a person knows the rules of the road.
  • Some studies have concluded that the French are probably paying 20 percent more than they should for the services they get from regulated professions, which include notaries, lawyers, bailiffs, ambulance drivers, court clerks, driving instructors and more.
  • The failure rate for the French driving exam is about 41 percent, the government office for road safety said. The cost to the economy goes beyond the embarrassment of those who fail, according to those who have studied it.
  • barriers to getting a license are so high that about one million French people, who should have licenses, have never been able to get them.
  • Mr. Kramarz said that it often costs 3,000 euros, or about $3,900, to get a license. But others said the average was closer to 1,500 to 2,000 euros.
  • Although students are required to take only 20 hours of driving lessons, most end up doing double that while they wait for a chance to take the test.
13More

Carmakers Are Central Voice in U.S.-Europe Trade Talks - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...for-us-europe-trade-talks.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 18 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • With the dexterity of thieves stripping a vehicle for parts, they remove each van’s engine, bumpers, tires, drive shaft, fuel tank and the exhaust system.
  • Next, the crews pack everything into steel freight containers, which begin a journey by river barge and cargo ship to Ladson, S.C., near the port of Charleston. There, American teams put the vans back together again.
  • It would be more efficient to ship the vans in one piece, of course. But with current trade rules, efficiency is seldom the goal.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Daimler’s stripped-down vans travel by cargo ship to Ladson, S.C., where a token portion of assembly occurs to avoid a costly American tariff.
  • It was first imposed on European light trucks during the 1960s in retaliation for German and French trade restrictions on American chickens.
  • The importance of European-American auto production, meanwhile, was highlighted by Volkswagen’s announcement on Monday that it would open a new production line in Chattanooga, Tenn., to make sport utility vehicles.
  • In Europe, discussion about the economic benefits of an agreement has been overshadowed by fears that more open trade would expose the Continent to what are widely perceived as less stringent safety and environmental standards in the United States. (And once again, chickens play a big role.)
  • Trucks, cars and other transportation equipment such as airplanes make up the second-biggest category of merchandise traded between the United States and Europe, just behind chemicals.
  • n the first three months of 2014 alone, the United States exported $2.6 billion in motor vehicles and parts to the European Union, and imported $12.3 billion worth.
  • The engines and other components used in Freightliner heavy trucks made in Portland, Ore., are similar to those installed in Mercedes-Benz heavy trucks made in Wörth, Germany. But Daimler must design and engineer many parts twice — and submit them for regulatory certification twice — to meet different United States and European rules.
  • The reason that Daimler goes to the trouble of finishing assembly in Germany in the first place is that the vehicles must be test-driven before they leave the factory. It would be too costly to set up a separate testing operation in the United States, the company said.
  • Industries like chemicals and pharmaceuticals are even trickier, and food is a particularly emotional issue in Europe.
  • there is a fixation on American chickens disinfected with chlorine, which local consumers find repellent
1More

Michael Pettis explains the euro crisis (and a lot of other things, too) | FT Alphaville - 0 views

ftalphaville.ft.com/...-and-a-lot-of-other-things-too
shared by Gene Ellis on 18 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Michael Pettis explains the euro crisis (and a lot of other things, too) Matthew C Klein | Feb 06 08:30 | 53 comments | Share Share this on Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn StumbleUpon Reddit Th
2More

Singapore, the Nation That Lee Kuan Yew Built, Questions Its Direction - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...t-questions-its-direction.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 24 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Singapore, the Nation That Lee Kuan Yew Built, Questions Its Direction
  • Battling a low birthrate among its citizens, the government opened the floodgates to foreign labor over the past decade and a half. More than a third of the 5.5 million people living in Singapore today are not citizens.The number of nonresident immigrants has more than doubled since 2000, to nearly 1.6 million from 754,000. The number of foreigners given permanent resident status also nearly doubled during the same period, to just over 500,000.
1 - 6 of 6
Showing 20▼ items per page